Category: Arts Entertainments

Daly’s pro se legal representation in the case was notable for its use of several novel affirmative defenses, including arguments that Nintendo’s “alleged copyrights are invalid,” that Nintendo “does not have standing…

Nintendo also accused Genki of “extensive use of Nintendo trademarks” in association with their unlicensed products, a move that “exploit[ed] and appropriate[d] for [Genki] the public goodwill associated with… Nintendo Switch marks.”…

Last year, we reported on the efforts of classic iPod fans to preserve playable copies of the downloadable clickwheel games that Apple sold for a brief period in the late ’00s. The…

A video shows how different storage media can affect Mario Kart World load times. CD Projekt Red VP of Technology Charles Tremblay has alluded to this same challenge when talking about the…

However, it’s important to note that neither of those metrics gives as complete a picture as some Internet discussions suggest they do; Civilization VII launched on other platforms and game stores like…

An influx of players excited for this morning’s launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong are encountering widespread errors purchasing and downloading the game from Steam this morning. Ars Technica writers have encountered errors…

A Sega fan and collector since his youth and an emulator hobbyist since the early ’00s, Nemesis tracked down his first LaserActive unit for $200 in 2004. By 2009, he was publicly…

Earlier this month, EA announced that players in its Battlefield 6 open beta on PC would have to enable Secure Boot in their Windows OS and BIOS settings. That decision proved controversial…

Overall, though, you can see a clear and significant downward trend to the year-over-year pricing for game consoles released before 2016. After three years on the market, the median game console during…

Then there’s the way the game stresses a number of early dialogue choices, telling you how your fellow agents will remember when you choose to treat them with eager support or stern…

The long and winding road It’s hard to remember now, but Star Citizen‘s then-impressive $6.3 million Kickstarter campaign came just a few months before Grand Theft Auto V first launched on the…

It’s been a busy year for Framework, the company behind the now well-established series of repairable, upgradeable, modular laptops (and one paradoxically less-upgradeable desktop). The company has launched a version of the…

Hollow Knight: Silksong will be released on September 4. It will come out simultaneously on Windows, macOS, Linux, Xbox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, the Nintendo Switch, and the Nintendo Switch 2. On…

Asus and Microsoft will be launching their ROG Xbox Ally series of handheld gaming PCs starting October 16, according to an Asus announcement that went out today. An Xbox-branded extension of Asus’…

Sony will join Microsoft and Nintendo in raising US prices across its entire game console lineup, the company announced today. Pricing for all current versions of the PlayStation 5 console will increase…

If you like something a little more statement-y, the Fractal Design North ($155) and Lian Li Lancool 217 ($120) both include the wood accents that some case makers have been pushing lately….

A lot of times, the titles that went for this on some level seemed more like simulations than games or stories. They were less consistently fun than other games, but they were…

The Mini SSD card isn’t and may never be a formally ratified standard, but it does aim to solve a real problem for portable gaming systems—the need for fast storage that can…

In my decades as a video game player and reviewer, I’ve used the humble PC mouse in hundreds of games for everything from first-person aiming and third-person character movement to basic menu…

Bad news if you’re one of the handful of people using Steam to play games on a Chromebook: Google and Valve are preparing to end support for the still-in-beta ChromeOS version of…

Framework has also published basic templates for both the tiles and the top panel so that those with 3D printers can make their own. PC testbed notes We’ve compared the performance of…

The kinds of randomized options you’ll have to choose between waves. The kinds of randomized options you’ll have to choose between waves. Those inter-wave upgrades are also randomized in each run, adding…

Slowed tech progress, inflation, and global trade wars are doing a number on game console pricing this year, and the bad news keeps coming. Nintendo delayed preorders of the Switch 2 in…

The Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs won’t be totally abandoned after 2025; Nvidia says it will release quarterly security updates for these cards through October 2028. These updates won’t optimize performance or…

With Red Viper’s built-in color support, though, anyone with a 3DS modded for homebrew software can now easily add a bit of color to the Virtual Boy library. And running the emulator…

I maintain a to-do list of story ideas to write at Ars, and for about a year “monthly column on DOS games I love” has been near the top of the list….

The brief message has replaced many adult games previously available on itch.io. The brief message has replaced many adult games previously available on itch.io. Credit: Itch.io Linked takedown notices on some of…

Julian LeFay, “the father of The Elder Scrolls,” has died at 59 – Ars Technica Arena and Daggerfall before passing the torch to Todd Howard.”,”image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/LeFay-500×500-1753300630.jpg”,”listing_image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/LeFay-768×432.jpg”}”> Skip to content LeFay spearheaded Arena and…

After 5 years in development, the Assassin’s Creed TV series is happening – Ars Technica Westworld, Halo alums.”,”image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/660e5a03fbff4e2940488bcd-1-500×500.webp”,”listing_image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/660e5a03fbff4e2940488bcd-1-768×432.webp”}”> Skip to content Series will be led by Westworld, Halo alums. The dual protagonists…

PC-like power, console-like benefits Cyberpunk is a big get for the Mac’s gaming team, as it’s an enduringly popular open-world game with a distinctive look, but it’s also of a piece with…

A collection of ports in the rear of the monitor. While the stereoscopic effect was overall comfortable for long periods in my tests, my eyes did have  a bit of trouble focusing…

There are countless Android-powered gaming handhelds, but they go beyond the usual slate of Android games by offering console emulation support. The problem is the game ROMs on these devices, which are…

Valve’s famously permissive rules for what games are and are not allowed on Steam got a little less permissive this week, seemingly in response to outside pressure from some of its partner…

This Kong’s got a funny face… Credit: Nintendo This Kong’s got a funny face… Credit: Nintendo As the game progresses, you’ll also unlock a handful of animalistic “Bananza” transformations from a menagerie…

In 2019, Nintendo announced a new benefit for subscribers to its Switch Online service: a pair of game vouchers, available for $100, that could be redeemed for any two Switch games on…

Greetings, Arsians! We love games here at the Ars Orbiting HQ, and I’m not just talking the latest AAA blockbusters—we love all kinds of games, from modern to ancient and all points…

Epic Games, buoyed by the massive success of Fortnite, has spent the last few years throwing elbows in the mobile industry to get its app store on more phones. It scored an…

Two key writers of HBO’s series The Last of Us are moving on, according to announcements on Instagram yesterday. Neil Druckmann, co-creator of the franchise, and Halley Gross, co-writer of The Last of…

Table of Contents Jump to section The road to Glacier To understand exactly what’s going on with the next Battlefield title—codenamed Glacier—we need to rewind a bit. In the early 2010s, Battlefield…

A clear improvement As you can see in the included charts, SteamOS showed noticeable frame rate improvements in four of the five games tested. Only Borderlands 3 showed comparable performance across both…

There’s also a new loading screen with more detailed information and more interactive elements, which Firaxis says is a hint at other major UI overhauls to come. That said, players have already…

Those who’ve played the excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition series will be familiar with the high-speed vibe here, but Pac-Man Superfast remains focused on the game’s original maze and selection of just four…

Microsoft’s “Xbox Series” consoles haven’t exactly been tearing up the sales charts. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft’s “Xbox Series” consoles haven’t exactly been tearing up the sales charts. Credit: Microsoft On the PC side,…

Earlier this week, the makers of the popular Mig Flash cartridge, which allows users to play Switch games loaded via an SD card without modifying the console itself, issued a firmware update…

Link’s Awakening, Switch 1, docked. Andrew Cunningham Link’s Awakening, Switch 1, docked. Andrew Cunningham Link’s Awakening, Switch 2, docked. Note fewer jaggies and sharper textures, especially on top of the posts. Andrew…

The nsOne project joins a growing community of homebrew PlayStation 1 hardware developments. Other recent projects include Picostation, a Raspberry Pi Pico-based optical disc emulator (ODE) that allows PlayStation 1 consoles to…

While that kind of item-based back-and-forth isn’t new to Mario Kart, it feels like it has been taken to a new extreme by World‘s more crowded race track. If you’re in the…

One weakness of Valve’s Steam Deck gaming handheld and SteamOS is that, by default, they will only run Windows games from Steam that are supported by the platform’s Proton compatibility layer (plus…

At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple unveiled a new iOS Games App that Apple Senior Director of Marketplace Platforms and Technologies Ann Thai promoted as “a new destination to help you…

Back in March, we outlined six features we wanted to see on what was then just a rumored Xbox-branded, Windows-powered handheld gaming device. Today, Microsoft’s announcement of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally…

As an included freebie with the Switch 2 system, this would merely be tedious. As a game with a $10 asking price, it’s a little insulting. GameChat is cute, but screen-sharing is…

Link’s Awakening, Switch 1, docked. Andrew Cunningham Link’s Awakening, Switch 1, docked. Andrew Cunningham Link’s Awakening, Switch 2, docked. Note fewer jaggies and sharper textures, especially on top of the posts. Andrew…

But this kind of online gaming moderation is typically designed for situations where players could be exposed to random strangers in online matches. Nintendo’s GameChat is already strictly limited to users whom…

It’s a whole lot of commotion for a GPU that is otherwise about as ho-hum as it is possible to be. It’s a noticeable but unexciting upgrade over its predecessor, and it…

The current state of the GPU market At this point in 2025’s graphics card market, the issue isn’t so much that mainstream cards like the 5060, 5070, or 9070 aren’t available but…

Once I brought the original Switch close by to start the transfer process, I was warned that save files for games including Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu would…

“Free Roam” mode is Mario Kart World’s killer app – Ars Technica Forza Horizon, Diddy Kong Racing, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.”,”image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mkw2-500×500.jpg”,”listing_image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/mkw2-768×432.jpg”}”> Skip to content Equal parts Forza Horizon, Diddy Kong Racing,…

You can use mouse mode to navigate system menus I stumbled on this feature when I was holding the Joy-Cons normally and one of my fingers accidentally passed over the mouse sensor,…

Nintendo’s Switch 2 has a small handful of new releases in its launch lineup, but for the first few months after its release, the main thing you’ll be able to play on…

There are a few crucial tweaks to the Elden Ring formula aiding you in this newly speed-focused effort. For one thing, your character now has an unlimited “surge sprint” that can get…

Valve’s instructions will walk you through downloading a SteamOS recovery image and copying it to a USB drive using either the Rufus tool (on Windows) or Balena Etcher (the preferred macOS and…

That blue bar sure does take me back… That blue bar sure does take me back… If that kind of nostalgia were all there was to Desktop Survivors 98, it would probably…

Consoles like these may get banned from Nintendo’s online services, but they tend to still work offline. Consoles like these may get banned from Nintendo’s online services, but they tend to still…

AMD didn’t provide much by way of performance comparisons, but it’s promising that the cards have the same number of compute units as AMD’s last-generation RX 7600 series. AMD says that RDNA…

Tell it to the judge In an attempt to force Apple’s hand, Epic filed a motion on Friday arguing that Apple’s latest Fortnite denial is “blatant retaliation” for Epic’s court challenge and…

Anno 117 Pax Romana hands-on: Gorgeous, deep, and tricky to learn – Ars Technica Anno 1800, 117 aims to seize an even bigger audience.”,”image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Anno-117-farms-500×500.jpg”,”listing_image_url”:”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Anno-117-farms-768×432-1747428860.jpg”}”> Skip to content After a return to form…

For voice actors who previously portrayed Darth Vader in video games, the Fortnite feature starkly illustrates how AI voice synthesis could reshape their profession. While James Earl Jones created the iconic voice…

New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about…

If you build up a big area of plains on your board, you can drop your “Farm” piece in the middle, and it converts those plains into richer plains. Put a “Woodcutter”…

Like the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game’s rather exacting standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a…

When Nintendo took the wraps off the Switch 2 in early April, it announced that around a dozen first-party Switch games would be getting free updates that would add some Switch 2-specific…

In that sense, the vulgar Vader situation creates a touchy dilemma for Epic Games and Disney, which likely invested substantially in this high-profile collaboration. While Epic acted swiftly in response, maintaining the…

Digital Foundry also notes that the Switch 2’s stated clock speeds can be tuned to higher theoretical maximums: 1.4 GHz for the GPU and 1.7 GHz for the CPU. Nintendo could eventually…

We’ve known for months now that Valve is expanding its Linux-based SteamOS operating system beyond the Steam Deck to other handheld PCs, starting with some versions of the Asus ROG Ally. This…

While working on our review of Doom: The Dark Ages last week, I was unable to test the game on the Steam Deck due to a bug that prevented it from launching…

Switch and Switch 2 users who try to hack their consoles or play pirated copies of games may find their devices rendered completely inoperable by Nintendo. That new warning was buried in…

In between all the parrying, you do get to shoot stuff. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios In between all the parrying, you do get to shoot stuff. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios In between…

Yesterday’s naming of Chicago native Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV—the first American-born leader of the Catholic church—has already led to plenty of jokes and memes about his potential interactions with various…

You could even argue that Nintendo is more likely to offer longer-term support for Game Key Card downloads since backward compatibility seems to be a priority for the Switch hardware line. If…

Nvidia will release the GeForce RTX 5060 on May 19 starting at $299, the company announced via press release today. The new card, a successor to popular past GPUs like the GTX…

While Gemini is using its own model and reasoning process for these tasks, it’s telling that JoelZ had to specifically graft these specialized agents onto the base model to help it get…

New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about…

Consider the PlayStation 2. Not all of the PS2 Slim’s streamlining came from chip improvements—it also shed a full-sized 3.5-inch hard drive bay and a little-used IEEE 1394 port, and initially required…

Broadly, UESPWiki is an impressive information repository of The Elder Scrolls franchise. It also documents the dense, often convoluted lore of the franchise, as well as books and merchandise sold alongside the…

Rockstar’s highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will finally launch on May 26, 2026, Rockstar Games said in a Friday morning announcement. That means the game will miss the “2025” release window…

It has been over six years since Epic started undercutting Steam’s 30 percent revenue share for developers, asking for just 12 percent of sales on its then-new Epic Games Store. Now, Epic…

Microsoft is increasing the recommended asking price of Xbox hardware and accessories worldwide starting today and will start charging $79.99 for some new first-party games this holiday season. The announcement comes after…

End of an era Polygon was founded in 2012 when Vox Media spent significant money to poach top journalists from popular gaming blogs like Kotaku, Joystiq, and The Escapist. After initially publishing…

In a statement provided to Ars Technica, an Apple spokesperson said, “We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.” An Epic return With…

A March video explaining the new Virtual Game Card system that launched via system update today. While that old system could be cumbersome to set up, it actually allowed for quite a…

To be sure, Patrick Stewart’s regal delivery in the early game helps paper over a lot of potential weaknesses with the initial narrative. And even beyond Stewart’s excellent performance, I appreciated how…

“Bethesda has always been supportive of community projects like ours, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon,” the team wrote at the time. The latest “making of” trailer for the ambitious…

US preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 console went live at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart at midnight Eastern time last night (though the rush of orders caused problems and delays across…

Wizards of the Coast has released the System Reference Document, the heart of the three core rule books that constitute Dungeons & Dragons‘ 2024 gameplay, under a Creative Commons license. This means…

Bethesda isn’t officially supporting mods for the newly released Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. But that hasn’t stopped some players from discovering that many mods created for the 2006 original seem to…

That said, Virtuos has also made changes on that front. Most notably, today’s announcement revealed that the remaster will have a completely overhauled leveling system, which is described as combining elements from…

In the descriptions for those videos, though, Coincident acknowledged some of the reasons that Okuplok’s level has been “deemed impossible to beat in one segment” on Ultra Violence difficulty. Even if you…

New episodes of season 2 of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t) will be talking about…

A tipped-cap moment The center of Whisky’s homepage. The page now carries a persistent notice that “Whisky is no longer actively maintained. Apps and games may break at any time.” Credit: Whisky…

Assassin’s Creed titles are cozy games for me. There’s no more relaxing place to go after a difficult day: historical outdoor museum tours plus dopamine dispensers plus slow-paced assassination simulators. The developers…

The creators of Sunderfolk wanted to make a video game that would help players “Rediscover game night.” By my reckoning, they have succeeded, because I am now regularly arguing with good friends over…

The Switch 2 hardware will still retail for its initially announced $449.99, alongside a $499.99 bundle including a digital download of Mario Kart World. Nintendo revealed Thursday that the Mario Kart bundle…

For Sigman and the Darkest Dungeon team, it was important to establish an overarching design philosophy that was set in place. That said, the details within that framework may change or evolve…

Earlier this month, Nintendo let Ars Technica and other outlets have access to a small hands-on slice of Mario Kart World ahead of its planned June 5 launch. Today, a short livestreamed…

As with its other 50-series announcements, Nvidia is leaning on its DLSS Multi-Frame Generation technology to make lofty performance claims—the GPUs can insert up to three AI-interpolated frames in between each pair…

Razer’s iOS app showing its width of game discovering. Who wants to stream some Solitaire? Razer’s iOS app showing its width of game discovering. Who wants to stream some Solitaire? I clicked…

As seen previously, the Joy-Cons will be bigger than on the original Switch and will feature larger shoulder buttons on the inside edges. The system itself has a larger, “more sturdy” stand…

“No ads, no hosts, no sponsors, just games.” The Triple-i Initiative‘s pitch for its now-annual showcase of games, crafted by studios working somewhere between “Solo dev or very small team” and “Investor-minded…

And there are real concerns and annoyances that will come with Game-Key cards. Normally, the physical copy of a game is playable right out of the box—or, at most, after downloading patches…

The verified TeamYouTube account responded to LocalThunk on X (formerly Twitter) late Monday, stating that “Videos featuring Balatro gameplay should not be age-restricted,” and noting a platform-wide review. In an email Tuesday,…

While Nintendo could theoretically avoid tariff impacts by moving Switch 2 production into the US, Wedbush’s Ives pointed out that the process would cost “tens of billions of dollars” and require “four…

$70 was a common price for N64 software, and that was in 1997 dollars! $70 was a common price for N64 software, and that was in 1997 dollars! Hughes Johnson By 2008,…

The current generative Quake II demo represents a slight advancement from Microsoft’s previous generative AI gaming model (confusingly titled “WHAM” with only one “M”) we covered in February. That earlier model, while…

Things just cost more now In justifying the $450 price of the Switch 2, Nintendo executives predictably pointed to the system’s upgraded hardware specs, as well as new features like GameChat and…

After dealing with years of widespread reports of “stick drift” on the original Switch Joy-Cons, Nintendo watchers have been hoping the Switch 2 would make use of magnetic Hall effect sensors that…

Actor Val Kilmer—star of Top Gun, The Doors, and Batman Forever, among other roles—has died at the age of 65 of pneumonia, Deadline Hollywood reports. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in…

You can read a lot more about original Switch games’ compatibility on the Switch 2, “Editions,” and upgrade packs elsewhere in Ars’ Switch 2 launch coverage. AAA games of recent vintage Switch…

A mouse? On a game console? Nintendo has a history of trying to differentiate its consoles with new features that have never been seen before. Some, like shoulder buttons or analog sticks,…

Road trips with just two people always have their awkward silences. In Dustland Delivery, my character, a sharpshooter, has tried to break the ice with the blacksmith he hired a few towns back,…

This morning’s announcement that Nintendo is delaying US preorders for the Switch 2 immediately increased the salience of President Trump’s proposed wide-reaching import tariffs for millions of American Nintendo fans. Additionally, the…

Nintendo Switch 2 preorders, which were due to begin on April 9, are being delayed indefinitely amid the financial uncertainty surrounding Donald Trump’s recent announcement of massive tariffs on most US trading…

In the wake of the Switch 2 reveal, neither Nintendo nor Nvidia has gone into any detail at all about the exact chip inside the upcoming handheld—technically, we are still not sure…

The Switch 2’s additional power opens the door to more complex games that could lag even more noticeably, especially if they’re ported from consoles that expect more than 50 times the storage…

Not all game releases will follow Nintendo’s pricing formula. The Switch 2 release of Street Fighter 6 Year 1-2 Fighters Edition retails for $60, and Square Enix’s remastered Bravely Default is going…

We’ve known for a few months now that the Nintendo Switch 2 will support backward compatibility for older Nintendo Switch games, and as of today’s presentation, we also know that some Switch…

Implausible: Long-suffering Earthbound fans have been hoping for a new game in the series (or even an official localization of the Japan-exclusive Mother 3) for literal decades now. Personally, though, I’m hoping…

Switch players who buy their games on physical cards are used to being able to share those games with other players simply by handing them the card. Now, Nintendo is planning a…

GT Sophy can now race at 19 tracks, up from the nine that were introduced in November 2023. The AI agent is an alternative to the regular, dumber AI in the game’s…

When Nintendo finally officially revealed the Switch 2 in January, one of our major unanswered questions concerned whether games designed for the original Switch would see some form of visual or performance…

The product has evolved into something akin to Slack, but for personal use. It’s used by artist communities, game developers, open source projects, influencers, and more to manage communities and coordinate work….

More than just rolling for initiative Obsidian added a turn-based mode to Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire in patch 4.1, roughly eight months after the game’s initial release. Designer Josh Sawyer, who worked…

“I don’t feel comfortable dragging people through getting world buffs, flasks, and consumes etc., just to raid with the anxiety and probably the actuality of just being DDOS’d again and dying,” sodapoppin…

Nvidia has seen its fortunes soar in recent years as its AI-accelerating GPUs have become worth their weight in gold. Most people use their Nvidia GPUs for games, but why not both?…

Harrington (left) poses with Scott Walker. Harrington (left) poses with Scott Walker. Credit: Monica Harrington / Medium In a post-talk interview with PC Gamer, Harrington noted that her ex-husband remembers the authentication…

Where previous models wandered aimlessly or got stuck in loops, Claude 3.7 Sonnet plans ahead, remembers its objectives, and adapts when initial strategies fail. Critical skills for battling pixelated gym leaders. And,…

I can say this for certain: The game’s tutorial does a lot of work in introducing you to the game’s core mechanics, which include choosing cards with sequential actions, “burning” cards for…

A bargain at twice the price The extensive Portal theming on the table seems to extend to the gameplay as well. As you might expect, launching a ball into a lit portal…

“Google wanted games that only worked in the cloud—which don’t exist,” Raccoon Logic co-founder & creative director Alex Hutchinson told VGC in an August interview. “They were asking us to deliver the…

A sample result from the DSP sample test program. Credit: Allan Cecil A sample result from the DSP sample test program. Credit: Allan Cecil Those heat effects paled in comparison to the…

A month ago, Civilization VII launched to generally positive critical reviews, but user reviews on Steam and Metacritic weren’t nearly so positive, at least at first. Take a look at the Civilization…

Using a Windows PC with an Arm-based Snapdragon processor in it feels a lot like using a regular-old Intel or AMD PC these days, thanks to the work developers have put in…

Last year, Microsoft showed off a pair of concept videos highlighting how “real-time conversations with your AI companion copilot” might one day provide personalized guidance and companionship while playing a solo game…

Bring old Xbox games to PC The ultimate handheld system seller. Credit: Microsoft / Bizarre Creations The ultimate handheld system seller. Credit: Microsoft / Bizarre Creations Microsoft has made a lot of…

Nvidia has launched all of the GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs that it announced at CES, at least technically—whether you’re buying from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel, it’s nearly impossible to find any of…

When you think about it, the keyboard is the most complex video game controller in common use today, with over 100 distinct inputs arranged in a vast grid. Yet even the most…

Like the 7950X3D and 7900X3D, these new X3D chips combine a pair of AMD’s CPU chiplets, one that has the extra 64MB of cache stacked underneath it and one that doesn’t. For…

“4090 performance at $549.” That’s what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said of the GeForce RTX 5070 when he announced the card at CES in January. Thanks to AI, this new midrange GPU…

Viral success (for someone else) VoltekPlay writes on Reddit that it was only alerted to the existence of My Baby or Not! on iOS by “a suspicious burst of traffic on our…

The pricing effects of those tariffs might not be immediate, as console makers work their way through pre-tariff import inventories that are already in the US. But the effects are already being…

Even if they come with a performance hit, new upscaling algorithms can still improve performance by making the lower-resolution presets look better. We run all of our testing in “Quality” mode, which…

One thing Shadowveil: Legend of the Five Rings does well is invoke terror. Not just the terror of an overwhelming mass of dark energy encroaching on your fortress, which is what the story…

Most readers come away from George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 with the same singular desire: to inhabit the world of the book by playing a late ’90s first-person puzzle-adventure PC game…

Zach Barth, the namesake of game studio Zachtronics, tends to make a certain kind of game. Besides crafting the free browser game Infiniminer, which inspired the entire global Minecraft industry, Barth and…

For most modern players, the worst thing about a video game classic like Portal is that you can never play it again for the first time. No matter how much time has…

The integrated heat spreaders put on CPUs at the factory are not the most thermally efficient material you could have on there, but what are you going to do—rip it off at…

AMD’s new Radeon RX 90-series cards and the RDNA4 architecture make their official debut on March 5, and a new version of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology is coming along…

And let’s not forget that millions of gamers already have easy access to SteamOS through Steam Deck hardware. Those aging Steam Decks might not be powerful enough to run a game like…

Inside the source code are some wonderful reminders of what Windows game development from 1995 to 2003 was really like. One experienced modder posted some gems on Bluesky, like a “HACK ALERT!”…

AMD is releasing the first detailed specifications of its next-generation Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs and the RDNA4 graphics architecture today, almost two months after teasing them at CES. The short version…

Sony’s first PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 hit stores at the right price at the right time and ended up being one of VR’s biggest hits. The PlayStation 5’s PlayStation VR2?…

Game studio Monolith, part of Warner Bros. Games until yesterday’s multi-studio shutdown, had a notable track record across more than 30 years, having made Blood, No One Lives Forever, Shogo: Mobile Armor…

Don’t you dare give me hope The newly discovered engine updates are a particularly good sign for the HLX project after credible reports that the game had gone into a friends and…

The Monaco 2 demo includes four classes of thieves, each with their own unique way of distracting or avoiding the guards. I especially liked the socialite, who uses a toy poodle to…

In Framework’s first-party case, the PC starts at $1,099, which gets you a Ryzen AI Max 385 (that’s an 8-core CPU and 32 GPU cores) and 32GB of RAM. A fully loaded…

Popular Amazon-owned game streaming platform Twitch announced Wednesday that it will be imposing a 100-hour limit on the archived video highlights users can preserve permanently on the site. And while Twitch says…

Though we’ve tested and re-tested multiple cards with recent drivers in our updated testbed, we don’t have a 4070 Ti Super, 4070 Ti, or 3070 Ti available to test with. We’ve provided…

Valve’s updates to its classic games evoke Hemingway’s two kinds of going bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. Nothing is heard, little is seen, and then, one day, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Day of Defeat, and…

That demonstrator currently generates the resulting video based on pre-recorded inputs, at a rate much slower than necessary for actual live gameplay. In a private demonstration for press, though, Microsoft also showed…

Nvidia’s PhysX offerings to developers didn’t always generate warm feelings. As part of its broader GamesWorks package, PhysX was cited as one of the reasons The Witcher 3 ran at notably sub-optimal…

For years, Maciej “Groobo” Maselewski stood as the undisputed champion of Diablo speedrunning. His 3-minute, 12-second Sorceror run looked all but unbeatable thanks to a combination of powerful (and allowable) glitch exploits along…

The GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 are both very fast graphics cards—if you can look past the possibility that we may have yet another power-connector-related overheating problem on our hands. But the…

Avowed‘s quests almost all boil down to venturing from a city to some far-off spot on the map to talk to a key person or retrieve some McGuffin-style relic. Usually, that trip…

While writing a wide-ranging history of Windows Minesweeper for Boss Fight Books in 2023, I ended up playing many variations of Microsoft’s beloved original game. Those include versions with hexagonal tiles, versions…

The 12VHPWR and 12V-2×6 connectors are both designed to solve a real problem: delivering hundreds of watts of power to high-end GPUs over a single cable rather than trying to fit multiple…

Bismuth explains the unreasonable luck needed for a record-setting Tyson fight at around the 56:30 mark in this 2024 video. Summoning Salt says Tyson here gave him a “perfect pattern” during his…

A short emulator-aided demonstration of how the broken ladder glitch works (not shown: the dozens of frame-perfect inputs needed to pull it off). Better to be lucky than to be good While…

The developer’s statement notes that preorder customers are getting refunds. Answering a question that has always been obvious to fans but never publishers, the company notes that, no, Football Manager 2024 will…

Despite all this, The Sims is worth a look It’s telling that in a market with too many options, I still put the effort in to get the game working, and I…

It’s been a month since we first heard rumors that the Switch 2’s new Joy-Cons could be slid across a flat surface to function like a computer mouse. Now, a newly published…

Since our first glimpse of the Switch 2 last month, we’ve been left guessing on many crucial hardware details, including the all-important launch price. Now, Nintendo has hinted that the unsteady state…

AMD announced its fourth-quarter earnings yesterday, and the numbers were mostly rosy: $7.7 billion in revenue and a 51 percent profit margin, compared to $6.2 billion and 47 percent a year ago….

I’ve spent comparatively little time playing other 4X games. I had a couple of weeks where I got really into Endless Legend, but it didn’t stick long-term. I played a lot of…

The strategy with the 5080 looks pretty similar. You get a mild increase in core count (up 10.5 percent over the original 4080 and only 5 percent over the 4080 Super), plus…

In the intro video, Salvador talks about looking through their archives and stumbling on the existence of Pretzel Pete, a little-remembered early 3D driving/platform game. Despite its extreme obscurity, the game is…

Black & White was intriguing; it had classic Molyneaux over-reach and deserves, in the words of one Ars staffer, a re-release so that “a new generation can realize just how janky it…

Sony’s game publishing arm has done a 180-degree turn on a controversial policy of requiring PC players to sign in with PlayStation accounts for some games, according to a blog post by…

Retro game enthusiasts may already be acquainted with Analogue, a company that designs and manufactures updated versions of classic consoles that can play original games but also be hooked up to modern…

We’ve tried to strike a balance between games with ray-tracing effects and games without it, though most AAA games these days include it, and modern GPUs should be able to handle it…

Nvidia is launching the first volley of RTX 50-series GPUs based on its new Blackwell architecture, starting with the RTX 5090 and working downward from there. The company also appears to be…

In place of Doom Eternal‘s “jump and shoot” gameplay loop, The Dark Ages focuses on more of a “stand and fight” mentality, the developers said. If Doom Eternal was like flying a…

Four out of five game developers are currently working on a project for the PC, a sizable increase from 66 percent of developers a year ago. That’s according to Informa’s latest State…

So what’s up with that new dock? So what’s up with that new dock? Credit: Nintendo Using your old Switch Joy-Cons in portable mode is a different matter, as the Switch 2…

After 14 years, EA will retire its controversial Origin game distribution app for Windows, the company announced. Origin will stop working on April 17, 2025. Folks still using it will be directed…

After months and years of rumors and official hints, Nintendo has finally pulled back the curtain on the Switch 2 with a first-look trailer (and sparse promo website) highlighting many small changes…

A scaled comparison between the Switch 2 and the Steam Deck OLED shows Nintendo’s system has a larger screen despite being narrower. Credit: Nintendo / Valve / Ars Technica A scaled comparison…

Age transitions feel like starting a new game The most significant change compared to prior titles is the game’s completely new approach to ages. In most of the earlier games, ages were…

We do see a hint of extra improvement in Forza Horizon 5, a game where the 8GB Radeon RX 7600 and the 8GB Intel Arc A750 do struggle compared to similar cards…

Here at Ars, we’re suckers for stories about hackers getting Doom running on everything from CAPTCHA robot checks and Windows’ notepad.exe to AI hallucinations and fluorescing gut bacteria. Despite all that experience,…

Nintendo may be getting ready to make its Switch 2 console official. According to “industry whispers” collected by Eurogamer, as well as reporting from The Verge’s Tom Warren, the Switch 2 could…