Steam

WWE 2K25 was teased during the first RAW live on Netflix as Roman Reigns walked backstage. Following the reveal of the WWE 2K25 on a backstage door, the game's Steam page went live, showcasing debut screenshots for the sequel. Cody Rhodes, Bayley, Liv Morgan, Damian Priest, and CM Punk have all been shown off in the sports entertainment title. View the full article

******** publisher Tencent are the biggest video game company in the world. Their wholly owned subsidiaries including League Of Legends developers Riot Games, Path Of Exile developers Grinding Gear Games, and *** outfit Sumo Group. They own shares in everything from Epic Games through Ubisoft to Silent Hill 2 rebooters Bloober Team. Are you a game developer? Odds are that at least one percent of your body belongs to Tencent. Maybe one of your toes. And now it turns out that Tencent are some kind of military operator, as well. Or at least, that's what the US Department of Defence would have us believe: they've just somewhat randomly added the firm to an infamous list of ******** military companies, together with lithium-ion battery maker CATL. This potentially makes it difficult for Tencent to do business in the States, but Tencent say that it's all based on a "misunderstanding". Read more View the full article

Here at Ars, we're judicious about which of the many, many Switch 2 rumors we decide to highlight on this page. For every report on hardware power or magnetic Joy-Cons that we share, there are probably five others we see and decide are too lightly sourced, too unlikely, or just too plain obscure to spread here. But when we started hearing reports that the Switch 2's Joy-Cons could be cradled on their sides and manipulated like a full-fledged gaming mouse, we knew the concept was one you'd want to hear about. Rumor: More images of Switch 2 Joy-Cons have immerged from China. Source: [Hidden Content] [Hidden Content] — Stealth (@Stealth40k) January 5, 2025 The rumors of mouse-like functionality on the Switch 2's included controllers got supercharged over the weekend when a Reddit poster shared detailed photos of purported Switch 2 Joy-Cons, sourced from an unnamed ******** social media user. In between the longer shoulder buttons along the Joy-****'s inner edge (SL and SR) and a new central connector port, eagle-eyed viewers noticed what looks suspiciously like the optical sensor that sits on the bottom of practically every mouse these days. Read full article Comments View the full article

The Lenovo Legion Go S, with SteamOS. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Lenovo is trying an experiment. In May, it will officially become the very first company outside of Valve to ship a handheld gaming PC with the Steam Deck’s wonderfully pick-up-and-play SteamOS instead of Microsoft Windows. And at $499, it’ll be a true Steam Deck rival, joining it as one of the lower-priced PC handhelds you can buy. [/url] That handheld will be the 1.6-pound Lenovo Legion Go S, a new and improved version of the company’s eight-inch handheld that ditches the Nintendo Switch-like detachable gamepads and kickstand for a lighter and more traditional design, with a sculpted grip that felt supremely comfortable in my hands. It’ll also be one of the few handhelds on the market to offer a 120Hz variable refresh rate screen — a highly desirable feature that lets low-power handheld gameplay feel smooth, even if it’s not generating lots of frames. That screen will be lower in resolution at 1920 x 1200, too, and feature a hopefully power-sipping new AMD Ryzen Z2 Go chip. (It’s a Lenovo-exclusive chip, by the way.) View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Verge (@verge) In other words, it might address every major complaint I had in my Legion Go review, while additionally adding fun configurable RGB lighting around the joysticks, a slightly larger 55Wh battery, a pair of levers to reduce the throw of the triggers, and a less obtrusive touchpad, too, while retaining the dual USB 4 ports. But Lenovo isn’t going all in on SteamOS. Not only will it hedge its bets by shipping a Windows version of the Legion Go S as well but it’ll also ship with Windows this month — four months ahead of the SteamOS models. The Windows model is white: It’s not like the SteamOS model is ready now anyhow. Valve codesigners Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais tell me they’ve only been working with Lenovo for a couple of months, and the integration isn’t quite done. The new touchpad, gyroscope, and both RGB lighting and TDP configuration options are among the things on their to-do list. But the Windows version shipping in January will cost $729.99, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. In May, the true experiment will begin when gamers can pick between a $499.99 SteamOS version with 16GB / 512GB, a $599.99 Windows version with 16GB / 1TB, or the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED at $399 and $549, respectively. And it does sound like there will be one important reason to pick the Steam Deck over the Legion Go S and vice versa, because AMD’s Z2 Go is a different chip. While the Z2 Go announced yesterday sheds cores and GPU generations to be slightly more akin to the Steam Deck’s semi-custom Aerith and / or Sephiroth parts, we noted that it targets higher power levels, and Legion Go product manager Alex Zhu confirms to me that the Legion Go S is aimed at 20-watt performance, 30-watt, maybe even 40-watt configurable performance, which will likely offer higher performance (and lower battery life) than the 15-watt-and-below Steam Deck’s chip. Zhu says Lenovo is targeting between two and 2.5 hours of battery life in demanding heavy games — which lines up with the basic math of dividing a 55 watt-hour battery by 20 watts, assuming the rest of the system doesn’t eat up a lot more. Versions with AMD’s existing Z1 Extreme chip will also be available in some markets. All Legion Go S can fit full-length M.2 2280 solid state drives. BTW, Valve isn’t keeping key Steam Deck features like precompiled shaders to itself, or anything else, for that matter. Yang and Griffais say it will be one SteamOS, and the Legion Go S and any future SteamOS devices will get the same updates as the Deck, minus hardware-specific tweaks. Valve tells me Lenovo is currently its only partner for a SteamOS device — there are no other third-party SteamOS devices currently in the works. But Griffais hints that Valve is close to publicly releasing a new beta of its SteamOS that just might possibly start working on other handhelds as well. (Valve previously confirmed to us that it was building toward some level of support for the Asus ROG Ally in SteamOS as well.) And it’s vaguely possible that SteamOS beta could arrive before the SteamOS Legion Go S — Valve says it’s slated to ship sometime after March. But the real dream is to pull a PC handheld out of a box and have it just work, the way a Nintendo Switch works, not to shoehorn an operating system on it afterward, no matter how good the result. That’s why Lenovo is working with Valve: Zhu agrees that SteamOS has the best out-of-box experience. But, he says, Windows offers a whole ecosystem of gaming and productivity that the company believes its customers still want. Zhu agrees that SteamOS is an experiment for Lenovo and says it’ll look at the feedback and momentum before making its next move. Speaking of what’s next, Lenovo is also building a larger Legion Go 2 with detachable controllers and an 8.8-inch OLED screen, and it brought prototypes of that unit to CES: Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge The new Legion Go 2 prototype, with a smaller kickstand and more sculpted grips. Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge Zhu tells me Lenovo doesn’t have “any specific plans” to put SteamOS on the larger Legion Go, just Windows — but perhaps it depends on what customers buy in May. Meanwhile, Valve is still looking ahead to a future version of its own Steam Deck, saying that partnering with companies like Lenovo hasn’t reduced the desire to build its own. But AMD’s Z2 isn’t the “leap” that Valve’s been waiting for, Griffais tells The Verge. There won’t be a Z2 Steam Deck. View the full article

Sorry, Until Dawn fans, but the characters you know and love seemingly won't be in the upcoming live-action film adaptation. Read more View the full article

Microsoft has announced the first wave of January Game Pass line-up, kicking off the new year with a selection of new titles for subscribers to check out. Though, if you're a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber playing on Xbox, you're only getting one new game. Read more View the full article

Street Fighter 6 fans aren't happy with the game's newly announced battle pass, which includes typical items like player avatars, stickers, and other customization options. What fans are taking issue with is not what's included in the new battle pass, but rather what's missing, as players were quick to notice no new character costumes are featured. This prompted a fierce storm of backlash and controversy, with the trailer for the new battle pass coming to Street Fighter 6 essentially being pounded into the ground on YouTube and other social media platforms. View the full article

Lenovo have lifted the lid on the world's first officially licensed handheld powered by SteamOS, the Lenovo Legion Go S, which should arrive in May. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

The leader of the Fantastic Four is one of Marvel’s most powerful and important heroes, and he could be just as important as a Duelist in Marvel Rivals. The same incident that gave birth to Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, and The Thing, also gave the world’s smartest man the ability to stretch himself like rubber, giving Reed Richards his new moniker, Mister Fantastic. View the full article

Kai Cenat was playing the new Squid Game Roblox game when he received a five-minute ban from the voice chat. What did he say that could have granted the suspension? Nothing, and that led to a furious outbreak while on stream. Roblox has a strict policy regarding what words and subjects you can’t say or talk about while using the voice chat. The majority of players on the platforms are children and most games are free for all ages, so you can’t use any violent language, and cursing is out of the question while playing any Roblox game, but Kai knew that and even warned his friend before he got the suspension. View the full article

Farming the Ascension and Trace materials for The Herta in Honkai: Star Rail is a necessary step to fully upgrade the character and take advantage of her perks as a main DPS in team comps. The Herta is a 5-star Ice character on the Path of the Erudition. The character is the first premium unit being introduced in the game’s third year of content, starring in the Phase 1 banners for Honkai: Star Rail 3.0, just before the debut of Aglaea as a playable character. Contrary to Aglaea, The Herta is not from Amphoreus, but important to the story. View the full article

Just months after launching its first handheld gaming PC, Acer is back at CES launching the Nitro Blaze 8 and Blaze 11. While the Blaze 8 appears to be a fairly routine update akin to the Steam Deck, the Blaze 11 is packing some far more interesting hardware choices. Companies are in a rat race to build the next best gaming handheld PC, as Valve still dominates with the Steam Deck. Acer's latest attempt includes the Nitro 11 that comes with an enormous 10.95-inch screen and removable, Switch-like controllers. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: This 27-inch 180Hz Acer gaming monitor has a surprisingly low price right now Acer leaks Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and 5080 VRAM ahead of CES 2025 launch Save $380 on this amazing Acer Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 gaming laptop View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

A Steam store page for Sting's RPG / board game hybrid is now live indicating a global release with English and Japanese support. View the full article

I go back to Counter-Strike, the early days of 1.6, and, for me personally, I think it set the ground rules for what a good online FPS ought to be. In Counter-Strike - and this is still true with CS2 - it's all about risk and consequence. You get one life per round, and you're incredibly vulnerable. It's not like Call of Duty or even Battlefield, where the default game modes give you armor and perks. It's raw. I've always preferred shooters in that tradition. So too, it would seem, have a lot of other PC players. One of the toughest, most brutal, and knife-edge FPS games available, after almost four years, the peerless Hell Let Loose just set a new Steam record. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Vicious, realistic WW2 shooter Hell Let Loose is totally free, if you're quick Hardcore WW2 shooter Hell Let Loose teases a brand new desert map Now is the ideal time to try Hell Let Loose, one of the best WW2 games View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Nvidia has unveiled the latest iteration of its DLSS suite, with the newest addition now claiming to increase your game's frame rate by as much as 8x without losing graphical fidelity, thanks to upscaling and frame generation. DLSS 4 improves upon DLSS 3 in several ways but the biggest new feature is a new frame generation mode called DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation, which allows for not just one but as many as three frames to be created entirely by AI. The innovation was unveiled as part of Nvidia's CES keynote where it also revealed the RTX 5000 series of GPUs - including claiming the RTX 5070 is as fast as the RTX 4090 - and discussed a new type of graphics processing technique called neural rendering. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Acer's newest Steam Deck rival is enormous with Nintendo Switch like controllers Project Arielle is a new Razer gaming chair that can heat or cool you Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 to match RTX 4090 speed for just $549, claims GPU giant View the full article

There’s a new Lenovo Legion Go on the way, and while it’s ditching the signature detachable controllers, it’s still got something unusual to stick on its CV. The Lenovo Legion Go S is a smaller, cheaper take on Lenovo’s portable gaming PC, and it’s on track to become the first officially licensed SteamOS handheld outside of Valve’s own Steam Deck range. Read more View the full article

Fortnite has a wide variety of musical icons you can play as or jam out to. Additional artists are added pretty frequently, and the highly popular Vocaloid legend Hatsune Miku seems to be the next one joining the lineup with a backpack teaser for her appearing on the island. Hatsune Miku’s backpack is quite small, making it difficult to find if you don’t know where to look. It’s a pretty cool Easter egg worth hunting down if you’re a fan of the Vocaloid singer though, so here’s where to find Hatsune Miku’s backpack in Fortnite. View the full article

Marvel Rivals players are gearing up for a pretty big week as they’re catapulted into Season One, with a fantastic slew of new characters providing plenty of reasons for excitement—and there’s one in particular who has caught the eye. Mister Fantastic is one of the first two characters due to launch at the start of Season One alongside the Invisible Woman, and a showcase video for Reed Richards’ abilities in Marvel Rivals has attracted plenty of player intrigue. The stretchy super-genius is a Duelist in Marvel Rivals, but has an arsenal that seems to make him a hybrid-Vanguard at times, providing the sort of… flexibility, shall we say, in a team composition that is the perfect fit for the character, and there’s one ability that has really got fans in a spin. View the full article

Baldur's Gate 3 has lots of unique quests and storylines with many different outcomes. It's almost impossible for any two players to have exactly the same experience, with every playthrough being entirely unique. Choices players make can completely change the fates of certain characters, or put players at a tactical advantage or disadvantage. View the full article

Hyperkin says the Hyper Strummer features a similar design to older hardware but uses improved internal components. | Image: Hyperkin Hyperkin opened preorders for a new guitar-shaped controller on New Year’s Day, but it isn’t compatible with Harmonix’s Fortnite Festival music game that debuted on the Switch in late 2023. In fact, the Hyper Strummer isn’t compatible with the Switch at all. It only works with the 18-year-old Nintendo Wii, and the older Guitar Hero and Rock Band rhythm game titles released for that console. The $76.99 Hyper Strummer could have potentially been a cheaper alternative to Fortnite Festival-compatible guitar controllers like PDP’s $129.99 Riffmaster. But it only works with a Wiimote slotted into the back, and is not compatible with modern gaming hardware like the Xbox Series X / S or the PlayStation 5. Its design also appears identical to the Guitar Hero controller Hyperkin released in 2009 during the Wii era, which led to accusations on X that the company was repackaging and selling old stock as a new product. We wanted to address the following concerns on the recently announced Hyper Strummer. [Hidden Content] — Hyperkin (@Hyperkin) January 2, 2025 Hyperkin responded to the accusations with a statement shared on X explaining why the Hyper Strummer looks so similar to older hardware. “While it is correct that this is the same shell mold of a previous Hyperkin release from 2009, that is all it is. We used the mold to make brand new shells, fitted with new 2024 internal components. This is not old stock, nor is it old guitars that have been sitting in a warehouse.” The company says the modernized Hyper Strummer was “developed to meet the demand for an accessible and budget-friendly solution, perfect for retro gamers who want to enter the guitar scene in 2025 at an affordable price.” Instead of risking buying used hardware online that potentially turns out to be non-functional, devoted Guitar Hero fans who have refused to upgrade their Nintendo Wiis now have another option. View the full article

The Keychron Q6 HE (pictured) now supports Hall effect switches. | Image: Keychron Mechanical keyboard specialist Keychron is adding fancy analog Hall effect switches to more of its lineup. Two of the models announced at CES today are launching immediately: the $169 Lemokey P1 HE QMK, and the $229 Keychron Q6 HE QMK, with three additional keyboards set to be released later this year. Hall effect switches are notable for providing more customization features and a faster press than traditional mechanical switches, making them a popular choice for gamers. They use magnetic induction sensing on the PCB that detects how far down a key has been pushed — allowing you to decide the exact actuation point or even set different functions that activate depending on how hard you press. The Lemokey P1 HE QMK is a 75 percent layout keyboard with 2.4GHz Bluetooth and a 1,000Hz polling rate. It can be used wired or wirelessly and is compatible exclusively with Gateron Double-Rail magnetic switches. The Keychron Q6 HE also launching today is a full-sized mechanical keyboard with similar features and switch restrictions. Both models are available in either ****** or white and feature PBT double-shot keycaps. Image: Keychron Here’s a look at the updated Lemokey P1 HE QMK. Keychron released its first Hall effect keyboard last year, and rival keyboard makers like Corsair and SteelSeries have also adopted the feature after Wooting popularized the use of Hall effect switches. Meanwhile, other brands like Epomaker and Ducky are trending toward induction-based switches that provide similar analog features and use less power. Other Keychron models like the K4, K8, and Lomokey L5 will also be available with Hall effect switches sometime in Q1 2025. View the full article

Developer Krafton is introducing the first “co-playable character” AI partner for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, designed to “perceive, plan, and act like human players.” This new PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds AI partner utilizes Nvidia ACE technology, which allows companions to act and talk like real players. View the full article

If you're quick about it, you could grab this incredible 34-inch QD-OLED curved ultrawide gaming monitor for a very competitive price. This Alienware AW3423DWF curved gaming monitor offers great value for money considering its specs and that it currently has a huge $250 saving on its normal asking price. That's a saving of 28%. Alienware produces some top tier tech, so it's no surprise to see the AW3423DWF in our best curved gaming monitors guide as one of the best you can buy. It packs in plenty of goodies for gamers, from a lightning-fast 165Hz refresh rate and 0.1ms response time to its stunning ultrawide WQHD 1440p resolution. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Alienware debuts stunning new 27-inch, QD-OLED, 4K gaming monitor Alienware AW2725QF review: 360Hz and 4K in one sub-$500 27-inch gaming monitor Save a huge $400 on this superb Alienware Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 gaming laptop View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Skyward Voyage is one of the side quests available in the Rinascita region of Wuthering Waves that takes you along for the ride in Captain Davide’s last adventure. You must use a feature almost everyone forgot about during the quest, so here’s a complete guide to the Skyward Voyage quest in Wuthering Waves. View the full article

One of comic book culture’s most popular heroines, along with her fantastic family, is joining Marvel Rivals this week—and her abilities make her sound exciting to play. According to leaker @X0X_LEAK, who has become quite a problem for NetEase Games’ ability to keep things secret in the hero shooter, descriptions of Invisible Woman, aka Susan Storm’s abilities make her sound like an interesting and well-needed addition to the Strategist role. View the full article