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Microsoft teases mysterious Discord and Xbox Game Pass partnership

2026-04-22T13:59:30-04:00

Microsoft has started teasing a new Discord and Xbox Game Pass partnership, just a day after lowering prices of its Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscriptions. Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma says the company is partnering with Discord again "as we continue to make Game Pass more flexible for our players."

It's not immediately clear what the latest Discord and Xbox partnership will result in, but given it's a Game Pass one it's likely related to some perks for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass. At the moment Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can get a month of Discord Nitro as part of the subscription, and it's possible that Microsoft and …

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Microsoft says the ‘idea’ of an Xbox mobile store ‘is not dead’

2026-04-22T13:42:45-04:00

Microsoft first revealed it was building an Xbox mobile gaming store to take on Apple and Google all the way back in 2022. Former Xbox president Sarah Bond even went on stage at a Bloomberg event nearly two years ago and promised the store would launch in July, 2024. Now, it looks like Microsoft has put the project on hold.

Better xCloud developer redphx noticed that the store URL Microsoft had been testing for the past couple of years no longer works. It's not clear exactly when it disappeared, but the last time the website was updated was nearly a year ago.

The store was originally supposed to compete with Google and Apple, but strict ap …

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I bought Alienware’s $350 OLED monitor and I can’t believe how good it is

2026-04-22T11:03:58-04:00

At $350, the AW2726DM is cheap enough that some people may choose to buy two for a dual monitor setup.

I've recommended several OLED gaming monitors to readers over the years, and I've finally taken my own advice to buy one. Alienware's new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED has all the features that I want and a low $350 price that was too tempting to ignore.

The AW2726DM model has five things that make it stand out for the price: a 1440p QD-OLED screen with lush contrast, a fast 240Hz refresh rate, a semi-glossy screen coating to enhance details, a low-profile design without flashy RGB LEDs, and a great warranty (three years with coverage for burn-in).

I've been using Alienware's new monitor for a couple days, and I've already spent hours with it play …

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Call of Duty never made much sense for Xbox Game Pass

2026-04-22T09:41:12-04:00

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. | Image: Activision Blizzard

Yesterday Microsoft announced some surprising news: at a time when everything in gaming is getting more expensive, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate was actually getting a price cut. Going forward, the subscription service will drop from $29.99 to $22.99 per month, less than a year after getting a major hike. But there's a caveat. Along with the cheaper price, Microsoft also announced that future Call of Duty games will no longer be available through Game Pass at launch.

It's the end to a strange experiment from Microsoft, in which it attempted to boost its subscription service at the expense of selling Call of Duty games, which also happens to be on …

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The year’s weirdest game is hard to explain and even harder to put down

2026-04-22T09:17:28-04:00

The first rule of Titanium Court is that you can't explain Titanium Court. Not because we're living under the omerta of an 8-bit Fight Club, but because it's one truth I can stand by. For the past week, I've been facing the consequences of getting isekai'd into a digital pastiche of the entire history of dramatic allegory and contemporary humor, leading a whimsical quasi-sentient court of wildly unmedicated faeries to their doom. They try, in their roundabout faerie way, to be helpful, because I don't know what I'm doing. "I'm looking forward to you explaining the game to me," said my editor Andrew Webster - words he silently swallowed after …

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Framework’s first eGPUs turn its laptop into a desktop PC

2026-04-22T14:19:35-04:00

Remember when Framework made the first laptop where you can easily upgrade its entire internal video card in three minutes flat? The company's getting into the external graphics game, too. As promised last August, you'll be able to turn the Framework Laptop 16's GPU modules into external ones instead. Or, you can plug in a desktop graphics card (or network card, or other PCIe cards) for more power than most laptops ever dream of having, with eight lanes of PCI-Express bandwidth.

Framework's calling it the OCuLink Dev Kit, because it uses the OCuLink standard to transmit data between your CPU and the external GPU, and because the company wa …

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gets a price cut but loses new Call of Duty games

2026-04-21T13:15:06-04:00

After Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted last week that "Game Pass has become too expensive for players," Microsoft is dropping the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Starting today, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate drops from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, and PC Game Pass moves to $13.99, down from $16.49 a month.

The price drops are being fueled in part by future Call of Duty titles no longer joining Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass at launch. "New Call of Duty games will be added to Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass during the following holiday season (about a year later), while existing Call of Duty titles already in the library will …

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Splatoon Raiders hits the Switch 2 in July

2026-04-21T09:49:30-04:00

The squid kids will be back this summer. Nintendo announced this morning that Splatoon Raiders, a single-player spinoff of its competitive shooter series, will launch on the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 23rd. It'll be the first new entry in the series since Splatoon 3 in 2022.

In addition to the date, Nintendo also released a new trailer that gives a better idea of what Raiders will actually play like. Essentially, it looks like it retains the same ink-focused shooter gameplay - and killer soundtrack - from the main series, but translates it to a new campaign. That said, while Nintendo describes the game as "single-player-focused," Raiders doe …

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PlayStation’s age-gating restrictions are coming to UK consoles

2026-04-21T09:39:37-04:00

Sony is starting to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act by notifying PlayStation players of its age verification requirements today. PS4 and PS5 owners in the UK and Ireland won't be able to participate in voice chats, messaging, parties, or other third-party communication services from June unless they verify their age.

"Beginning June 2026, if you have not completed age verification, you can continue playing on PlayStation, but some features won't be available until you verify your age," says Sony in a support note. Age verification will also be required for broadcasting features or sharing gameplay to YouTube or Twitch from a PlayStat …

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The Lenovo Legion Go S is RAMageddon’s latest victim

2026-04-20T19:17:42-04:00

You can still find the Asus Xbox Ally X and the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus for $999 and $1,049 respectively, but Lenovo's Legion Go S has seemingly given up the fight. The best version of Lenovo's 8-inch handheld now costs nearly double what it did at launch - originally $829.99 last summer, the SteamOS version with Z1 Extreme chip now costs a staggering $1,579.99 at Best Buy.

That's an even bigger price hike than with Lenovo's flagship Legion Go 2, which saw up to a $650 price hike early this month.

Not every Legion Go S model costs nearly double what it did before, but none are anywhere near what they originally cost. The Windows Z1 Extreme mo …

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