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Tag: Gaming

  • Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (2025) Review: Thick and Hefty Never Looked So Good

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    The first thing that surprised me about Lenovo’s 2025 16-inch Legion Pro 7i was the size of the box. I dig through a lot of laptops here at Gizmodo, and Lenovo’s 16-inch laptop seemed like an 18-incher judging by the packaging. By its heft, it felt like it too. Then I opened it up and learned what it was.

    The 16-inch Legion Pro 7i itself isn’t overly large, though good luck slipping it into your backpack’s laptop pouch. The overt weight was intensified by the 400W power brick used to give this beast of a laptop enough juice to play all your favorite games. I’m not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The brick and the laptop are inextricably linked, making a big thick device bigger and thicker.

    The power brick is the size of my two fists put together. You could stick it in a wall and hold up a structure that may imminently collapse. It’s heavy enough that anybody who drops it on their foot runs the risk of flattened toes, as if a Looney Tunes character dropped an anvil on their southern digits. I could go on about the weighty power brick because it’s indicative of what kind of device the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i is. This gaming laptop will stay at home, where its loud fans have enough runway to blast the back wall with warm air. In exchange, it offers a truly delectable OLED display that helps set it apart from some other expensive laptops at its roughly $3,600 price (though you’ll find the device going for between $2,700 and $3,000 depending on storage options) with these top-end specs.

    Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (16-inch, 2025)

    The Legion Pro 7i (16-inch, 2025) is not the kind of device to take with you, but if you want a stay-at-home laptop with a bright, beautiful display and performance to boot, this is a great choice.

    • Bright OLED display
    • Solid I/O
    • Full-featured keyboard
    • Performance for days
    • Too large for backpacks
    • That massive 400W brick
    • Reflective screen
    • Poor battery life

    The last Legion Pro 7i I reviewed back in 2024 was one of my favorites of the year. It had everything I wanted, and it felt comfortable to boot. In 2025, Lenovo redesigned the chassis and added even more RGB lighting facing the desk and on the rear thermal shelf. The company also inexplicably replaced the “O” key with the Legion logo, and I’m not sure I need any more branding to remind me this is a Legion device than with that pretty screen. With a new Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 mobile GPU, benchmarks prove the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i is a step above its last iteration. That’s necessary, considering the gaming laptop costs a little over $300 more than its predecessor.

    Is it still my everything laptop? Yes, though only for a very specific use case. Lugging this beast to and from my office was a chore. The laptop lid became a mess of scuffs and thumbprints as I manhandled it. The thought of carrying a 400W power brick with me is enough to make me wish I could live a hermetic lifestyle and never leave the house again.

    See Legion Pro 7i (2025) at Amazon

    See Legion Pro 7i (2025) at Lenovo

    Lenovo’s display is beautiful… in the right conditions

    In the right conditions, that OLED screen makes games look even better. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Lenovo’s penchant for pretty OLED displays on its gaming devices enchanted me enough with the ultra-expensive Legion Go 2. Having it here, again, makes suffering through any small pain points of a big, thick laptop worth the hassle. Organic light-emitting diode display (OLED) technology allows for deeper black levels—often described as “inky”—and excellent contrast. Like the $3,300 HP Omen Max 16’s OLED display, the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i goes up to 2,560 x 1600 resolution and tops out at 240Hz refresh rate with Nvidia GSync support.

    Lenovo’s screen is extra glossy, which enhances the OLED’s pretty features at the cost of reflections from a sunny room. The Legion Pro 7i is already not travel-friendly, and taking it outside won’t offer anywhere close to a premium experience when you’re struggling to see anything between the glare. In the right environment, like my room with the shades pulled down, the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i is bright enough to offer enough glow during daytime, though you need to be careful positioning the screen facing windows.

    The dual 2W speakers have very clear, balanced sound thanks to dual subwoofers. There’s a small hint of spatial audio as well, though you’ll need to turn up the volume to get a sense of the directional sound. It’s barely loud enough to eclipse the noise of the fan blowing, which seems to kick in even if the gaming laptop is plugged in. The 16-inch Legion Pro 7i can be your all-in-one suite for making your games look and sound good, as they should for this price.

    Hefy, hefty, hefty

    Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Review 11
    That laptop lid tends to attract fingerprints and scuff marks. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Though the new 16-inch Legion Pro 7i appears very different from the 2024 version, they feel very similar once you start clacking on its keys. That’s not a bad thing. The laptop’s keys and their 1.5mm of travel have a nice bounce to them that makes it easy to type on. Even though the keyboard features a full numpad, there is enough separation between the keys that I never got my fingers twisted when flexing my WASD instincts.

    The off-center trackpad is nothing to write home about, but since you’ll likely be keeping this laptop at home, you’ll end up using a mouse most of the time anyway. Though I don’t hate the feel of the palm rests, I wish Lenovo paid a little more attention to the overall structure of the laptop. There’s a slight keyboard flex toward the center of the device you’ll feel if you start to lean your weight down during an intense match.

    It’s not enough to make me concerned about breaking the laptop, though, for the price I expect more. The 16-inch Legion Pro 7i weighs in at 5.67 pounds, which is less than last year’s model but will still feel heavy if you hold it aloft in one hand. It’s thicker than other gaming laptops with an RTX 5080 GPU from 2025, such as the Razer Blade 16, but if you plan to make this laptop your main creative suite, you won’t be too disappointed considering that bright, beautiful screen. There are two USB-A ports and a headphone jack on the right-hand side, plus one more on the left alongside two USB-C and an HDMI port on the left. There’s one additional electronic switch to turn the 5-megapixel webcam on and off. The only thing missing is a dedicated SD card port to help creators avoid a dongle.

    The proprietary power cable port also hangs out on the left, and with my home setup, it meant wrapping the power brick down and around the back of my desk. The two USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 4, meaning they can supply up to 100W of power to the PC. That’s not nearly enough to top off the PC when running games, even if that’s overkill for what’s necessary on a mobile RTX 5080 GPU. The 400W power brick would be more necessary for an RTX 5090 GPU variant. There are some versions of the laptop with an RTX 5090 and 64GB of RAM that I saw floating around on Amazon for the same MSRP.

    Always expect a few compromises

    Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Review 10
    At least the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i is easier to carry from room to room than an 18-inch laptop. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The real kicker for all this is just how strong a performance I got from the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i compared to other 16-inch laptops. My review unit came with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage to go along with the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and RTX 5080 GPU. In multiple synthetic benchmark tests, the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i slightly outperformed other gaming laptops like the HP Omen Max 16 and Alienware 16 Area-51. In Geekbench 6 CPU tests, the laptop managed to squeak out a few hundred points more in multi-core tests compared to other laptops.

    For gaming, you just need to remember this laptop may still not do everything you want it to do, even with its RTX 5080 GPU strapped in with that obtuse power brick. In a game like Cyberpunk 2077, when pushing tracing to ultra settings, you’ll need DLSS on “balanced” settings to achieve 60 fps when playing at the full 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. In games like Black Myth: Wukong, where the expectation is you’re using Nvidia’s AI upscaling, you’ll easily attain more than 76 fps with all the ray tracing options enabled.

    Alan Wake 2, which tanks performance once you start enabling ray tracing options, ran at around 40 to 45 fps on the highest settings with some path tracing. That was with DLSS on “balanced settings.” Other games that can hurt performance, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, manage to equalize around a stable 60 fps when you stop yourself from maximizing path tracing. As much as you may hope an RTX 5080 will hit the peak performance, you’ll inevitably have to accept some trade-offs for a steady frame rate. With the excellent display, games look crisp and detailed in a way that few machines can match, though only in just the right conditions.

    This big baby needs its 400W sippy cup

    Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Review 08
    I far prefer laptops with their I/O on the sides rather than on the back. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Big gaming laptops don’t have good battery life. It’s a fact of the necessary power used for the GPU, but when you start stacking on RGB lights, bright OLED screens, and all the other fixings, you can’t expect anything more than three hours of battery life on a good day. The 16-inch Legion Pro 7i is no exception. When doing my basically daily grind, with several Chrome windows open plus Slack, I can barely make it past 2.5 hours before the PC is throwing a tantrum and won’t be satisfied until I plug in its massive 400W sippy cup.

    The 16-inch Legion Pro 7i is not the kind of laptop to run around town with, even if you intend to use a smaller 100W charger plugged into one of its Thunderbolt 4 ports. That may be enough for some light gaming, but you’ll then have to accept you’ll mar your big, beautiful laptop with whatever junk you have swimming in your bag.

    After enough time with the 16-inch Legion Pro 7i, I started to admire its qualities and ignore its deficiencies. Its bright OLED screen has enough to help smooth over lingering wrinkles. If I truly wanted something more portable, I’d have to look at devices like the Razer Blade (and spend the extra premium on a Razer product, not to mention deal with their less-than-stellar support) or opt for a 14-inch gaming laptop. An 18-incher like the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 may be better as a true desktop replacement. Still, I never felt like I was missing anything from Lenovo’s all-in-one laptop, except for a baby carrier to lug this laptop and its power brick around with me.

    See Legion Pro 7i (2025) at Amazon

    See Legion Pro 7i (2025) at Lenovo

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    Kyle Barr

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  • Maingear’s Apex Rush Gaming Desktop Makes Laziness Feel So, So Good

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    You can build your own PC. It isn’t that hard. The time commitment may be too much for some people, but the end result is normally more compelling since you know what went into it and what may inevitably be upgraded. Custom PC makers like Maingear have to dig up some compelling reasons to sell a more expensive tower. You can already tell by the photo above there’s a big reason you might opt for the Maingear Apex Rush before another PC. Your ultra-expensive tower could look like a piece of art, as long as you treat it right.

    The last Maingear desktop I reviewed, the MG-1, was a conscientiously built, customizable PC that looked too much like something I could have pieced together, at least judging from the exterior. Inside, the tower was far better than that thanks to its screw-in GPU bracket and cable management that would leave even the most demanding IT professionals nodding in approval. The interior was inlaid with a strip of RGB lights that offered a subtle internal glow. It was the kind of slapdash DIY project anybody building their own PC could have easily accomplished.

    Maingear Apex Rush Artist Series

    You could spend way less just by building a PC yourself, but I doubt it would be nearly as pretty and well-put together as a Maingear Apex Rush

    • Artwork makes the PC truly unique
    • Stable build
    • Excellent cable management
    • Performance for high-end gaming
    • Premium on top of PC parts
    • Glass art can be scuffed
    • Not a lot of front or rear I/O

    When Maingear first announced its Rush PCs at CES 2025, the company’s CEO, Wallace Santos, told Gizmodo they attempted to create a desktop that truly looked unique, hence the special “Artist Series” designs that push a unique case while offering an internal design with everything gamers have come to expect. This design doesn’t come cheap. My review unit, packed with the top-end AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU, 32GB of RAM, 2TB storage, and all the special cooling apparatus blaring RGB lights in and around the case, costs $4,325. That’s $1,000 more than the previous generation MG-1 which contained a high-end Intel 14th-gen CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4080 Super. GPU The Artist Series costs an extra premium above the units without the unique art.

    If I try and create a very similar PC using ordered parts, I can build something for closer to $2,600, and that’s without seeking discounts. You’re paying Maingear for the hassle-free experience. At that price, the Apex Rush should be the last PC—for gaming or not—you’d buy for a long, long while. The MSI Pro B850-P motherboard has enough RAM and PCI-E slots to make upgrading easy. But then, you can find many other, far cheaper desktops with similar components for under $3,000, like a specced-out version of the Cyberpower PC Gamer Supreme. Will the beauty of your case last that long? Depends on whether you’re willing to shield your case from any blunt instruments or cats who would use your PC as a launchpad for your windowsill.

    Don’t go scratching at your case

    The panels use pressure-fit pins that make it easy to remove the front and side panels. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Just look at this thing. The Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vibes are almost enough to get me in the gaming mood by themselves. The fishbowl sides on the front and left of the tower are coated with a vinyl artwork and ringed with RGB LED strips. There are three different artworks to chose from, including a cyberpunk-esque “Machina” version and a pan-Asian “Good Fortune” edition, though I found the “Night Drive” version I got to review fit the internal glow of the RGB fans, RGB RAM sticks, and RGB liquid cooling CPU unit much even better. The only thing marring the visage is the overt “gamer” neon signage on the front. Its also bears a giant “Maingear” logo that’s more distracting than fun.

    Maingear is so confident about its build quality, it ships its units without foam inserts inside the case itself. The GPU is held tight with a printed bracket screwed into the case. The Apex Rush is a heavy unit, as you may expect from a mid-sized desktop tower full of high-end PCs. It’s probably a good thing you’re not dragging the unit from room to room, since the artwork painted on the glass is liable to get chewed up if you graze it during transit. I’ve hung onto the Apex Rush for long enough; I’ve had to move it from desk to desk, and in that time, I’ve managed to scratch the paint on the top part of the glass and on the lip of the desktop’s top panel. The case’s metal parts fare much better. Still, you’re better off treating the Apex Rush with more care than your normal black aluminum towers.

    Too many PC towers stick their front ports on top of the unit. This not only looks ugly with the tumors of several peripheral dongles sticking out, it means you need to plug wired connections up and over the PC if, for instance, you need to connect a headset or mouse. The Apex Rush sets its front I/O right next to the right-hand tower foot. You’ll have access to just one USB-C, two USB-A, and a headphone jack. I would have preferred more USB-C and perhaps placing it on the side closer to the user.

    As for the rear, there’s a similar lack of USB-C, something I appreciated about Alienware’s utterly massive Area-51 desktop tower. There’s an HDMI port, four USB-A 2.0 ports, plus the two USB-C 10G sockets. With the number of peripherals I’m regularly plugging into my desktop, I quickly ran out of USB.

    Maingear knows how to put a PC together

    Maingear Apex Rush Desktop Pc Review 13
    All the RGB baths your desk in a subtle glow, but all the parts in my specced-out build fit the neon-drenched theme. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Inside, the Apex Rush’s motherboard isn’t capped with any covers to make the components look “clean.” I’m in the camp that would rather a PC look like a PC. There’s a unique elegance to soldered silicon on a mainboard surrounded by heatsinks and wires. Maingear’s versions look more elegant than other PCs I’ve used thanks to their expert eye with component selection and cable management. All the motherboard, CPU, and GPU wiring exits stage right through several hatchways just behind the mainboard. If you remove the Apex Rush’s back panel, you’ll find all the cabling running in neat packs down to the side-mounted PSU, or power supply unit. Behind a metal panel set on a hinge, you’ll find all the wires are bundled up with velcro strips that make it easy to find the right component connected to the power supply. You won’t have to do any finger gymnastics to reach each port.

    My review case came with the 850W MSI MAG A850GL, which is enough juice for the RTX 5080 GPU but is barely enough wattage if you ever wanted to plug in an RTX 5090. It’s not an overly large unit that will offer more upgrade paths, but there is one 16 PIN PCIe connection for the Nvidia GPU and enough connection options if you ever want to turn to an AMD in some apocalyptic future where the RTX 5080 doesn’t cut it anymore.

    With these specs, of course, the Apex Rush runs well

    Maingear Apex Rush Desktop Pc Review 05
    I would like this case a little more if it didn’t have the big Maingear logo, but that’s what you get when you buy a premade case. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    If Alienware’s absolutely ginormous Area-51 desktop PC was all about girth while offering expected performance, the Apex Rush pre-built lineup offers a more subtle beauty without the promise of getting the most out of every possible game.

    AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D is considered one of the top-end CPUs for a reason. In benchmarks against an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, AMD’s chip is simply better for gaming purposes. Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs got a bad rap on release with poor performance even compared to the top-end 14th-gen consumer chips. Intel dropped numerous fixes over the months to push gaming performance back to expected levels, but it wasn’t enough to make a case against Intel’s top-end chip. AMD’s X3D chips use a special layered cache for extended memory within the CPU. This mainly benefits gaming scenarios, and it’s why gamers seek out these chips first and foremost while Intel’s Arrow Lake fell by the wayside.

    It’s been long enough since the RTX 50-series launch that Nvidia’s drivers have cleared the way to eke a few more frames from most games compared to months before. I first tested the RTX 5080 Founders Edition on an Origin PC Neuron 3500X build, and after many moons I can say the platform is relatively bug-free and stable enough to enjoy your games without the hassle of reinstalling drivers or messing with your BIOS. With AMD’s top gaming CPU, I can blow past older systems in 3DMark Speedway tests by a little more than 200 points. In 3DMark Steel Nomad, the difference is closer to 500 points. Gaming scenarios can look like I can get around five more average frames in Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks running with ray tracing on and DLSS balanced settings on Maingear’s build than I could on the Neuron 3500X’s Core Ultra 9 285K with the same GPU. CPU-heavy games like Total War: Warhammer III benefit even more.

    You really can’t expect the world from a PC like this, despite its price. If you have any hope of topping out games without any AI upscaling like Nvidia’s deep learning super sampling (DLSS), you’ll need to opt for a RTX 5090 and spend even more. Even then, you’ll come away disappointed. I’m still of the opinion that the RTX 5080 is what a demanding player will need for 4K gaming. If you want an Apex Rush with the highest-end GPU, you may end up spending more than $7,000.

    The premium price on top of an already expensive PC is hard to swallow. Again, building a PC yourself can be less expensive and more fun. However, Maingear promises lifetime product support and free repairs. The company doesn’t funnel the PC full of bloatware you need to delete. The build quality on the Apex Rush is, per usual, on point.

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    Kyle Barr

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  • So, Is Intel Still Making Graphics Cards?

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    There’s something strange going on at Intel. The company is looking to get leaner as it simultaneously builds up its chipmaking capabilities. The U.S. chip giant’s nascent venture into graphics cards did not go unappreciated by the PC-buying community, especially the budget-end Battlemage GPUs like the B850. Amid the hubbub of its big Panther Lake announcement, one thing seemed to be missing: a clear idea of its future plans for GPUs, with or without Nvidia’s aid.

    (Full disclosure: Intel invited me to its chipset fab in Phoenix, Ariz. Travel and lodging were paid by Intel, but Gizmodo did not guarantee any coverage as a condition of accepting the trip.)

    With the introduction of Panther Lake and updates to XeSS upscaling software comes Intel’s new Xe3 graphics microarchitecture, which sits under the umbrella of Arc B-Series (Battlemage). Intel said we should expect better performance at lower wattages than its previous Arrow Lake H lineup and much better frame rates in games with the 12Xe core chip variants. But what about everything else? Intel detailed the “Next Arc family” will be labeled Xe3P. No, not Xe4. Will it be a discrete GPU, aka the rumored “Celestial” or C-line of graphics cards?

    The next Xe3P graphics architecture will be a “significant architectural advancement’ for Intel. It may or may not be a discrete GPU. © Intel

    Intel’s head of architecture, graphics, and software, Tom Petersen, told reporters in a roundtable Q&A that Panther Lake would only hint at what’s implied by the name. “Xe3P is a significant architectural advancement from where we are now,” he said. Whether that means it’s a whole family of products, that doesn’t matter. However, it may still be called “Celestial,” more for the sake of continuity than anything.

    “Our naming is not great,” Petersen said. “If we knew what we knew now, we would name those things differently.”

    Even Intel doesn’t know what it will do with Nvidia

    Acer Panther Lake Swift 16 Laptop
    An Acer Swift 16 AI set to debut at the end of this year will include some variety of Panther Lake inside. © Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

    Intel has other things on its mind. The company needs you to know that its Fab 52 in Chandler, Ariz., that’s generating the company’s new 18A process is up and running. So much so, they strapped me and a host of other journalists and analysts in a white bunny suit to inspect the place. Just to enter this temple to silicon, your body is wrapped head to toe in Gore-Tex waterproof layers, your eyes and feet are covered, and you start to blend in with everybody roving those floors. What can I tell you? Not much. How big is the fab floor where they make the chips in square feet? “A shit ton,” or at least that’s what Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford was allowed to say. I couldn’t take pictures. I couldn’t tell you how big the lithography machines were. That would give some competitors an edge, perhaps give an indication to the world of how many chips they planned to ship, or so that’s what Intel claimed.

    As I stared up at the flying shuttle robots roving across the ceiling—looking like the two-pronged “Recognizer” vehicles out of a Tron movie—while they carried wafers to and fro across rails in the ceiling, I could tell I was a resource for Intel’s mission statement. Fab 52 has been in production since 2021. Since then, the person who started Intel on this mission for U.S. manufacturing, Pat Gelsinger, was pushed out as CEO and the company went into a year-long spiral that culminated with President Donald Trump pushing the federal government to take a 10% stake in the company. Then, Nvidia came in with its Scrooge McDuck-sized moneybags ($5 billion, to be exact) to pump even more fuel into the chipmaker’s furnaces. Among all the capital changing hands, Nvidia and Intel’s respective CEOs touted a new combo chip that would combine Team Blue’s CPU with Team Green’s GPU.

    Intel Fab Tour Panther Lake 2
    How big are both production floors of Fab 52? A “shit ton” of square feet. © Intel

    The fab is only as important as the chips they make with it. And while I could sit here and wax lyrical about the company’s Clearwater Forest data center chips, the PC-buying public only cares about what’s going to end up in their desktop or laptop. Companies don’t like to talk about their futures, but from what Intel execs said last week, the company itself is still trying to figure out what a partnership means.

    “It’s brand new,” Petersen said, referring to the still unknown chips it could make with Nvidia. “We don’t know all the answers to that. You’ll know more about that relatively soon. We’re still in the figure-it-all-out mode.”

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    Kyle Barr

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  • Kentucky lawsuit says Roblox fails to protect children on its online gaming platform

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    FRANKFORT, Ky. — FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s attorney general claimed Tuesday that the online gaming platform Roblox has become a “playground for predators” as he announced a lawsuit accusing the company of lax child safety measures.

    The Kentucky suit, filed by his office Monday in a state court, is the latest action alleging that the wildly popular site isn’t doing enough to protect children on its gaming services.

    To bolster safeguards for children and teenagers flocking to the site, the company needs to install effective age verifications and content filters, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said. Added parental notifications also are needed, he said.

    Courtney Norris, a Kentucky mother of three who joined Coleman at a news conference, said she mistakenly viewed Roblox as a safe online gaming choice for her children.

    “I came to realize, later than I would like to admit, that it actually is the ‘Wild West’ of the internet, targeted at children,” she said.

    The company is facing a growing backlash. The Kentucky suit comes after Louisiana sued the company in August. A suit was filed in Iowa after a 13-year-old girl was allegedly introduced to an adult predator on the platform, then kidnapped and trafficked across multiple states and raped.

    Roblox on Tuesday pushed back against the allegations.

    “We have rigorous safety measures in place from advanced AI models to an expertly trained team of thousands moderating our platform 24/7 for inappropriate content,” the company said in a statement. “No system is perfect and our work on safety is never done. We are constantly innovating our safety systems, including adding 100 new safeguards, such as facial age estimation, this year alone.”

    Roblox says it has 111 million daily active users. The company said in an email Tuesday that it implements strict safety defaults for its youngest users. It said the platform’s users under 13 cannot directly message others on Roblox, outside of games or experiences, and cannot directly message others during games or experiences unless the default setting is changed using parental controls.

    The company said it has rigorous text chat filters to block inappropriate words and phrases, attempts to direct under-13 users off the platform and the sharing of personal information such as phone number or address. It does not allow user-to-user image sharing and prohibits sexual conversations, it said.

    The Kentucky lawsuit gives a starkly different portrayal of the platform.

    Despite assurances its site is safe, the company has failed to install basic safety controls, the suit said. Roblox also fails to inform its users and their parents about “dangers inherent” on the platform, it said.

    Coleman, a Republican, said the site’s “cartoonish figures and experiences” appeal to children, but he warned that “underneath this cartoonish, innocent veneer is something sinister. The platform has become a playground for predators who seek to harm our children.”

    The Kentucky suit alleges that children are exposed to “violent or sexual situations within the Roblox universe, with parents reporting children contacted by strangers using third-party chat apps that function as if they are part of the game.”

    Norris said that like many parents, she considered it a safe choice for her children.

    “I described it as a ‘fenced-in backyard’ for kids’ gaming,” she said Tuesday. “And that is the genius and the danger I found of Roblox — the illusion of safety it gives parents like me.”

    “The reality is, Roblox makes it nearly impossible to police as a parent,” she added.

    The suit claims that Roblox’s lax protections violate Kentucky’s Consumer Protection Act and asks a judge to order the company into compliance. The suit seeks penalties of up to $2,000 for each violation of the consumer protection law.

    Coleman said his office is open to negotiating a settlement with Roblox.

    “Our goal is not to shut a platform down,” Coleman said. “Our goal is for Roblox to be safe.”

    Roblox said it shares the goal of keeping kids safe online, and said it would welcome discussions with Coleman’s office to “ensure they have a clear understanding of all Roblox is doing to keep users safe.”

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  • Not Only Is the New PlayStation 5 More Expensive, It’s Also Worse

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    Five years into the console’s life cycle, the latest PlayStation 5 is more expensive than ever. If that wasn’t enough, Sony is now offering customers less bang for their buck than if they had bought the hardware just a few months ago. The version of the PlayStation 5 without a disc drive costs $500 and has far less internal storage than before. It’s such a big downgrade; you’re better off hunting for an older or used console if you hoped to play Ghost of Yotei before the end of the year.

    Earlier this month, Sony started shipping a 500-euro version of the slim PS5 with less storage—825GB—than the previous slim version’s 1TB to Europe. With the standard storage requirements for the system’s operating system, that means the new system only has 667GB for you to download your games to. It didn’t take long for that version to make its way to the U.S. The PlayStation Direct online store now sells the $500 “PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Console – 825GB.” It’s the same amount that shipped with the original PS5 in 2020. The PlayStation 5 with a disc drive still comes with 1TB of storage and demands $550 from your wallet. The PlayStation 5 Pro comes with 2TB of storage but now costs $750 after the recent price hikes.

    Gizmodo reached out to Sony for comment on the switch to the older storage option, but we did not immediately hear back. Anybody who has tried to wrangle multiple digital games on their system knows how fast 667GB of storage will get eaten up by storage-hungry games. Less storage only means players will need to go out and spend even more money on new SSD upgrades they need to install themselves. (Admittedly, that’s a very easy process.)

    This is not how things are supposed to unfurl. Gaming and computing hardware normally cheapens over time. In the case of Sony’s gaming brand, consoles also improve over time. Hardware aficionados have made a game of opening up new PlayStation 5 consoles over the years to see how Sony has minimized excesses and improved thermals. For example, the CFI-12XX version of the non-slim PS5 from 2022 was significantly lighter than the 2020 edition. It sports a new heatsink and lighter cooling fans to help reduce weight. The latest version clocks in at 2,433g, or about 5.3 pounds. That’s around 100g lighter than before. Sony didn’t touch the SoC, or system on a chip. It’s getting the same power draw as before and will be practically equivalent in performance compared to previous editions. The only cosmetic change is the black plastic between the two white plates is matte instead of glossy.

    This is a bad time to try and get into gaming. Last month, Xbox hiked prices for its Xbox Series S and X consoles for the second time in a year. Now, a brand-new Series X with a disc drive costs $650. The digital-only version asks for $600, but at least it comes with the full 1TB of storage. Last week, Xbox raised the price of its Game Pass Ultimate subscription to $30 a month, or $360 a year. While Netflix and other streaming services have trained consumers to expect subscriptions to get more expensive and worse with time, Sony is setting us up to anticipate the same with hardware.

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    Kyle Barr

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  • Lenovo Legion Go 2 Review: A Handheld Made For Big, Meaty Claws

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    You buy Lenovo’s new Legion Go 2 handheld for the screen. The performance is secondary to how beautiful recent 2D titles look on the 8.8-inch, 1200p OLED display. The Legion Go 2 is otherwise a big, meaty handheld for gamers with big, meaty claws. You’ll struggle to hold it above your head lying in bed unless you’re a professional power lifter; the controls won’t be your favorite; it’s as wonky as its predecessor. And it’s hard to argue anybody should spend well over $1,000 on a gaming handheld rather than just buying a full gaming laptop.

    Despite all that, I can’t help but enjoy the hell out of it. My initial hours spent rolling my eyes at everything Lenovo failed to fix from its first iteration slowly morphed into the kind of appreciation that can only occur when a device starts to feel personal. It’s what happened when I downloaded Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades II to the device and had to hold back a gasp on a crowded plane for how gorgeous both games looked on Lenovo’s big, expensive, beautiful display.

    Legion Go 2

    It’s thick, heavy, and so damn pretty. It’s a shame it costs as much as it does.

    • Beautiful OLED display
    • 144Hz refresh rate with VRR
    • New ergonomics
    • Low-wattage performance uplift
    • Annoying removable controls
    • FPS mode is pointless
    • Reflective display
    • Very expensive at $1,350

    It’s the same feeling I get from Valve’s $550 Steam Deck OLED, which uses the same organic light-emitting diode screen technology to present deeper contrast and rich colors. Valve’s handheld maxes out at 800p on an older, custom AMD chipset. Even when you factor in performance and display size, the Steam Deck OLED is still a much, much better deal. My review unit version of the Legion Go 2 with the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage, costs $1,350. I could literally buy two Steam Decks for this price (more if I opted for the LCD model). For Lenovo’s inflated price, I could run out and buy three $450 Nintendo Switch 2 handhelds. You could nab a version of the Legion Go 2 that starts at $1,100 for a version with a AMD Ryzen Z2, but judging by my tests that chip will land closer in power to handhelds that are three years old and cost much less.

    It’s a ridiculous scenario that consumers are taking the brunt of Donald Trump’s obsession with import taxes, aka tariffs. And in that way, consumers are screwed no matter what. The upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, which is set to launch on Oct. 16 with the same Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, will set you back $1,000. The original Legion Go asked for $700 in 2023. The Asus ROG Ally X demanded $800 at launch last year. Both now retail at a higher price, likely due to tariffs. I would tell you to wait and buy a new handheld, but there’s no way to tell if prices might increase in coming months.

    Really? You kept FPS mode?

    Unlike the Switch 2, you won’t be using the Legion Go 2’s mouse-mode like ‘FPS mode’ on your pants’ leg. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    What drives me mad using the Legion Go 2 is how Lenovo held back from improving over the 2023 handheld. The revised version is far more ergonomic than the two-year-old device with its sharp corners. Both handhelds let you remove each controller and play with the screen separated, like the Nintendo Switch. The Switch 2 did away with rails and went for magnetic connections for each Joy-Con 2, which makes attaching and detaching the controllers a little easier. Lenovo’s old and new system still use a series of exposed pins you jam into a cavity on each side of the screen. You need two hands and a strong pitching arm to remove each controller with a down and out motion. Reattaching them can be just as annoying.

    See Lenovo Legion Go 2 at Best Buy

    The controller uses Hall effect sticks that are much better at surviving stick drift, though they still feel a little too thin on my fingers compared to other handhelds I’ve used. The Legion Go 2 has slightly redesigned bumper buttons that make it easier to press and the same, large triggers. The $650 Legion Go S had a switch to enable instant triggers with less travel—better for first-person shooter games, but because of the removable controllers you’ll have to stick with the full range of motion.

    The Switch 2’s big standout feature is its new mouse mode enabled just by putting the controller down on a table or your pant’s leg. Lenovo did it first on the Legion Go with its FPS mode. So is it any better now? No, absolutely not. You still need to remove the right controller and flick the “FPS” switch to turn on an optical mouse sensor. You then need to slot it into a base to hold it like an old-school flight stick, where the two side buttons act as the left and right mouse click. The DPI is still low enough you’ll struggle to get it working on anything but a desk. Even when you do, using a joystick and the FPS controller together necessitates changing the in-game controls. I tried it in both Cyberpunk 2077 and Borderlands 4, and it caused such havoc with both titles I was loathe to use the FPS mode again.

    As for I/O, the Legion Go 2 has both a bottom and top USB-4 port. In theory, this could allow you to hook it up to an eGPU. More likely, it’s sole purpose is for charging or hooking up to a dock for HDMI passthrough. As much as Lenovo implies you’ll create a full “battle station” out of your device for instantaneous PC, you don’t want to hook it up to anything larger than a 1440p monitor, and only then for playing games most systems can run anyway.

    Strangely enough, one of the best improvements over the last generation handheld is the Legion Go 2’s new soft carrying case. The old case was very protective, but it was also enormous. The new version is smaller and more squat than the default Steam Deck case, which makes lugging around the 8.8-inch handheld onto planes surprisingly easy. There’s two little hidey-holes for the FPS mode stand, but since you’ll never use it, you can stick anything else in there. Just don’t tell me what.

    The Legion Go 2 is so damn pretty

    Lenovo Legion Go 2 Review 10
    The real reason you’ll like this handheld is for those truly rich colors and deep blacks on the OLED display. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    All the new ergonomics make it easier to hold, but not enough that it won’t feel heavy in your hands. You’ll find you’ll need a table or lap to rest your elbows on, or else you’ll use the built-in kickstand to prop it up on your desk. Either way you hold it, you’ll end up enjoying this handheld mostly for the display. As I said earlier, the 8.8-inch OLED display is sublime. It doesn’t have any higher screen resolution than the Legion Go’s 1,920 x 1,200, but it’s enough to make games pop.

    For my hands, the Legion Go 2 is just large enough where I can grip it and access all the controls. Other users who are smaller in stature may not be so lucky. Ignore all those 11-inch handhelds out there. Near-9-inch devices are more than enough. The screen also sports a 144Hz refresh rate with VRR, or variable refresh rate. All those games that can hit above 100 fps (which, let’s be honest, will mostly be older or 2D titles), will look their peak on the Legion Go 2.

    Lenovo Legion Go 2 2
    The Legion Go 2’s screen isn’t bright enough to remain visible in direct sunlight. © Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

    The screen feels bright enough indoors, but while Lenovo promises you’ll get 1,100 nits of HDR brightness, the screen is not great for using outdoors. It’s blinded by direct sunlight, and even sitting near a window you’ll see most details disappear. The screen is also very reflective. A matte coating would have dulled the display quality, but it’s at the risk of catching a glimpse of your girlfriend walking up behind you.

    Ryzen Z2 Extreme isn’t a huge leap

    Lenovo Legion Go 2 Review 18
    The Legion Go (top) and Legion Go 2 (middle) both sport Windows 11 by default. The Legion Go S (bottom) has a version that contains SteamOS. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU is purely iterative. If you’ve been watching like a hawk, hoping to devour the latest and fastest handheld chip, this isn’t it. The performance difference generation to generation is minimal. In some games, you could get 5 to 10 fps more at the highest TDP, or thermal design power, People who focus too hard on benchmarks will come away disappointed. If you care more about whether the system can play the latest AAA games, know that you’ll be able to achieve playable frame rates at the max 1200p resolution though only by dropping any hope of ray tracing for more-realistic lighting effects.

    See Lenovo Legion Go 2 at Best Buy

    I’m fundamentally a gamer who refuses to drop the resolution of games for the sake of performance. I will lower graphics settings in a desperate attempt to eek out the minimum 30 fps. The Legion Go 2 can manage to take some AAA games into playable states at the max 35W of TDP (thermal design power) once the handheld’s engines are firing on all cylinders. TDP determines how much power is being sent to the processor, which will dictate overall performance. Borderlands 4 is one of those games notorious for running poorly on PC and consoles alike (you won’t find the game on Switch 2 in the coming days, either). I was able to get a stable sub-40 fps on the lowest possible graphics settings. I could achieve a little better frame rates in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Even at lower graphics settings, the game still looks and sounds great on the small screen.

    Older games fare better. Control could average 40 to 49 fps at low settings with the handheld plugged in. The Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark at 1200p and medium settings preset with AMD’s FSR upscaling saw an average of 44 fps, while at 1080p with the same settings it could hit 48 fps. In Baldur’s Gate III, I could average above 60 fps in the open areas of Act 1 and get between 45 and 55 fps in the city environments of Act III.

    In 3DMark benchmarks, the Legion Go 2 hit a score of 3,305 and 24.48 average fps in Steel Nomad Lite tests. That’s 1,000 points better than the Legion Go S with its Ryzen Z2 Go chip running on Windows, but it’s only a little more than 300 points better than the Z1 Extreme on the Asus ROG Ally X from 2024. The new device hit 3,897 points in Time Spy tests, which again is barely more than 300 points better than an Ally X. It’s not much better than an MSI Claw 8 AI+, which uses a full Intel laptop chip. Simply put, the Legion Go 2 isn’t a huge step over the previous gen at the max wattage.

    However, the device’s secret sauce is in how well it performs at lower wattages. Tests with multiple games at wattages as low as 34 fps still enabled relatively stable frame rates in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider. While in Cyberpunk 2077 at full resolution and Steam Deck settings, the device gets 44 fps in benchmarks, at 15W it still managed to eek out nearly 30 fps. I don’t expect anybody will run high-end games on lower power. Instead, the best experience comes from games that are far less intensive. I could net well over 160 fps in Hades II on the “Balanced” performance setting. Hollow Knight: Silksong seems like it was built with the Legion Go 2 in mind with automatic settings to stay around 144Hz. These games play so gloriously on this handheld, I don’t want to play them on anything else. It’s a shame you have to spend $350 more than an Xbox Ally X jut for that pretty screen and higher refresh rate.

    Windows still sucks for handhelds, but it could get better

    Lenovo Legion Go 2 Review 05
    The Legion Go 2 is neither thin nor light, but at least it feels comfortable. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    On balanced power settings, I could game for around 2 hours and 40 minutes before the device was literally begging me to plug it in. In other tests where I was gaming at the full resolution and wattage playing Indiana Jones, it lasted closer to 2 hours. The Legion Go 2 sports a 74Wh battery, which is slightly worse than the ROG Ally X’s 80Wh. The larger OLED display and higher max resolution will inevitably drag the battery life down.

    At this point, players should not expect a handheld that will last very long. The ROG Ally X still has one of the best battery life at full power when it gets closer to 3 hours of runtime. In real life, the difference is negligible. At this point in my life, having a max two hours of playtime is strangely beneficial. If I’m clearing room after room in Hades II late at night, the battery timer is essentially my alarm. If it’s close to 12 a.m. and I’m about to run out of power, it’s a sign I should get some rest.

    Depending on the game you’re playing, the device’s fans can get relatively loud. Even at max speed I wouldn’t call them jet engine noise. It’s enough to remind you to be mindful when sitting next to strangers on a plane. The device kept very cool in my time using it. I never felt any heat around the controls, and the area around the fans also didn’t feel steamy when playing a game at max wattage.

    I can’t excuse the price, but I had such a good time with the Legion Go 2 it felt like a personal companion after traveling for more than a week and a half away from home. But there’s an elephant in the room shaped like a big “X” we need to address. The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are supposed to launch with a new version of Windows, dubbed the “Full Screen Experience” (FSE) built exclusively for gaming handhelds. While this may fix the lingering usability issues of Windows 11 on a 7- or 8-inch screen, the upgrade should also eliminate background tasks and—hopefully—boost performance by 20%. The issue is that Microsoft has said you may need to wait until next spring to get it on handhelds like the Legion Go 2.

    Windows is terrible on handhelds. It gets in the way when trying to put the device to sleep while still in-game. It bombards you with popups for OneDrive that you need to use the touchscreen to excise. It saps power and makes the device run worse than it would if it was running SteamOS, the same Linux-based operating system running on the Steam Deck. In our tests, the Legion Go S with SteamOS outperforms its Windows counterpart by 20 to 30%. Unless you’re dead set on keeping your Xbox Game Pass games handy, I would suggest looking into installing Valve’s software on the Legion Go 2. I have not confirmed whether you can install SteamOS on the new handheld, though if its not compatible at launch, I assume an update may be around the corner. Without the FSE or SteamOS, this can’t be my handheld of choice. With a new operating system, the Legion Go 2 would become the bell of the ball for modern PC handhelds.

    See Lenovo Legion Go 2 at Best Buy

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    Kyle Barr

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  • Lego Game Boy Review: The Designers Share All the Secrets to the Fun, Nostalgic Set

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    I owe the original Game Boy everything. Had it not been for Nintendo’s gray brick of a handheld, and a copy of Super Mario Land, I doubt I would be writing these words on Gizmodo. It was the gadget that started my lifelong obsession with cutting-edge technology and my passion for sharing it with others. So excuse me for being overwhelmed with emotion and nostalgia when Lego announced it was making a 421-piece brick set version of the iconic Nintendo handheld.

    Released on Oct. 1 for $60, the Lego Game Boy is a pretty easy build. Lego says it’s for ages 18+ and up, but there was nothing complicated enough that a 10-year-old couldn’t follow the instructions. (Though, they wouldn’t have any nostalgia for the handheld that came out in 1989.) It took me about 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete, but I think it would have taken under an hour if I hadn’t stopped to shoot B-roll for a social video. (It’s all fun and games building Lego sets after work; this is also work for me.)

    Lego Game Boy

    Lego’s Nintendo Game Boy is easily one of the most fun brick sets of the year.

    • Easy to build
    • Pressable buttons, wheels, and switches
    • Nearly 1:1 replica
    • Includes lenticular screens and Game Paks
    • Affordable
    • Building it is over too soon

    As I noted in my hands-on a few weeks earlier, the Lego Game Boy is more than just a charming—and almost 1:1 replica—display piece. In addition to the pressable buttons, scrollable dials, and the slideable power switch, you can also pop in brick versions of Super Mario Land and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening game cartridges into the Lego Game Boy. Remove the back cover and you get access to swap in three different lenticular screens featuring the two games and the Game Boy’s famous bootup screen featuring the Nintendo logo sliding down.

    https://x.com/raywongy/status/1974417263097974908

    There are tons of Easter eggs inside the Lego Game Boy that make it more than just a skin-deep recreation. I spoke with Carl Merriam, a senior designer at the Lego Group, and Simon Kent, a design director at the Lego Group, who worked on the Lego Game Boy set to unearth some of its unseen secrets.

    Designing the Lego Game Boy

    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    There’s been some strongly worded opinions about which company gets credit for the Lego Game Boy. Is it Lego or is it Nintendo? The answer is both—as it should be. Nintendo is famous for being extremely protective of its IP—its products, franchises, and characters are well-guarded and require top-level approval. To do a Lego version of the Game Boy, Merriam and Kent had to go beyond just the outer gray shell and pink buttons.

    “Nintendo was very involved,” Kent, who’s been at Lego for almost 20 years, told Gizmodo. “We have a team that works in Japan… they basically allow us to connect to different IP teams or hardware teams or even creative teams within Nintendo to get the right information to make the product as best as it can be. We also met with the hardware designer that I think may have worked on the original or certainly was connected to the original [Game Boy].”

    Merriam, a senior designer who’s been at Lego for 12 years, started as a fan before landing at the toy company. He’s worked on Lego sets, including Boost, Minecraft, and Super Mario, to name a few popular series. For the Game Boy, which he says took around a year from concept to development, the team went through 10 to 20 iterations before landing on the final design and tweaking it to feel extra special, extra Nintendo-y.

    The dimensions of the Game Boy proved to be restrictive in what Lego could do, but in the end, I would say it’s semi-faithful to the actual handheld, which has to be commended.

    “We don’t really have a lot of room in here to do a lot of stuff, and we played around with all kinds of different functional ways to make you be able to do something with the games,” Merriam told Gizmodo. “It turned out that the one thing that we could achieve all over the entire thing was making all of the buttons have the same haptic feedback as the actual device, or as close as we can get in Lego bricks.”

    Lego Game Boy Review 20
    There are so many nice parts to the inside of the Lego Game Boy. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    He said each area of the Lego Game Boy was a design challenge on its own. Merriam says he probably built 30 to 40 versions for the way the D-pad, buttons, and switches. I noticed that attention to detail as I built the Lego set. Behind the D-pad is actually a little rubber piece that gives it a springiness when you press into it. Same goes for the A and B buttons; those are actually minifig hats painted pink, and there’s a little rubber band behind them that gives them a familiar button travel when pressed. The start and select buttons are black tire pieces changed to gray, and they date back to 1969, Kent told me. Comparing the Lego Game Boy controls with my original Game Boy that my mom bought in 1993, I gotta say it’s impressive how hard Lego went to replicate it.

    Lego Game Boy Review 21
    That rubber band provides the A and B buttons with a springiness when pressed. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    I asked how they approached building the Lego Game Boy—did they 3D model it first or just get right to building? How do you even go about choosing the pieces, though? It’s estimated that there are tens of thousands of unique Lego pieces available to use. With an entire vault going back almost 70 years to select from, where do you even start? Sure, Lego could—and it did—create a few new, custom parts for the Game Boy, but where’s the creativity in making many new parts?

    “My mind is built of the Lego system, so whenever I see anything in the real world, I see a Lego piece that maybe could be that thing,” Merriam said. He explained to me how the clear panel for the Lego Game Boy screen is actually a window frame that’s “quite an old piece,” and it was a good problem to have to design it so that it would be centered properly.

    Lego Game Boy Review 07
    You can pop in three included lenticular screens to bring the Lego Game Boy to life. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    As for the custom pieces… well, you could try to find out which one it is, or I could just tell you. It involves one of the corners of the Lego Game Boy.

    Lego Game Boy Review 08
    The buttons are all pressable. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    “We wanted to sort of incorporate everything that was mobile about the Game Boy,” added Kent. “We had discussions—should we do any peripherals that can plug into it? Should it come with some headphones? Should it come with a little light [like the Game Boy Light Magnifier]? But, in the end, we wanted to keep it simple and focused very much on… taking their favorite games and playing them anywhere.”

    Speaking of games, the insides of the cartridges, or Game Paks as they’re officially called, were something that came later on in the process, after they finished making the outer case and making sure all the functions worked. In the Zelda game cart, there’s a “save battery” piece that replicates the way Game Paks preserved your game progress.

    Lego Game Boy Review 12
    The Zelda cartridge has a save battery piece inside. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    One burning question I had to ask the two was what the joint/kickstand-like piece that keeps the lenticular screens in place is called. “I call it a dingler, I don’t have a technical term for it,” Merriam told me. So there you have it, it’s unofficially called a dingler!

    Lego Game Boy Review 10
    That thing holding the lenticular screens in place is unofficially called a “dingler,” according to Clark Merriam. At least that’s what he calls it. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    More Lego Nintendo consoles coming?

    The Game Boy is the second Nintendo console that Lego brickified. The first was the Lego NES set released in 2020. That set was larger, had more pieces, and was more expensive. Kent says the Lego Game Boy was an attempt at a Nintendo set that’s more affordable.

    “For a long time, the team in general has wanted to do the Game Boy, and we felt that now was probably the right time, and we also wanted to explore a different price point,” Kent said. “Obviously, the NES came with a TV. It’s a higher price point, so we wanted to do something smaller to test that area.”

    Lego Game Boy Review 04
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    I tried to get Merriam and Kent to tell me whether there are more Lego Nintendo consoles on the way, but they wouldn’t let anything slip. So if you’re waiting for a Lego SNES, N64, or GameCube, you’ll just have to keep waiting.

    Pure joy and fun

    Lego Game Boy Review 01
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    When I first saw the Lego Game Boy, I was both excited and curious to see how it would differ from the many fan creations out there. I was surprised—or maybe I shouldn’t have been—that Merriam and Kent didn’t look at the fan creations out there.

    “If you search for anything related to intellectual property, there’s probably a Lego version of it out there somewhere,” Kent said. “We are very careful for that exact reason. We deliberately don’t look at fan-related material because we want to focus on the actual real thing and do what we think is the right thing with the partner who we are collaborating with.”

    “One of the most interesting differences between being a Lego fan and the Lego designer is that we’re designing a product for people to build at home, and to make the experience of building the product fun is a totally different challenge than just making something look like the source material,” said Merriam.

    Lego Game Boy Review 13
    The lenticular screens for the two included games. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    At the end of the day, the Lego Game Boy—or any Lego set, really—should be fun to build. Yes, I often speed build Lego sets, but that usually comes at the expense of enjoying all the care that went into designing not just how the completed build looks on the outside, but the inside.

    “The Lego system is like a language,” Merriam said. “I like to try to write poetry with the Lego system. Every once in a while, I can achieve it, and I believe I’ve achieved it in this one.”

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    Raymond Wong

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  • Modder Does What Nintendo Didn’t: Hack Lego Game Boy to Play Real Cartridges

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    As much as we wish it did, the Lego Game Boy does not play actual cartridges. The inevitable next step is to fix that error. Yes, that picture shows off a fully working Lego Game Boy built using a custom PCB (printed circuit board) that plays actual Game Paks or any of your modern homebrew titles. What’s more, the modder who created the working Lego Game Boy promised fans she will release a kit to turn the $50 Lego set into the best—or perhaps first—operational brick-based handheld. Tetris playing on a handheld made of blocks is likely the most ironic experience you can have with gaming hardware.

    See Game Boy at LEGO

    Australia-based modder Natalie the Nerd has been making waves in the retro handheld modding scene for long enough that when she claimed in July she would make the Lego Game Boy play actual cartridges, people paid attention. The modder proved that, occasionally, dreams do come true. She showed off a functional Lego Game Boy, complete with actual controls and a cartridge slot. To put it in the simplest terms, it’s damn glorious.

    The back panel is just a plastic plate that normally holds the fake Game Pak in place. The modded Game Boy has a physical cartridge connection. © Natalie the Nerd

    “I know from experience of routing Game Boy CPU PCBs that there isn’t much to it. There’s the RAM, CPU, some decoupling capacitors, and power regulation,” Natalie the Nerd wrote a blog post. She opted for the MGB (Pocket) CPU, the same as the one found in the 1996 version of the Game Boy line, versus the DMG launched in 1989. Space is tight when the external shell is made out of thick Lego bricks, so using the more recent chip made more sense, she said. “The DMG CPU has external VRAM, the MGB CPU has internal VRAM and in a very space-conscious build, that was the biggest factor.”

    So no, this isn’t one of the many software emulation devices or even an Analogue Pocket running a custom FPGA (field-programmable gate array) board. In almost every way, it’s a real Game Boy. The working Lego Game Boy buttons and USB-C port are hooked up to 3D-printed parts. As far as mods go, this one seems relatively doable even for the newcomer with little DIY experience. On Discord, Natalie the Nerd confirmed she plans to release a mod kit. “It just needs to be refined a touch,” she said.

    Lego told Gizmodo it worked closely with Nintendo to design the toy handheld, and it shows. The Lego Game Boy is very similar in scale compared to the real handheld that first debuted in 1989. Instead of a screen, it uses lenticular cards to offer a simulacrum of the famous green-shaded dot matrix display. The device also comes with a false cartridge slot to shove in brick-based Game Paks. Lego and Nintendo designed it as a display piece. If you intend to use it as a working handheld, you may need to break out the “Kragle,” aka superglue, to keep it from falling apart in your hands.

    Lego rarely makes working, mechanical devices. I’m still hoping beyond hope that one designer’s working Lego film camera becomes a reality. If you’re not patient enough to wait for this mod kit and you need a working Lego gaming console right now, you can always jam an entire NES motherboard into the Lego version and relive the retro delights of the late 1980s.

    See Game Boy at LEGO

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    Kyle Barr

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  • The ASUS TUF T500 Is a Great Gaming PC for Beginners

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    Because it’s so easy to build a gaming desktop at home, companies making prebuilt machines need to offer either a great value or something unique. That’s why the Asus TUF T500 isn’t technically a desktop PC, at least in the classic sense. Instead, it leverages a smaller motherboard and laptop CPU, reducing the overall footprint but dropping the ability to upgrade or repair some of the individual parts.

    Most notably, the T500 is sporting a full-size desktop GPU, which is the biggest determining factor when it comes to gaming performance, and also the part that gets replaced the most often. That should give this desktop a much longer lifetime than gaming laptops that are similarly-equipped, at least on paper. This version came with an RTX 5060 Ti installed, a card that generally hits 60 to 90 frames per second at 1080p, a good match for a living room console replacement.

    I’m pleasantly surprised with the execution, and the T500 offers a solid value and a unique upgrade path, with some expected compromises around cooling and ports. It’s a solid choice for the tech-averse or television-bound gamer looking to move from consoles to PC, but I think more savvy users will still want to build their own.

    A Unique Appeal

    Photograph: Brad Bourque

    The upside to Asus’s approach is that the T500 is a relatively compact machine, around six inches wide and twelve inches deep, or just a little bigger than two Xbox Series X consoles sitting side by side. With gaming handhelds increasingly capable even for newer titles, I imagine the people who have room for a desktop and monitor, but only just barely, aren’t a huge audience. Asus specifically calls out college students, but I’d think a gaming laptop would get you through at least four years, and you could take it to class with you. At this size, it seems more likely you’d find one tucked into an entertainment stand in a living room or home theater.

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    Brad Bourque

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  • How Electronic Arts’ $55 billion go-private deal could impact the video game industry

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    NEW YORK — In what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private equity, video game maker Electronic Arts has agreed to be acquired in a deal valued at $55 billion.

    Beyond the potentially record-breaking price tag, the deal could bring wider shifts in the gaming world. Electronic Arts owns popular titles like Madden NFL, Battlefield and The Sims — and going private could potentially grant the company more freedom in developing and distributing future games. Still, what its future under new ownership could look like has yet to be seen.

    The proposed buyout also marks the latest move from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF to invest in gaming. If the transaction gets the green light, PIF would join Silver Lake Partners and Affinity Partners, run by U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as ElectronTheic Arts’ new owners. The companies aim to close the all-cash acquisition by the first quarter of 2027.

    Here’s what we know.

    The size of the video game market has attracted significant investment from large investors in recent years. And analysts note that Redwood City, California-based EA brand and lineup of titles make it a popular acquisition target — particularly as competition grows.

    One of EA’s biggest rivals, Activision Blizzard, was snapped up by technology powerhouse Microsoft for nearly $69 billion in 2023, for example, while the competition from mobile video game makers such as Epic Games has intensified.

    PIF, Silver Lake and Affinity’s combined offer to acquire EA far exceeds the $32 billion price tag to take Texas utility TXU private in 2007, which had previously shattered records for leveraged buyouts. A leveraged buyout means a company is purchased largely using borrowed funds, and requires the acquired company to repay the debt taken on to finance the deal.

    It’s possible that the deal could give EA more freedom in future development and distribution of its games. By going private, EA will be able to retool operations without worrying about market reactions.

    Still, time will tell whether there will be any significant shifts in operations.

    EA has faced criticism for recent moves toward live-service gaming — which features a continuous stream of new content often aimed to keep players online longer — and other monetization efforts that have been seen as aggressive among some gamers. Its proposed buyers haven’t indicated any plans to part from those models. In Monday’s announcement, EA and the firms looking to acquire it just pointed broadly to coming growth.

    “Looking ahead, we will continue to push the boundaries of entertainment, sports, and technology, unlocking new opportunities,” Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, who will continue to stay in the top seat if the go-private deal goes through.

    Still, some analysts are skeptical about whether a buyout is the best thing for EA right now — particularly ahead of its “Battlefield 6” launch slated for October 10. “It is still unclear to us why EA would agree to be acquired right before a very promising BF6 launch,” TD Cowen analysts Doug Creutz and Mei Lun Quach wrote in a Monday note.

    The analysts had previously pointed to the positive responses “Battlefield 6″ received from players in its testing period — noting that expected revenue could push up EA’s share price even further.

    Others have similarly argued that the proposed acquisition price — which divvies up to $210 per share — undervalues what EA has to offer. Meanwhile, Nick McKay of Freedom Capital Markets thinks an increase in share price is likely limited, given the success of EA’s sports offerings being baked into the price, and that the pricing makes sense.

    After being taken private, formerly public companies often undergo extensive cost-cutting.

    EA hasn’t indicated any expected cuts spanning from its proposed buyout at this time, although the company has gone through several layoff rounds recently. After jettisoning about 5% of its workforce in 2024, EA ended March with 14,500 employees and then laid off several hundred people in May.

    The company has also shuttered many game studios over the years. Just this past May, EA reportedly canceled the development of a video game based on Marvel’s “ Black Panther,” for example, as part of the closure of Cliffhanger Games.

    Among investment risks raised following EA’s go-private offer on Monday, TD Cowen’s analysts pointed to the possibility of key talent leaving the company as a result of a buyout, or other potential “value-destroying” acquisition impacts.

    Among EA’s proposed buyers is Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF — which has increasingly upped its gaming investments. It already holds a 9.9% stake in EA, and is also a minority investor in fellow gaming giant Nintendo.

    Amanda Cote, an associate professor and director of the serious games certificate at Michigan State University, noted that the attempted EA acquisition is particularly in line with PIF’s recent moves in esports, with competitive gaming platforms like ESL FACEIT also among its portfolio today.

    “EA’s game portfolio simultaneously aligns with Saudi Arabia’s expansions into sports, gaming, and esports,” Cote said, alluding to EA’s esports and sports properties like Madden Football and EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA).

    At the same time, she also noted human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, have been highly critical of Saudi Arabia’s overall investments in sports and esports — with some accusing the nation of “sportswashing” to distract international attention. “This proposed deal is likely to face similar criticism,” Cote added.

    Among the other notable names in the proposed buyout is Kushner.

    The deal still needs shareholder and regulatory approval, although most analysts don’t expect notable headwinds under the current administration. In a Monday note, Baird Equity Research analysts wrote that the “connections to both the Saudi government and the Trump administration” could be “viewed as a strategic asset for EA in navigating any regulatory speed-bumps.”

    _______

    AP Business Writers Michael Liedtke and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.

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  • I’ve Been Reviewing Gaming Laptops for Over a Decade. Here’s What to Look for When Shopping

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    ROG Strix is Asus’s performance-focused subbrand. This is where the company’s thicker, more conventional gaming laptops are found. Pricing can range widely, as it includes affordable options like the ROG Strix G16 with the RTX 5050, which starts at just $1,300.

    TUF Gaming is the company’s entry-level gaming laptop subbrand. These TUF gaming laptops used to be some of the most affordable gaming laptops you could buy, but they’ve gone up in price over the past few years. There aren’t any Asus gaming laptops under $1,000 that feature the latest RTX 50-series GPUs, though you can find plenty of older models for less on Amazon or Best Buy.

    Dell’s gaming laptop lineup is fairly sparse these days. All of Dell’s gaming laptops fall under the Alienware brand, which the company acquired back in 2006. Alienware has been through many cycles of reinvention with its gaming laptops, but in 2025, there’s really only four laptops in the stack right now: the Alienware 16 Aurora, Alienware 16X Aurora, Alienware 18 Area-51, and Alienware 16 Area-51. I like the simplicity of the new lineup, which focuses on what Alienware has always been known for: its brash, gamer style and higher-end performance.

    The Alienware 16 Aurora is the company’s attempt to reach a cheaper demographic, starting the laptop at just $1,100 right now for an RTX 5050 configuration.

    HP’s Omen gaming brand has been around for over a decade, but it really feels like the company has started to build some momentum around it over the past few years. Interestingly, HP breaks down its options into three categories of thickness and performance. Omen Max is the chunkiest at almost an inch thick, and supports up to an RTX 5080. Omen 16 is the middle ground, capping out at an RTX 5070. Omen Transcend, which offers a 14-inch model, still supports up to an RTX 5070, but brings the thickness down to 0.7 inches. There are 16-inch size options available across all three subbrands; however, none of the laptops are as thin as some of the competition. There’s also an Omen 16 Slim, which blurs the lines a bit.

    Apart from Omen, HP also launched its “Victus” subbrand in 2021, which represents its budget-oriented options. HP only has a few configurations of the HP Victus 15 and Victus 16 available right now.

    Razer, MSI, Acer, and Others

    Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Razer is solely committed to PC gaming, unlike many of the laptop brands on this list. Its Blade gaming laptops have become iconic in the industry for their minimalist aesthetic. Like many companies, Razer has a Blade 14, Blade 16, and Blade 18, which all have an identical design, but scale up in terms of size and performance.
    • MSI has made quite a name for itself in the gaming space, especially with its high-end, performance-focused, monster gaming laptops like the MSI Titan HX. Beyond Titan, MSI has a mind-boggling amount of other options, though, including the Raider, Stealth, Vector, Katana, Sword, and its budget-oriented Cyborg series. There’s a lot to dig into.
    • Acer’s Predator line has its own fanfare about it. Predator Helios is its high-end, performance-driven line with tons of options across 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch sizes. Triton is its thin-and-light sub-brand, but it hasn’t been updated in 2025 so far. The company also has its Nitro budget brand, which comes in 14-, 15-, and 16-inch options and with support up to an RTX 5070.

    Beyond these mainstay brands, you also have PC gaming companies that have dipped into gaming laptops, such as Gigabyte, Origin, and Maingear. Just stay away from the no-name brands that have popular listings on Amazon despite lacking discrete graphics cards—like this.

    Gaming on Non-Gaming Laptops

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    • Photograph: Luke Larsen

    While there’s an entire ecosystem of laptops marketed toward gamers, that doesn’t mean you can’t play games on other devices. Laptops with dedicated graphics cards can often play games just as well as gaming laptops, but they’re often targeted more at creatives who need better graphics to run creative applications. These include laptops like the Dell 14 Premium, Acer Swift X 14, and the Asus ProArt P16.

    If you’re buying a laptop primarily to play games, though, I wouldn’t recommend one of these. They usually don’t support the higher-tier GPUs like the RTX 5080 or 5090, and you won’t get super-fast refresh rates beyond 120 Hz. If you’re more of a casual gamer and just want a high-end laptop that can do it all, these are good options. They’re especially good if you despise the “gamer” aesthetic and want something a bit more subtle.

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    Luke Larsen

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  • ASUS ROG Xbox Ally Series Debuts with AI Power

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    ASUS has officially opened pre-orders for its latest handheld gaming devices—the ROG Xbox Ally and the more powerful ROG Xbox Ally X. Built in collaboration with Xbox, both machines promise to merge console-style ease with PC versatility, offering gamers a unique cross-platform experience.

    Performance That Pushes Limits

    The ROG Xbox Ally X is powered by the all-new AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme processor, designed to handle the most demanding AAA titles with remarkable efficiency. Early benchmarks suggest up to a 30% leap in performance compared to its predecessor, alongside significantly improved battery life. The standard ROG Xbox Ally, meanwhile, houses the AMD Ryzen Z2 A chip, which balances energy efficiency with solid gaming output, boasting up to 20% higher frame rates in select titles.

    Designed With Gamers in Mind

    Both models prioritize ergonomics and build quality, ensuring comfort for extended sessions. ASUS emphasizes that the handhelds are not just about raw power, but about offering gamers a seamless transition between Windows 11 and Xbox experiences. This hybrid approach means access to Game Pass titles, PC storefronts, and cloud gaming all within one portable device.

    AI, Graphics, and Future-Ready Features

    The Ally X includes an onboard NPU, making it one of the first handhelds prepared for AI-driven features in upcoming games. Both devices benefit from AMD’s latest graphical technologies, such as FidelityFX Super Resolution and Fluid Motion Frames, which can deliver up to 60% smoother gameplay. Battery optimizations further differentiate the two—Ally X excels at long AAA sessions, while the Ally offers longer endurance for less demanding titles.

    Pre-Order Bonuses and Availability

    Gamers in the United States who pre-order through the ASUS Shop can enter raffles for exclusive accessory bundles worth over $500, or collectible ROG OMNI figurines for ROG Elite members. The ROG Xbox Ally starts at $599.99, while the ROG Xbox Ally X comes in at $999.99. Both are available from major retailers including Amazon, Best Buy, Microsoft, and ASUS Shop.

    Technical Specifications

    Model Processor Battery Notable Features Price
    ROG Xbox Ally (RC73YA) AMD Ryzen Z2 A Up to 110% longer vs Ally X 20% boost in Forza Horizon 5, Gears Reloaded $599.99
    ROG Xbox Ally X (RC73XA) AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Up to 2x endurance in Hollow Knight Silksong 30% boost in AAA titles, onboard NPU $999.99

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    Al Hilal

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  • Lenovo’s Legion 7i Is the All-White Gaming Laptop You’ve Always Wanted

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    None of that means you’re going to get good battery life, though. I was only getting around four and a half hours in a very light video playback test. That’s pretty short, limiting the laptop’s viability as a hybrid device for travel, work, or school.

    Close Competition

    Photograph: Luke Larsen

    The RTX 5060 model is available only at Best Buy, starting at $1,870. I would not buy this right now—at least not at this price. Currently, the better deal is over at Lenovo.com, where you can pick up an RTX 5070 model for $1,795 on sale. Though I haven’t tested it (and both GPUs come with only 8 GB of VRAM), stepping up to the RTX 5070 is certainly worth it. Both configurations get you 32 GB of RAM and one terabyte of storage.

    The Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the most expensive gaming laptops to use the RTX 5060. You’re paying extra for the keyboard backlighting, faster HX-series Intel chip, higher-resolution OLED display, and superior design. These all add a lot to the laptop experience, but they are, for the most part, quality-of-life additions. For example, the Alienware Aurora 16 (a laptop I’ll be reviewing soon) also starts with an RTX 5060 and a similar resolution screen, but it’s IPS instead of OLED.

    Just be careful with the cheap RTX 5060 laptops out there, such as the Gigabyte Aero X16, which is on sale for just $1,150 right now. I haven’t tested it yet, but it uses the 85-watt variant of the RTX 5060, which will mean a significant drop in performance compared to the Legion 7i Gen 10. That’s rock bottom for RTX 5060 gaming laptops. Lenovo has its own version of a cheaper RTX 5060 right now, the LOQ 15, which will be available in October, gets you an RTX 5060 for close to $1,000, but comes with a standard 1080p IPS display.

    With that in mind, the Legion 7i Gen 10 is clearly not for those who value performance above all. But it’s one of the nicest looking gaming laptops I’ve reviewed lately that isn’t a Razer Blade, and it has enough performance and high-end features to make it worth the money—just make sure to opt for the RTX 5070 while it’s still on sale.

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    Luke Larsen

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  • Corsair’s New Sabre v2 Pro Gaming Mouse Is Impossibly Light

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    The lack of Bluetooth connectivity is, presumably, for weight savings, but it makes this mouse inconvenient as a travel option. The lack of rigidity already makes traveling with it seem unwise. It’s meant to be kept on a desk.

    The mouse has a total of five buttons: The left and right clicks, the middle click, and the two side buttons, which are mapped to “forward” and “back” by default. There are five built-in sensitivity presets, ranging from 400 to 2,000 dpi. These presets can be adjusted, and the number of presets can be decreased. With the default button maps, you can cycle through the presets by holding down the right click and back button for three seconds. The scroll wheel will flash three times to indicate that the setting has changed. It’s a little convoluted. More importantly, the dpi switch only works if the rear side button is mapped to the “back” key. When I remapped this button to anything else, the combination didn’t work.

    Photograph: Henri Robbins

    Corsair recently unveiled its in-browser Web Hub utility, replacing its iCue software for peripheral management. It’s a vast improvement, being easier to navigate and less issue-prone than its predecessor. With the utility, you can easily adjust settings like polling rate, dpi, and button mapping. However, a mouse this simple really doesn’t have much to adjust. I quickly remapped the side buttons, cranked the polling rate to 8,000 Hz, and never needed to use the software again (outside of testing). The only catch is that in-browser management means you need an internet connection, though maybe you have bigger issues if that’s the case.

    The Sabre v2 Pro also includes rubberized “grip tape” stickers, applied to the primary buttons and either side of the mouse. These can improve grip and only increase weight by half a gram, but they don’t make a massive difference in functionality unless you have particularly sweaty hands. More than anything else, it makes the mouse feel softer and provides some added comfort. However, I found that the tape was limited-use. After removing and reapplying it a couple of times, the edges started to peek back when holding the mouse.

    By Any Means Necessary

    Corsair Sabre V2 Pro Ultralight Gaming Mouse Review Impossibly Light

    Photograph: Henri Robbins

    This mouse has an ethos of lightness at any cost. It weighs practically nothing, to the point that it feels surreal when you’re holding it. You can easily flex the plastic by squeezing either side of the mouse, and pressing from the top and bottom too hard will cause one of the side buttons to actuate. Pressing hard on the mouse from any side causes a small creaking noise to emit from the shell.

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    Henri Robbins

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  • We Finally Know How Much the Xbox Handheld Will Cost

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    Xbox has a pricing problem, and that’s not changing with the company’s first officially branded handheld. Microsoft and Asus’ ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are set to launch on Oct. 16, and after weeks and weeks of making everyone wait, we finally know how much they will cost. If you’re planning on buying one, do it at launch before tariffs force Microsoft to jack up prices like it has with Xbox consoles.

    Xbox Ally preorders started later Thursday, Sept. 25. The regular Xbox Ally will sell for $600. It comes at base with an AMD Ryzen Z2A processor, with specs that hint it could be equivalent to Valve’s $550 Steam Deck OLED in performance. It also packs 16GB of RAM and a 60Wh battery with a 7-inch IPS LCD display. At that price, Asus and Xbox are trying to claim some small part of the PC handheld market dominated by Valve’s handheld, even if it lacks the prettier OLED display. The Xbox Ally is a bit larger than a Steam Deck, though it feels more ergonomic thanks to its controller-like grips.

    The one you actually want, the Xbox Ally X, will demand $1,000 from your already-stretched wallet. The darker handheld contains an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, the long-awaited SoC—or system on a chip—that should have better performance in games compared to handheld PCs from the last two years. How much more powerful is a question with a big red “to be determined” sign hanging over it, but earlier leaks have suggested it won’t be too much better than before running at the highest possible power settings. It may do better at lower power, so you may be able to game for longer at a stable frame rate. The more expensive Xbox Ally also comes with 24GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and an 80Wh battery—equivalent to last year’s $900 ROG Ally X. The more powerful handheld will only be available through Best Buy.

    Trump tariffs have caused havoc with PC and gaming prices. Last week, Microsoft hiked prices of all its Xbox Series S and Series X consoles. Now, if you want the Xbox with a disc drive, it will set you back $650. The Galaxy Black version with 2TB of storage now costs a whopping $800. This year, Asus hiked the cost of its Ally X by $100, up to $900. Lenovo raised prices on its Legion Go S handheld PCs with SteamOS to $650 at base. Lenovo originally cited $550 back when it announced the handheld back during CES 2025. The Legion Go 2, with its 8.8-inch OLED display and a Ryzen Z2 Extreme, starts at $1,350. If you want a handheld PC that can run some AAA games at somewhat stable frame rates, you’ll end up paying through the nose for it.

    Asus and Xbox stalled out in August and refused to share the preorder date and price. I’ve wrapped my hands around the handheld’s comfortable Xbox controller-like grips, but it wasn’t nearly enough time to say if the handheld is worth the money. The new Xbox Ally devices will sport Microsoft’s new version of Windows 11 built specifically for handhelds. Compared to other handheld PCs running the OS, the new version will make selecting games across your various distribution platforms easier. It may also finally fix the aggravating issues when putting these devices to sleep. Most importantly, they should increase performance by nixing background tasks.

    The ROG Xbox Ally X runs a handheld-optimized version of Windows 11. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Some users have managed to get a version of the Xbox handheld experience working on other Windows devices. We still have to see how the final version shakes out. In the end, SteamOS may still prove to be a much cleaner, console-like experience thanks to three years of updates from Valve, plus an active developer community. The Steam Deck hardware is looking a little long in the tooth, but it’s still the cheapest handheld around—at least until Valve inevitably hikes prices just like every other company.

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    Kyle Barr

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  • PlayStation’s New Portable Gaming Speakers Could Be Really Good, If They Don’t Cost a Fortune

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    Sony has been on a roll lately with lots of gaming peripherals (including the Inzone H9 II gaming headset that may actually justify its big price tag), and it’s apparently not ready to stop just yet. PlayStation just announced its Pulse Elevate wireless speakers, which support PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, and the PlayStation Portal, and they may potentially be useful for anyone who doesn’t love constantly wearing a headset.

    Inside the Pulse Elevate, Sony says it’s including “studio-inspired planar magnetic drivers” that are designed to give you “lifelike sound across the entire audible spectrum.” I can’t say for sure what that sounds like yet, but if it’s anything close to the audio quality of the H9 II, it’ll be a hit for me. There are built-in woofers, too, so you’ll still get some low end. On top of that, there are also built-in mics with “AI-enhanced noise rejection,” which is just a fancy way of saying the speakers will cancel environmental noise while you’re talking. If this feature actually works as advertised, it should be good news for anyone who plans to substitute a gaming headset with these speakers, either fully or partially.

    Another nice addition is PlayStation Link compatibility, which means you’ll be able to get low-latency sound on PS5, PC, Mac, and PlayStation Portal. As always, you’ll need to use the provided dongle for Link, which transmits audio faster and at higher fidelity than a standard Bluetooth connection. One last twist here is that Sony is building in some portability to the Pulse Elevate. The wireless speakers have rechargeable batteries, so you can take them elsewhere to use with your Portal (again, if you have one of those) and then charge them in a provided dock when you’re done. If you want to connect a phone or another device with a standard Bluetooth connection, you can do that, too.

    One thing we don’t know is how much the Pule Elevate speakers will cost, but Sony says they’ll be available in Midnight Black and White when they’re released sometime next year. PlayStation gaming peripherals have been pricey as of late, so I would expect a decent-sized price tag. That being said, if they sound as good as the H9 II, they might be worth every penny.

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    James Pero

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  • AI-cloning of Lara Croft’s voice has ‘Tomb Raider’ fans and actors up in arms

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    PARIS — A lifelong fan of “Tomb Raider,” French gamer Romain Bos was on tenterhooks when an update of the popular video game went online in August.

    But his excitement quickly turned to anger.

    The gamer’s ears — and those of other “Tomb Raider” fans — picked up something amiss with the French-language voice of Lara Croft, the game’s protagonist.

    It sounded robotic, lifeless even — shorn of the warmth, grace and believability that French voice actor Françoise Cadol has given to Croft since she started playing the character in 1996.

    Gamers and Cadol herself came to the same conclusion: A machine had cloned her voice and replaced her.

    “It’s pathetic,” says Cadol, who straight away called her lawyer. “My voice belongs to me. You have no right to do that.”

    “It was absolutely scandalous,” says Bos. “It was artificial intelligence.”

    Aspyr, the game developer based in Austin, Texas, didn’t respond to e-mailed questions from The Associated Press. But it acknowledged in a post last week on its website that what it described as “unauthorized AI generated content” had been incorporated into its Aug. 14 update of “Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered” that angered fans.

    “We’ve addressed this issue by removing all AI voiceover content,” Aspyr’s post said. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

    Still, the affair has triggered alarms in the voiceover community, with campaigners saying it’s a sobering example of dangers that AI poses to human workers and their jobs.

    “If we can replace actors, we’ll be able to replace accountants, and a whole range of other professions that could also be automated,” says Patrick Kuban, a French-language voice actor who is also a co-president of United Voice Artists, an international federation of voiceover artists.

    “So we need to ask ourselves the right questions: How far should we go, and how do we regulate these machines?”

    Hollywood has seen similar concerns, with video game performers striking for 11 months for a new contract this year that included AI guardrails.

    “This is happening pretty much everywhere. We’re getting alerts from all over the world — from Brazil to Taiwan,” Kuban said in an Associated Press interview.

    “Actors’ voices are being captured, either to create voice clones — not perfect ones — but for illicit use on social media by individuals, since there are now many apps for making audio deepfakes,” Kuban said.

    “These voices are also being used by content producers who aren’t necessarily in the same country,” he said. “So it’s very difficult for actors to reclaim control over their voices, to block these uses.”

    Cadol says that within minutes of the release of the “Tomb Raider” update, her phone began erupting with messages, emails and social media notifications from upset fans.

    “I took a look and I saw all this emotion — anger, sadness, confusion. And that’s how I found out that my voice had been cloned,” she said in an AP interview.

    Cadol says 12 years of recording French-language voiceovers for Lara Croft — from 1996 to 2008 — built an intimate bond with her fans. She calls them the “guardians” of her work.

    Once the initial shock subsided, she resolved to fight back. Her Paris lawyer, Jonathan Elkaim, is seeking an apology from Aspyr and financial redress.

    In the update, new chunks of voiceover appear to have been added to genuine recordings that Cadol says she made years ago.

    Most notably, fans picked up on one particularly awkward segment. In it, a voice instructs players how to use their game controllers to make Lara Croft climb onto an obstacle, intoning in French: “Place toi devant et appuyez sur avancer” — Stand in front and press ‘advance.’

    Not only does it sound clunky but it also rings as grammatically incorrect to French speakers — mixing up the polite and less polite forms of language that they use, depending on who they’re addressing.

    Gamers were up in arms. Bos posted a video on his YouTube channel that same evening, lamenting: “It’s half Françoise Cadol, half AI. It’s horrible ! Why have they done that?”

    “I was really disgusted,” the 34-year-old said in an AP interview. “I grew up with Françoise Cadol’s voice. I’ve been a ‘Tomb Raider’ fan since I was young kid.”

    “Lara Croft is a bit — how should I say — a bit sarcastic at times in some of her lines. And I think Françoise played that very, very well,” he said.

    “That’s exactly why now is the time to set boundaries,” he added. “It’s so that future generations also have the chance to experience talented actors.”

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  • Enter the Whimsical World of Animula Nook, a Lilliput Fantasy Life Simulation Game

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    GUANGZHOU, China, September 24, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    LilliLandia Games, an indie studio under Tencent Games specialising in the life simulation genre and integrating both development and publishing, is proud to announce its upcoming title, Animula Nook, a fantasy life simulation game set in a lilliputian world. Blending whimsical characters with richly interactive environments, the game aims to offer players an enchanting, creative and cozy experience.

    Watch the official trailer for Animula Nook here.

    Inspired by the charm of modern animated cartoons, Animula Nook transforms everyday objects into fantastical landscapes. From towering coffee mugs to sprawling bookshelves, players become tiny explorers in a giant’s world. They can navigate and interact with oversized, real-world objects, build their own homestead, collect elements such as raindrops and wind to help with crafting, and grow crops in flowerpots.

    Animula Nook offers players a haven where they can explore, create and forge friendships. The game also supports online functionality, allowing players to share their creativity and experiences with their family and friends.

    Key Features of Animula Nook:

    • Discover a tiny yet immense world: Venture into vibrant landscapes hidden in plain sight. Explore lush, resource-packed houseplant forests, delve into the mysterious depths of a forgotten well, and navigate other awe-inspiring (and sometimes perilous) corners of your home. Every expedition is an adventure, whether you are unearthing rare materials or meeting a new friend.

    • Collect beyond the ordinary: In this tiny world, sunlight, raindrops, gentle breezes-even forgotten scents-become precious materials waiting to be discovered. Coins, buttons, and other small wonders are scattered throughout the land – each one not just a resource, but a lost treasure waiting for a new purpose.

    • Build with everyday objects: Milk cartons become charming houses, teacups turn into bustling cafés, and spice jars transform into tiny, glowing shops. Use the objects around you to build, decorate, and customize a miniature haven with unique furniture and personal touches. Start on your desk, then expand your creations across windowsills, cabinets, or even inside a vibrant, living vivarium.

    • Befriend the world’s tiny folk: This miniature world is full of life. Meet a delightful cast of residents, from tiny humanoids to whimsical beings you’ve never seen before. Exchange gifts, create memories, and watch as your bonds deepen over time. As you grow closer, their stories will unfold in more personal and surprising ways. With enough care, you might even convince them to move in – just be sure to build them a space they’ll love.

    • Define yourself in every detail: Customize your character, express yourself creatively, and make the world truly yours. With an endless assortment of outfits, accessories, furniture, and tools, everything you create is a reflection of you.

    • Convenient creative tools: Bring your ideas to life with intuitive tools that make creativity effortless. Sketch blueprints for builds, dismantle objects into modular components, and see your imagination come to life with ease.

    Animula Nook will make its first appearance at Tokyo Game Show this week, September 25th to 28th. Attendees can visit the booth in Hall 6 06S02 to get a first look at gameplay and secure exclusive gifts.

    Animula Nook is available for wishlist on Steam, Epic Games Store, and PlayStation, and will be available for Switch 2 and Mac. Players who wishlist the title will receive updates on upcoming announcements, release timelines, and exclusive content reveals.

    Join the official Discord server, to become part of the Alpha testing team. Get early access to community events and rewards and hear from the development team.

    For more information about Animula Nook, check out the website or follow the game on social channels: Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.

    About LilliLandia Games

    LilliLandia Games is an experienced studio with mature cross-platform global development capabilities, built by a core team of veterans who specialise in platform development and multiplayer experiences. The team focuses on making games that provide social connection and comfort, creating beautiful worlds as a sanctuary for the global gaming community.

    Source: Tencent

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  • ‘Star Wars Outlaws’ Review: The Switch 2’s Game Ports Have Reached Their High-Water Mark

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    The Nintendo Switch 2 is not the most powerful game console, not by a long shot. Instead, it is powerful enough to give developers the breathing room to port modern games to it. Where the original Switch forced developers to pare back visuals, Star Wars Outlaws, which launched on Nintendo’s handheld on Sept. 4, signals what players should come to expect with Switch 2 ports. It still has the best parts of what made the game beautiful in 2024. On handheld, it may finally be worth slogging through the Ubisoft open-world formula.

    Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2

    It’s one of the best ports I’ve seen to a handheld, though some may enjoy the game more than others.

    Pros

    • Stable 30 fps in all environments
    • Ray-traced lighting effects even in handheld
    • Beautiful environments and effects
    • Minute-to-minute gameplay is fun

    Cons

    • Disjointed story
    • Relies on the open-world Ubisoft formula
    • Uses game-key card

    I’m still floored by how well Cyberpunk 2077 runs on Switch 2, and Star Wars Outlaw is a very well-optimized port. The game maintained a stable 30 fps frame rate throughout the hours I spent playing the game over the past week. I never experienced a hitch or a dip. Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, which boasts excellent ray-traced lighting effects, is still in full effect on the Switch 2 version of Star Wars Outlaws. The neon lights of the game’s many cantinas bloom off the polished bar tables while outside lights beam in through broken slits of saloon windows. There are so many great effects to enhance the gritty tone of the game, such as the faux dirt bespeckling the screen—as if you were filming each scene in a dustbowl.

    A Galaxy far, far away in handheld form

    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    No, it doesn’t look as good as the game running on a full desktop PC with a high-end gaming CPU and a discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU. There are subtle fluctuations and an odd, blurry aura around Outlaws’ protagonist Kay’s hair. The anti-aliasing, which reduces jagged edges in scenery, is less smooth than the game running on a high-end PC. I also experienced multiple instances of flickering shadows. That, I would attribute to issues caused by the game relying on DLSS, Nvidia’s version of AI upscaling that renders the game at a lower resolution and uses AI to make it appear at a higher resolution.

    All these issues are minor compared to the spectacle of the game running so damn well, both in 1080p in handheld mode and at 1440p when docked and connected to a TV. In handheld mode, I could see a few more jagged outlines and more flickering, which is likely due to the game rendering at a much lower 540p resolution before being upscaled. The draw distance is also scaled back slightly, and you’ll see more textures and shrubbery “pop in” as you roll across these open environments. In either case, I was amazed at the number of effects still present in the game, especially when the wind shuddered the grass in long waves in the game’s open-world sections. The game suffered a bit more during cutscenes, where I spotted some instances of odd textures when we got too close to some characters. Regular gameplay proved much smoother.

    Some commentators online seem to think that the game running this well is a small miracle. It’s not. It’s an effect of what happens when developers put effort into a port. Star Wars Outlaws was built first for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC. The game cannot run well on a Steam Deck. It’s a title that will prove difficult to maintain stable frame rates on more powerful handheld PCs like the Asus ROG Ally X, even at 25W or 30W TDP, or thermal design power. The game relies on ray tracing by default, which means it will also lean on upscaling technology such as AMD’s FidelityFx Super Resolution 3. Even then, Outlaws was not built for small devices. It can’t maintain a stable frame rate.

    The Switch 2 runs at a much lower TDP than high-end handheld PCs and even lower than the Steam Deck’s max 15W. And still, it looks damn good. Developers at Massive Entertainment, who created the first game, worked with Ubisoft Red Links for the port. The extra time and attention paid off. There are a few extra features included, such as touchscreen support in some Wordle-like puzzles. You won’t miss much playing in docked or in handheld mode, anyway.

    Sorry, no physical edition

    Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 4
    © Ubisoft; screenshot by Gizmodo

    Nintendo has the pull to push publishers and developers to design games around the handheld hardware, even if it means losing out on 4K assets available for higher-end consoles. However, it comes at the cost of game preservation. There is no physical version of Outlaws like there is with Cyberpunk 2077. It’s either a game-key card or digital download for a mere 21GB (the PC version is closer to 60GB). Massive Entertainment may have an excuse for why there’s no physical version. Rob Bantin, the audio architect for the Snowdrop engine, wrote on Bluesky that the game relies on fast disk streaming for its open worlds, and the flash storage on Switch 2 game cards isn’t fast enough. “I think if we’d designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up, it might have been different,” Bantin said.

    It’s a Ubisoft game in Star Wars clothing

    Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 2
    © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    The game is a looker. If that’s all that matters to you, it’s worth the trip to the outer rim to see the sights. Whether Star Wars Outlaws is the game for you should depend wholly on how well you can stomach the prototypical “Ubisoft formula” of open-world game design. The protagonist, Kay Vess, is a strangely naive scoundrel who seems to stumble from big-name job to big-name job like a drunk confused about how they ended up working for the galaxy’s largest and most dangerous crime syndicates. In usual Ubisoft fashion, players are forced to interact with all the game’s many, many systems slowly over time in what can only be described as extra-long tutorials.

    One mission asks you to upgrade your speeder—the main way players zip around the open world. That mission requires players to travel to three separate points on a map, and then when you finally find the lone speeder mechanic who can install the most basic upgrade to your device, you then have to crawl around an Imperial base to get a lone part just to trudge back and finally fix up your bike. All the while, Kay “ummms” and “uhhhs” her way through conversations in a way that makes her seem like the most alien creature in a universe filled with blue-skinned Chiss, humanoid guinea pig-faced Chadra-Fan, and a literal talking fish in a jar that you break out of prison. It doesn’t help that the lip syncing often doesn’t match up to characters’ speech. Kay grows more confident over the course of the game, but in an effort to shoehorn players into the main gameplay loop, Outlaws loses a chance for players to grow alongside Kay in more than mere upgrades to her blaster or spaceship, the Trailblazer.

    It’s the kind of game that will fill your journal with enough quests and missions to play for dozens or hundreds of hours, but I can only stomach so much of the game’s quest design. Star Wars Outlaws can feel overburdened with choice and still all too simple when each quest revolves around the same “go here, sneak into base, steal object, leave” quest design. They’re similar problems for Ubisoft’s other open-world series, from Far Cry to Assassin’s Creed. Cloaked in Star Wars’ high-tech, low-society aesthetic, Outlaws feels familiar in two ways that gel together but never truly stick.

    On the Switch 2, where I can take Outlaws with me for short stints of sneaking and stealing, the game feels at home. It also marks a high-water mark for Switch 2 ports. Now with Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws running so well on the system, other developers have less of an excuse if we end up with titles that can’t hit playable framerates. This sets high expectations for upcoming ports of games like Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Elden Ring. Borderlands 4, which is facing a small player rebellion over performance issues on both consoles and PC, is set to hit Switch 2 on Oct. 3. It will be up to developers to make sure their games play well on the handheld.

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    Kyle Barr

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  • With ‘Super Mario Galaxy,’ the Switch 2 Feels More Like the Wii Than Ever

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    Remember Super Mario Galaxy (not the upcoming movie)? You better. It’s one of those games that came out for Nintendo’s oddest console, the Wii, built for the system with a controller shaped like a TV remote. It was more than innovative for the time. No other game has managed to replicate Galaxy’s complicated gravity simulation. Every jump and leap sends Mario orbiting around a planetoid, the camera barely able to keep up. It’s as magnificent now on the Switch 2 with a big 4K television as it was back in 2007, played on my old, boxy CRT TV. It looks better, but does it play better when we replace the Wii Remote with a Joy-Con 2?

    Nintendo invited me to play through a single level in both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. The company is selling each game separately for $40, or you can buy them both together for $70 at a “mama mia”-level price for an 18-year-old game. The Mario maker implied this is a good deal since you’re getting new storybook chapters, enhanced textures, and 4K resolution at your regular 16:9 aspect ratio. There’s also a new “Assist Mode” that adds extra health and will automatically rescue Mario if he falls into a black hole. It’s a recreation, and based on my brief experience with it, it’s a good one.

    Gyro isn’t quite the same as the Wii Remote

    The original Super Mario Galaxy used the Wii Remote plus Nunchuk attachment to enable Mario’s normal suite of jump attacks, plus the pointer to pick up the candy-colored sprites and launch them at enemies. Galaxy’s controls were notably simplified compared to Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine to make up for the lack of face buttons on the Wiimote. Now on the Switch 2, we can only approximate what the original game felt like.

    The Joy-Con 2 controllers use the built-in gyroscopes to simulate the pointer on screen. You can use the motion controls or the X button to complete Mario’s spin attack and the ZR shoulder button to launch sprites or grab onto “Pull Stars.” In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the gyro is also how you aim Yoshi’s tongue for licking enemies (both in terms of swallowing them and tossing them around).

    The Joy-Cons are far, far better than a controller for Wii Remote-like controls. © Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

    You can also use Nintendo’s Switch 2 Pro controller or any other third-party gamepad with a gyro built in. Based on my experience with Galaxy, holding up the controller and swishing it around is more uncomfortable than lounging with a Joy-Con 2 in each hand. Unlike the Wii, which used an infrared sensor bar to track your remote, the Switch 2 doesn’t have that capability. If you lose the sensor or shift your controller, you’ll reset the cursor by hitting one of the R buttons. This means you don’t have to point the Joy-Con 2 directly at the screen, though you may lose track of your cursor if your hand starts to drift.

    I experienced a few issues with the Joy-Con 2 registering with the game, though Nintendo told me it may have been an issue with so many Switch 2 units around, and it shouldn’t be a problem with the final game. I’m keen to believe them; Nintendo had already rereleased the original 2007 on the first Switch with the limited run of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. The title on Switch 2 is certainly the better version. The pastel colors seem jarring today when you compare the original’s 480p resolution to the modern version at 4K and native widescreen support. The game looks like a storybook, with every color big and bold, surrounded by the glow of space and a sea of stars. There’s an ethereal quality to the world and its characters. Once you show the game side by side with its older version, you can see how much the updated textures make a difference.

    Metroid Prime 4: Beyond plays great with gyro and mouse

    I only wish the game came with mouse controls as well. Such a feature seemed like a shoo-in when Nintendo first showed off the game at last week’s Direct. The fact that it’s missing from the Switch 2 version leaves potential gameplay off the table. I also managed to play the first level of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond—a game I have been awaiting for so many years. It’s the same demo Nintendo showed off before the Switch 2’s debut, but it may be one of the games emblematic of everything the console has to offer.

    Metroidprime4gameplay1 Ezgif.com Video To Gif Converter
    Metroid Prime 4: Beyond allows you to seamlessly switch between mouse and gyro controls. © Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

    Metroid Prime’s classic lock-on mechanic combines with gyro controls that edge closest to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the original Wii. Then, with the added mouse controls, you can seamlessly switch between gyro and precision mouse aiming just by putting the Joy-Con 2 down on a flat surface. Easy swapping to and from mouse controls is the one element missing from the otherwise excellent port of Cyberpunk 2077. Now I can’t help but think of how I want sequels to the incredible Metroid Prime: Remastered, but with options to enable Metroid Prime 4’s controls.

    Metroid Prime 4 will cost the same $70 as the Galaxy remake.

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    Kyle Barr

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