Borderlands 4 is on the way this September, and gamers are a little worried about its potential price. The founder of Gearbox and current CEO of Gearbox Entertainment, Randy Pitchford, has come out to defend the possible pricing of Borderlands 4, in a way that might just come across as tone deaf.

There’s a new tab in Google Search. You might have seen it recently. It’s called AI Mode, and it brings a Gemini- or ChatGPT-style chatbot right into your web search experience. You can use it to find links, but also to quickly surface information, ask follow-up questions, or ask Google’s AI models to synthesize things in ways you’d never find on a typical webpage.

For now, AI Mode is just an option inside of Google Search. But that might not last. At its I/O developer conference on May 20th, Google announced that it is rolling AI Mode out to all Google users in the US, as well as adding several new features to the platform. In an interview ahead of the conference, the folks in charge of Search at Google made it very clear that if you want to see the future of the internet’s most important search engine, then all you need to do is tab over to AI Mode.

Google likes to remind people that much of the core technology underpinning the AI revolution was actually created at Google. The “T” in ChatGPT stands for “transformer,” a concept developed by a bunch of Googlers in 2017 and presented in a now-iconic paper called Attention Is All You Need. The industry continues to look for every nook and cranny into which it can shove a large language model, but “we invented a lot of this stuff for search,” says Nick Fox, who runs all of Google’s knowledge and information products. And thanks to Google’s AI work, he thinks Search might be unrecognizably different — and, in his mind, far better — in just a few years.

“In the past,” Fox says, “search would have been limited to, ‘if there’s a piece of information out there, I can deliver it back to someone.’” He calls this the information retrieval phase of search. “But what’s amazing about these models is they have the ability to reason, to transform, to connect dots across, to synthesize, to do all these other things that go beyond information retrieval to this notion of intelligence.” For years, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has talked about wanting Google to be more helpful, and that’s exactly what Fox thinks Search can do better now.

The new features coming to AI Mode are mostly things that you simply can’t do with a normal Google query. There’s Deep Search, Google’s take on the deep research trend in AI models, which turns your prompt into lots of searches, and spends time looking up and synthesizing information to give you a (hopefully) broad and coherent summary of even a very large topic. Project Mariner, the previously experimental feature that can actually click around the web and do stuff for you — Google likes to show Mariner booking vacation travel for you, or hunting around the web for the best concert ticket prices and then buying the best deal all on its own — is also now built into AI Mode. And with Search Live, you can interact with the search engine by having a conversation with it, and by pointing your camera at whatever you’re looking for.

AI Mode is increasingly agentic, meaning it can do do things on your behalf.

Image: Google

 

AI Mode can now access your old search queries, too, and you can opt to allow it to access your email (and eventually other Google apps) to give the system more context about who you are and what you care about.

Add all these things together and what you get is a version of Search that is much more flexible and personalized, both to the user and to the individual query at hand. Imagine a version of Google that isn’t just a page full of links, but offers a completely different interface and set of data every time you press enter. That’s what Liz Reid, who runs Google’s search team, wants the product to look like.

“I think the search results page was a construct,” she says. The way we’ve all Googled for two decades was largely a response to the structure of the web itself: web pages in, web pages out. Good AI models are now able to get around that structure, and find and synthesize information from lots of sources. Now the question for Google, Reid says, is “is the information just presented to you, or is it presented to you in a way that feels as useful as you would like it to be?”

The chatbot-first AI Mode won’t fully replace the search results page for a while. It’s not even replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, no matter what a few people saw recently. Google is too complicated a product, used for too many things, to make a switch like that all at once. For now, Fox compares the setup to the way you might use Google Images or Google News: as both dedicated spaces for a specific use, and a section in general search results. “We think the main search experience should be the best experience for the majority of our users. And it should bring in AI, images, news, whatever it is, into the experience that makes sense. And then we provide modes for people to go deeper into the thing they’re looking for.”

If you want to see where the AI takeover is happening, though — and it is happening — keep an eye on the AI Overviews that pop up at the top of your results. Google also announced at I/O that 1.5 billion people are seeing AI Overviews in their search results every month, which Fox says is both a function of Google showing them on more searches and of users increasingly searching for things that show the overviews. “Really what we see is that people are seeking it out,” he says. AI Overviews have been somewhat problematic in the past: Google’s AI has told people to eat rocks and put glue on their pizza, and at least for a while would happily define any made-up saying you asked about. But they’re here to stay, and Fox and Reid both say they’re confident that they’ll keep getting better.

Over time, Google seems to think of AI Mode and AI Overviews, and by extension Search as a whole, not as “some text summarizing search results” but something more like a blank canvas for sharing information. Should some results be AI-generated videos or podcasts? Or automatically generated charts and graphs, which AI Mode can already create for you? What about a full, one-off web app, created by Gemini, just to help you answer the question you asked? What if, instead of just offering you some information about your question, Google could tap into Project Mariner and just go solve your problem for you? That’s the future of search results, Google thinks, and it doesn’t have much use for a page full of blue links.

When I ask Fox and Reid what this might mean for the web, and for the millions of website owners and publishers that have long depended on Google to send them traffic, Fox says he’s convinced the rise of AI is not the end of the open web. “I deeply believe this is an expansionary moment,” he says. “The death of the web has been 25 years coming, and it’s not happening. The web is growing.” He says Google’s data shows that people do click the links in the AI Overviews, and can actually be more engaged in the sites they go to because they’re deliberately looking to go deeper on something. But he allows that he’s an optimist on this stuff.

Whatever it will mean for the web, there’s no question that Google is committed to a total reinvention of what search looks like, and what it even means, going forward. In three years, Fox says, we will all think about and use Search in a way completely unrecognizable to today’s product. Google executives always love to talk about the company’s mission statement — to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful — and Fox and Reid both reference it multiple times. Google has spent 25 years working on “organize” and “accessible,” and Reid says the job is now shifting to the last word in the sentence. What does it mean for Google to take all the world’s information, and make it useful? In AI Mode, and across Google’s most important product, it means putting Gemini to work.

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I've been waiting quite a while for this one! After two whole years in early access, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is finally releasing on May 23, 2025.

Built on the Arthurian legend, your character comes into the story as a prisoner, some 600 years after the founding of Avalon by King Arthur himself. From there, it's your path to take on the world.

It's a first-person, open-world RPG that shares quite a few features with something like Skyrim. I've also heard a few players call it "indie-Skyrim". One YouTuber even said, "Skyrim walked so Tainted Grail could run," which is one heck of a positive thing to say.

Coming out of this early access, it very much led to a development cycle similar to Baldur's Gate 3 with Larian Studios. Currently, only the prologue and first act are available. Once released, the second and third acts, alongside an epilogue that will reflect your choices in-game, will also be playable.

Before diving into why I believe this game is incredible, you can check it out for yourself on Steam with a demo! In it, players can dive into the first hour or two of gameplay to get a feel for whether Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is right for you.

What makes Tainted Grail the most promising open-world RPG in years?

Google Beam is a futuristic video calling technology that simulates a lifelike version of you and the person you are talking to. It uses six cameras to capture the person from different angles, then uses Google's AI models to generate their 3D self in real-time.

This futuristic technology is a step up from Project Starline, which the search giant unveiled in the past. During the keynote, Pichai revealed that Google Beam can do near-perfect head tracking "down to the millimeter" at 60 frames per second, resulting in a much more natural and deeply immersive conversational experience.

"We debuted Project Starline, our breakthrough 3D video technology at I/O a few years back. The goal was to create a feeling of being in the same room as someone, even if you were far apart. We have continued to make technical advances, and today, we are ready to announce our next chapter," Pichai said.

"Introducing Google Beam, a new AI-first video communications platform. Beam uses a new state-of-the-art video model to transform 2D video streams into a realistic 3D experience. Behind the scenes, an array of six cameras captures you from different angles. And with AI, we can merge these different video streams together and render you on a 3D light-field display."

Google joined hands with HP to launch the first Google Beam devices for early customers later this year. Pichai added that HP will share more details on the upcoming devices in the coming weeks.

Project Starline was officially unveiled at Google I/O in 2021. Last year, Google said that Starline works like a 'magic window' and announced that it will partner with HP to make it commercially available in 2025, adding that it's also working to enable the video calling experience directly from services like Google Meet and Zoom.

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Exactly 10 years ago on May 19, 2025, developer CD Projekt RED took a huge leap, launching The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt after years of work.

File this under "water gets things wet," but it turned out to be a popular game, receiving critical praise and commercial success — so much so that as of 2023, it's sold over 50 million copies.

As The Witcher 3 celebrates its 10th anniversary, I'm indulging in a trip down memory lane. Over a decade ago, I was in a pretty rough headspace and I was having a hard time finding my place in everything.

Still, I loved the Witcher series, enjoying the books and the second game, and I was scarfing down every last bit of information I could find on the then-upcoming third entry in Geralt's journey.

While it was CD Projekt RED's third mainline game, it was a gargantuan leap from what had been accomplished in 2011's more modestly-scoped The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. The Witcher 3 promised a huge open world, more involved monster contracts, as well as the debut of major characters from the books like Ciri and Yennefer.

When I eventually got my hands on the full thing, I fell in love. It was everything I wanted it to be, with a world filled with secrets and mystery, an open breeze at the player's back.

It was a game that delivered tough choices, with side quests and monster hunts that often felt just as involved and complex as the main story. I was enraptured with the narrative of the Bloody Baron and his shame, chasing after the titular Wild Hunt, and of course, Ciri reuniting with Geralt after so many years.

Paul's Hardware (1.52M subscribers)

May 19, 2025

Video length: 1m 29s

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Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said:

“A tectonic shift is underway: for the first time in decades, data centers must be fundamentally rearchitected — AI is being fused into every computing platform. NVLink Fusion opens NVIDIA’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for partners to build specialized AI infrastructures.”

The NVLink technology isn't entirely new. We've seen the tech being used in Nvidia's GB200 system that combines two Blackwell GPUs with a Grace processor. With this new chip, the end-to-end bandwidth will now be faster.

Major bottlenecks for the inference of AI models are compute, memory, and bandwidth. The new NVLink Fusion tries to solve the bandwidth bottleneck for creating ultra-efficient and highly scaled systems, also called hyperscalers, needed for AI processing.

Nvidia says that its new NVLink Fusion chip is capable of delivering 1.8 TB/s of bidirectional (total upstream and downstream) bandwidth between systems.

NVLink delivers 1.8 TB/s of bidirectional bandwidth per GPU and 14x times the bandwidth of PCIe Gen5, for seamless high-speed communication in most complex large models. It improves throughput and reduces latency by performing in-network compute for collective operations. Every 2x of scale-up in NVLink bandwidth can lead to 1.3-1.4x of rack-level AI performance improvement.

The NVLink Fusion isn't just the silicon, but part of a scalable architecture. Hyperscaled data centers can integrate their semi-custom ASICs with NVLink Fusion and can also be paired with Nvidia's own CPUs, NVLink Switches, ConnectX Ethernet, BlueField Data Processing Units (DPU), and Nvidia's Quantum and Spectrum-X switches as well. The company says that cloud providers can deliver a throughput of up to 800Gb/s per GPU utilizing Nvidia's networking platform.

NVLink Fusion partner ecosystem includes custom silicon designers, CPU, IP, and OEM/ODM partners, providing a full solution for deploying custom silicon with Nvidia at scale and creating what the company calls "AI factories". Once set up, all of the components of its AI factories can be powered by Mission Control, a unified operations and orchestration software that automates much of the management needed for running such complex systems.

The NVLink Fusion silicon and its services are available now with Nvidia along with partner companies like MediaTek, Marvell, Alchip, Astera Labs, Synopsys, and Cadence.

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The Blackwell Ultra powers the GB300 NVL72 system, a fully liquid-cooled computing rack that utilizes 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs and 36 Nvidia Grace CPUs. Nvidia says this system delivers 1.5x more performance than its predecessor, the GB200 NVL72, and increases Blackwell's revenue opportunities by 50x compared to those built with Nvidia Hopper.

Along with the HGX B300 NVL16, which uses the NVLink Fusion, Nvidia says the new system features 11x faster inference on large language models, 7x more compute, and 4x larger memory when compared to the Hopper generation.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said:

“AI has made a giant leap — reasoning and agentic AI demand orders of magnitude more computing performance, We designed Blackwell Ultra for this moment — it’s a single versatile platform that can easily and efficiently do pretraining, post-training and reasoning AI inference.”

Nvidia says it has built the new Blackwell Ultra platform specifically for building agentic AI and physical AI systems. For starters, Agentic AI uses reasoning and iterative planning to solve complex problems. It takes a multi-step approach to plan and take action. Physical AI, on the other hand, allows companies to virtually train robots and autonomous vehicles at scale before they're deployed in the real world.

The Blackwell Ultra systems can be integrated with Nvidia's Spectrum-X Ethernet and the Quantim-X800 InfiniBand platforms, with 800Gb/s of data throughput for each GPU in the system, connected via the new ConnectX-8 SuperNIC network accelerator, which was also announced at the event.

For better inter-GPU communication bandwidth, ConnectX-8 integrates 48 lanes of PCIe Gen6 with an integrated PCIe Gen6 switch, consolidating GPU-to-GPU and GPU-to-NIC communication into a single, high-performance device, switching from previously used dedicated PCIe switches.

Blackwell Ultra products will be available from Nvidia partners Cisco, Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, and Supermicro starting from the second half of 2025.

Blackwell-powered cloud instances will also be available on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, as well as GPU cloud providers CoreWeave, Crusoe, Lambda, Nebius, Nscale, Yotta, and YTL. The GB300 NVL72 system will also be available on Nvidia's cloud platform, DGX Cloud.

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There aren't any games quite like the Anno series, and based on some hands-on time at a recent press junket, I can say that the latest entry has the potential to be an appealing on-ramp for history buffs and strategy game fans who haven't explored the franchise before—provided players approach it with a lot of patience.

The previous entry in the series, 2019's Anno 1800, was seen as something of a return to form by longtime franchise fans, who weren't as thrilled with the futuristic entries that preceded it. It reportedly reached 5 million players, which is quite a lot for a PC-focused strategy title, so 1800 was a popularization moment for the franchise, too.

Anno 117: Pax Romana, due later this year, aims to build on that momentum and turn the franchise into a crossover hit. While the Anno games have long been popular with a certain crowd (strategy gamers in Europe, and specifically Germany, where the games are developed), its addictive gameplay and top-tier presentation have the potential to appeal with even more people, provided publisher Ubisoft makes the right choices.

Throughout its decades of history, I've dabbled with the Anno series of strategy games, but it has always been on my "someday I think I'll really get into this" list. Last month, I attended a press junket where a preview build of the game was available to play for about three hours—a chance to see if it successfully follows up on 1800. In my time with it, I found that the bones of the game are promising, and the presentation is outstanding. That said, the new-player onboarding experience will have to improve for the game to find new audiences.

How an Anno game works

Anno games are part city builders, part supply chain simulations. Like many builders, you lay down roads, build critical infrastructure like firefighting structures, and develop your population in size and wealth. But all of that dovetails with systems of developing and harvesting natural resources, converting them into produced goods, and turning those produced goods into both wealth and further development for your settlements.

You have to pay careful attention to where you place things. For example, warehouses are needed to store goods that you're gathering or making, and those warehouses have to be strategically positioned to allow the right goods to flow from one structure to another.

Ultimately, you build settlements on multiple islands, connecting them with trade routes and naval units. Natural resources can be island-specific, so your islands end up with specializations. On top of all that, there's a story, and there are other, AI-controlled leaders scattered around the map you have to either coordinate or skirmish with.

Naval combat isn't the main focus of the game, but it is a factor.

Samuel Axon

 

Meeting and managing relationships and conflict with other leaders on the map is also part of the gameplay.

Samuel Axon

 

The Anno games have a unique identity, and there's a lot to learn for new players, even if those players have played other city builders or economic sims (though, of course, prior background won't hurt). That said, it all becomes relaxing and smooth as butter once you learn it. The game won't satisfy players who are looking for conquest or tactical combat, though, as that's not an emphasis.

What’s new in 117

You could argue that the main selling point of Anno 117: Pax Romana compared to its predecessors is its setting; it's one of the most requested settings and time periods by fans of the franchise, and it's a natural fit for the game's mechanics.

I'll admit I was swept up in the game's aesthetic presentation while playing it. As the rosy subtitle "Pax Romana" implies, this is the Roman Empire at its most idealized. The wheat fields practically glow golden-yellow, the citizens work and mingle while wearing gorgeous and colorful clothes, and the music swells and soothes with ancient vibes.

Sure, the actual Roman Empire had something awful to offer to counterbalance every positive image we have, but Anno 117 prefers an escapist fantasy, much like many prior entries in the franchise. This is a game about enjoying the idealized aesthetics embedded in our collective cultural memories while building something you're proud of, not tackling thorny historical or moral realities. It's more SimCity than Frostpunk.

All told, the game's artistic and technical presentation is top-notch. It pulls you into the setting, which is further thematically reinforced with the resources and products you gather and produce, as well as some of the new mechanics and the occasional story-based dialogue prompts. The aesthetic experience is easily one of the strongest parts.

There are a few other selling points, too. First, there are new mechanics, like a religion system, a more robust research tree, and the return of ground-based military forces to go along with the franchise's standard light inclusion of naval conflict. I wasn't able to engage with the army aspect in this demo, but I did get to touch on the religion system and the research tree.

Shortly into founding the settlement on your island, you can build a temple to one of the game's deities. Each deity provides bonuses that help you specialize your focus. For mine, I chose Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and fertility. That gave me significant bonuses for my farms. If I had chosen Poseidon instead, my ships would have moved faster, among other things.

You can pick a Roman deity as a patron for your settlement.

Samuel Axon

 

The research tree branches off in several directions, providing a wide range of bonuses.

Samuel Axon

 

Land-based warfare will be in the final game, but it wasn't in the demo I played.

Ubisoft

 

Compared to strategy games that make religion a major factor in how the game is played, this system wasn't particularly robust or deep in the demo I played, but as I alluded to above, it was a nice way to reinforce the aesthetic and the themes in the game. Plus, it gives you a way to customize what you're building in a fun way.

The research tree sprawls out in multiple directions, winding around on different tangents. In my time with it, it seemed to be composed largely of numerical bonuses to things like yields or ship speed and wasn't too focused on introducing totally new mechanics. It's a nice inclusion in terms of just giving you more customization and choice, but it's by no means a game changer, and it doesn't represent a fundamentally new approach to the game.

It's also worth noting that you can now build diagonal roads and place buildings diagonally on them, allowing you to free yourself from the rigid grid. That said, I found that grids still seemed optimal in most cases, so this is a perk for beauty builders (which is totally valid!), but it won't generally sway folks focused on efficiency.

You can place roads and buildings (like this farm) diagonally now. (Don't judge my building placement—I'm still learning!)

Samuel Axon

 

In the final game, players will be able to choose between settling Rome-themed Latium...

Ubisoft

 

...or Great Britain-themed Albion.

Ubisoft

 

There's one other major feature I didn't get to try out during my time with the game. The developers say that players will be able to choose to build either in a Rome/Mediterranean-themed network of islands or a British frontier-themed area from the start. I was only able to try the former during this demo.

It’s still a bit hard to get into

For the Anno games to become as mainstream as the developer hopes, they'll have to become much easier to learn and get into. Anno 1800 made strides here with its story-based tutorial, though that tutorial was also criticized for some unnecessary busywork and being a bit too involved for existing fans.

Unfortunately, I felt during my time with Anno 117 that the onboarding experience was a step back from 1800. Right off the bat, the tutorial instructed me to do something but skipped a crucial step with no explanation, causing five minutes of confusion. As I progressed, story content guided me further along with objectives, but key systems were left unexplained. Since I played 1800 a bit before, I was able to figure it out, but I still had to ask for help from a nearby developer to progress on two occasions. Another journalist sitting next to me who had no prior experience with the franchise seemed totally lost.

On the bright side, the game benefits immensely from a beautifully thought-out user interface, which is ordered in a logical and intuitive manner. It's particularly strong at giving the player a sense of the impact of the choices they're about to make—for example, by indicating with overlays on nearby buildings how placing a building in one spot might be more advantageous than placing it in another. To some extent, this makes up for the relatively anemic tutorial, as many (but not all) of the game's most important concepts are intuitively obvious from the user interface alone.

That's in stark contrast to another recent big-budget, mainstream strategy game release (Civilization VII), which offered robust onboarding tutorials but also had a user interface that at times failed completely to indicate to players what their choices meant.

Anno 117's mechanics themselves are intuitive once you've had the proper introduction, and I don't think the game inherently needs to be difficult to learn. But the tutorial experience needs to improve to reduce that initial friction so new players don't bounce off quickly. Anno 1800 may have been too heavy-handed here, but Anno 117 seems to overreact by going too far the other way.

The launch is months away, though, so there's time to improve these things, and it wouldn't take that much to do so. I'm hopeful, anyway.

Something for almost everybody

The Anno games scratch an itch that no other games do, and based on a few hours with a preview build, Anno 117 seems like a promising entry in that unique tradition.

Numbers-obsessed efficiency mavens can go quite deep with optimization to set up the best economic powerhouses possible, but the game's systems are flexible enough to allow aesthetics-focused beauty builders to get creative and expressive instead—virtually any combination of those two approaches is viable, too.

The appeal is elevated by visuals that are definitely a cut above the usual for strategy, simulation, or builder games, and the Ancient Roman setting gives the game's technical artists ample space to create an immersive experience.

Anno 117 doesn't seem to reinvent the experience compared to 1800, but after the controversial attempts that preceded both of these titles, that may not be a bad thing. It's fun once you get going—I found the minutes drifting away from me as I took in the sights and watched all the right numbers tick up at a satisfying pace because of my choices.

I'm not part of the existing core audience for this franchise, so it's hard for me to predict how they'll respond to it—there are a lot of finer details they'll be sensitive to that I'm not yet. My guess, though, is that longtime fans will probably be happy with this one provided it gets most of those things right, with the usual strategy-game sequel caveat that post-launch content has made Anno 1800 much more robust than Anno 117 is likely to be at launch. There's promise here for newcomers, but Ubisoft Mainz will have to keep working on that tutorial and onboarding experience to really break the dam the way they hope to. That's really my primary concern about this title.

We'll find out how that goes when the game launches on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime later this year. One way or the other, I intend to play more of it when it releases to see if this is the first Anno game that becomes an obsession instead of a passing interest.

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Quick links:

1. Windows 10 and 11
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Reviews are in
5. Gaming news

Windows 11 and Windows 10

Here, we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And, of course, you may find a word or two about older versions.

This week, Microsoft released May 2025 Patch Tuesday updates. Those on Windows 10 received KB5058379 with build numbers 19044.5852 and 19045.5852. Windows 11 users received KB5058411 for version 24H2 and KB5058405 for versions 23H2 and 22H2. Plus, there is a new out-of-band hotpatch for Windows 11 LTSC 2024.

In addition to security updates, these updates fixed some bugs, including the one preventing Linux dual-boot on Windows 11 systems. Unfortunately, though, the same updates triggered BitLocker problems on certain Intel-based systems, and Microsoft is already working on a resolution.

Windows 10 will soon be out of support, and you, like millions of other users, might be thinking about upgrading to Windows 11 before October 2025. If you are ready to do it now (or you just want to improve your existing experience if you are already on Windows 11), check out this guide with five important things to change right after installing Windows 11. And no, it is not about changing your wallpaper or moving the taskbar to the left.

Windows 11's calendar flyout is pretty lame, and Microsoft is attempting to fix it with a new Calendar app, at least for Microsoft 365 users. The new program lets you invoke a mini calendar with your schedule and the ability to quickly jump into a Teams call, create a new event, or find something.

Other Windows-related stuff you might find useful includes an official guide from Microsoft about troubleshooting blue screens of death and an interesting editorial from David Uzondu about what is to blame for poor performance on modern, super-powerful computers.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Besides new builds, Microsoft released an update to Copilot Vision, a special feature that can see what is going on on your screen and offer insights, answer questions, and more. With the latest update, Copilot Vision can now work with two apps at once, plus you can ask it to guide you through something. For example, you can ask Copilot how to add text to a video in Clipchamp, and it will show you (they are literally stealing my job).

Another Copilot update for Windows 11 introduced the ability to invoke the assistant and its Voice Mode with the "Hey, Copilot" command. It is now rolling out to insiders across all channels. Finally, ChatGPT's latest image-generation capabilities are now available for free to Copilot users. GPT-4o offers accurate text generation on images, more precise prompt following, image editing capabilities, and more.

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Microsoft announced a new wave of layoffs. The company is letting go of about 3% of its global workforce, which roughly amounts to over 6,000 workers across countries and departments. The company says that it continues "to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace."

Microsoft also closed one of the three remaining offline stores. This time, the Microsoft Experience Center in Sydney, Australia, was closed for good. As a reminder, in January, Microsoft closed its Experience Center in London, UK.

This week, Microsoft released a big update for PowerToys. The May 2025 update under version 0.91 arrived with a long list of various fixes for Command Palette and other modules. Sadly, no new toys in this release, but improvements for existing ones are also welcome.

No week goes by without browser updates, and this time, we have some big ones. Microsoft, for one, is pulling quite a lot of features from its browser. Version 137, which arrived in the Beta Channel early this week, deprecates stuff like Image Editor, Image Hover menus, Mini menus, video upscaling, the Wallet hub, and more. However, there is also some new stuff in the update to make up for the loss.

Customers in the Stable Channel received a small update. Version 136.0.3240.76 arrived with fixes for two security vulnerabilities, one of which has been actively exploited in the wild.

Mozilla also released an update for Firefox, but it is a minor one. Version 138.0.3 fixed a bunch of bugs causing crashes, HDR issues, non-working shortcuts, and more.

Opera GX got a new feature update. Developers introduced a bunch of productivity features to their gaming-oriented browser, such as split screen, recent tab highlights, and tab islands.

This week's Office updates start with Microsoft killing a bunch of stuff. SharePoint Alerts are discontinued, and Microsoft will remove them by the end of June 2026. Also, Microsoft is pulling the plug on Organization data types in Excel because the feature is too expensive for Microsoft to maintain, and PowerPoint on Mac is getting caption generation based on speech recognition.

Finally, Microsoft delayed the rollout of a new policy regarding enabling or disabling the new Outlook on Windows.

This week brought some interesting Surface news. For one, Microsoft reportedly killed the Surface Laptop Studio 2. It is no longer in production, and there are no successors in sight. While Microsoft has not confirmed rumors, retailers told the press that the software giant is no longer producing this powerful laptop with some interesting design choices. However, there are rumors bout Microsoft making a new Surface with one of AMD's upcoming low-power ARM processors. It could see the light of day in 2026.

On the third-party side, we have an update for the Files app, one of our favorite file managers for Windows 10 and 11. Version 3.9.9, which is currently available in the preview channel, introduced redesigned icons, performance improvements, and a few bug fixes.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft announced a major update to model fine-tuning in Azure AI Foundry

• Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code reached 50 million monthly active developers

• Microsoft discontinued the Bing Search API

• Microsoft denied accusations of its tech being used to harm civilians in Gaza

   

Here are the latest drivers and firmware updates released this week:

• Nvidia 576.40 WHQL with support for DOOM: The Dark Ages, RTX 50 fixes, and more.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

Robbie Khan was quite busy this week, dropping quite a few reviews of various gadgets. Starting with the ENGWE L20 3.0 Boost, a folding e-bike with full suspension, boost mode, strong brakes, a solid on-board computer, and quick charging. It has some cons, though, such as heft and some quirks in the trip computer.

Also, Robbie reviewed the Quntis RGB Pro+, a customizable light bar with a wireless controller and some very good, premium craftsmanship. If you need a relatively inexpensive screen light bar, the Quntis RGB Pro+ will delight you.

There is also a little unconventional review, a comparison of two lavalier microphones, one from NANK and one from Maono. If you need to upgrade your audio capture, our comparison will help you make the best choice between those two.

Finally, Robbie reviewed the Keychron B6 Pro, an affordable keyboard that can cater to those looking for a cheaper alternative to the legendary Logitech MX Keys.

Steven Parker published a review of the T-FORCE XTREEM 7200 ARGB DDR5 memory for modern Intel and AMD systems. He compared the performance in various modes, such as 7200 CL34 vs. 7600 CL36 vs. 6000 CL30, and checked out the kit overall, with its fancy RGB lights.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts, and more.

Microsoft announced a floral collection of accessories for Xbox and PC. They include floral-themed controllers from various makers, a stylish-looking Xbox Storage Expansion Card, a flowery headset, and more.

Stalker fans have a reason to rejoice. GSC Game World announced a remake of the entire trilogy to optimize legacy games for modern hardware and equip them with more modern tech like enhanced lighting, godrays, screen space reflections, global illumination, 4K cinematics, and more.

Sea of Thieves continues receiving new content updates. Season 16 is ready to sail with portable cannons, skeleton mercenaries, and plenty of other content. The update will be available on May 22 on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

Nvidia announced new games for its GeForce NOW streaming service. The latest additions include DOOM: The Dark Ages, The Precinct, Blacksmith Master, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and Capcom Fighting Collection 2.

Microsoft is testing a neat Dashboard update for Xbox consoles. A preview update, which is now available to certain Xbox Insiders, lets you hide system apps, pin games to the home screen, and more, giving gamers the ability to have a cleaner UI with more focus on their favorite games.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away two titles: Dead Island 2 and Happy Game. If that is not enough, check out the latest series of Weekend PC Game Deals, where you will find zombies to slay, creatures to collect, and a bunch of fresh bundles.

Other gaming news includes the following:

• Skydance delayed Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and pushed the release to 2026.

• Valve reassured that its systems were not breached after the recent data leak

• Prince of Persia: Sand of Time and Anno 117 Remake finally have release dates

   

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Last fall, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber was roundly ridiculed after suggesting the company would like to produce a “Forever Mouse” — a mouse with a monthly subscription fee for software updates. It seemed to betray a lack of understanding: many people who buy mice don’t want software at all, much less software they have to pay for; the idea they’d pay every month is ridiculous.

But as I sit here with a perfectly good Logitech mouse, the best I’ve ever owned, I’m starting to think some sort of “forever mouse” wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Logitech has an opportunity and a responsibility to make its mice last longer, and I have part of the proof right underneath my palm. I use a great mouse that is slowly disintegrating.

In some ways, my wireless Logitech G502 Lightspeed is already a forever mouse. I may never have to charge or replace its battery again, because I use Logitech’s magic wireless charging mouse pad to automatically keep its battery at the perfect level. I haven’t plugged in this mouse once in nearly three and a half years.

Luckily, the mouse’s buttons and sensor have held up well over the same period, as far as I can tell. But the soft rubber grips that let me hold the gadget? After just a few years of use, they’re reaching the end. They’re worn down, so grubby and discolored that I can’t simply clean them anymore. Worst of all, one of the grips is beginning to delaminate from the mouse’s frame and is starting to peel off. It squishes uncomfortably under my thumb every time I grip the mouse.

There’s one obvious solution: Logitech should sell replacement mouse parts. The company even claims it sells mouse parts via the repair site iFixit. Here is a quote from Logitech chief operating officer Prakash Arunkundrum in an iFixit press release: “Normal wear and tear is inevitable, which is why we strive to make it simpler for people to access original Logitech replacement parts for their devices.”

But as of today, Logitech doesn’t actually sell the parts that would address “wear and tear.”

Here is the complete list of parts you can buy for a Logitech mouse on iFixit:

• $10 for a set of screws
• $15 for a set of mouse skates
• $20 for a battery

Don’t get me wrong, it’s refreshing to see official parts on the open market. But these aren’t the parts I, or anyone who wants to repair a Logitech mouse, truly need.

We need grips. Buttons. Shells. Mouse wheels. And optimally, microswitch assemblies. These are the things that wear out over time — or all at once, if you have an unfortunate accident. Logitech and iFixit are also only selling three different kinds of mouse batteries. If you have a dying Logitech G900 mouse battery, like my wife, iFixit doesn’t have that part.

$2.50 per screw. (At least go with the $15 fix kit instead, it comes with a good pair of tweezers, screwdriver, and more.)

Image: iFixit

Months ago, I reached out to both Logitech and iFixit to find out why the part offerings are so slim, but I didn’t get very far. Logitech declined The Verge’s request for an interview about its repair strategy, and iFixit didn’t want to speak out of turn.

Here’s what Logitech did say, via spokesperson Leila Lewis:

Yes, there are plans to add additional replacement parts for existing products supported by iFixit, as well as new products, to the Logitech Repair Hub on iFixit in the future. We actively explore and evaluate other critical repair components (such as switches, buttons, and scroll wheels) based on replacement feasibility and compliance requirements across geographies.

iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens told me:

Logitech is pretty responsive to what people are asking for. If there are particular parts people want, please speak up! We’ll work on expanding the selection.

I told them both that for now, I simply need the grips. Several months later, Logitech’s part selection has not expanded. I haven’t found replacements anywhere (though Amazon will happily sell me some grip tape).

I can’t imagine replacing an entire $100 mouse over a couple of pieces of rubber. If I have to, I probably won’t pick Logitech again. Peeling rubber coating is exactly why I had to stop using my beloved Logitech MX518 over a decade ago. I don’t expect mice to truly last forever, but I think it’s worth sending the world’s leading peripheral maker a message that you can’t build disposable products while claiming they’re repairable.

How much loyalty could Logitech inspire if its mice were truly repairable? How many more mice might it sell if word got out that — like Logitech’s legendary C920 webcam — they were made to last? That if you buy Logitech, you don’t have to trash a device that fits you like a glove, don’t have to keep retraining your hand for slightly different shapes of mouse? What if, at a minimum, Logitech shared 3D printer files like Philips just did with shavers, so we could print our own buttons and grips?

Or do Logitech’s profits rely on people trashing perfectly good mice just because they’re starting to get gross, I wonder? I’d hate to think that. (The company’s financials don’t say.)

Thankfully, Logitech now has a way to disprove that idea. Forever Mouse, but forget the subscription; embrace the idea that mice should last.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

My Ars colleagues were kicking back at the Orbital HQ water cooler the other day, and—as gracefully aging gamers are wont to do—they began to reminisce about classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. I was a huge fan of these games in my youth, so I settled in for some hot buttered nostalgia.

Would we remember the limited-palette joys of early King's Quest, Space Quest, or Quest for Glory titles? Would we branch out beyond games with "Quest" in their titles, seeking rarer fare like Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist? What about the gothic stylings of The Colonel's Bequest or the voodoo-curious Gabriel Knight?

Nope. The talk was of acorns. [Bleeping] acorns, in fact.

The scene in question came from King's Quest III, where our hero Gwydion must acquire some exceptionally desiccated acorns to advance the plot. It sounds simple enough. As one walkthrough puts it, "Go east one screen and north one screen to the acorn tree. Try picking up acorns until you get some dry ones. Try various spots underneath the tree." Easy! And clear!

Except it wasn't either one because the game rather notoriously won't always give you the acorns, even when you enter the right command. This led many gamers to believe they were in the wrong spot, when in reality, they just had to keep entering the "get acorns" command while moving pixel by pixel around the tree until the game finally supplied them. One of our staffers admitted to having purchased the King's Quest III hint book solely because of this "puzzle." (The hint book, which is now online, says that players should "move around" the particular oak tree in question because "you can only find the right kind of acorns in one spot.")

This wasn't quite the "fun" I had remembered from these games, but as I cast my mind back, I dimly recalled similar situations. Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge had been my first Sierra title. After my brother and I spent weeks on the game only to die repeatedly in some pitch-dark tunnels, we implored my dad to call Sierra's 1-900 pay hint line. He thought about it. I could see it pained him because he had never before (and never since!) called a 1-900 number. In this case, the call cost a piratical 75 cents for the first minute and 50 cents for each additional minute. After listening to us whine for several days straight, my dad decided that his sanity was worth the fee, and he called.

Like the acorn example above, we had known what to do—we had just not done it to the game's rather exacting standards. The key was to use a glowing gem as a light source, which my brother and I had long understood. The problem was the text parser, which demanded that we "put gem in mouth" to use the gem's light in the tunnels. There was no other place to put the gem, no other way to hold or attach it. (We tried them all.) No other attempt to use the light of this shining crystal, no matter how clear, well-intentioned, or succinctly expressed, would work. You put the gem in your mouth, or you died in the darkness.

Returning from my reveries to the conversation at hand, I caught Ars Senior Editor Lee Hutchinson's cynical remark that these kinds of puzzles were "the only way to make 2–3 hours of 'game' last for months." This seemed rather shocking, almost offensive. How could one say such a thing about the games that colored my memories of childhood?

So I decided to replay Space Quest II for the first time in 35 years in an attempt to defend my own past.

Big mistake.

Play it again, Sam

In my memory, the Space Quest series was filled with sharply written humor, clever puzzles, and enchanting art. But when I fired up the original version of the game, I found that only one of these was true. The art, despite its blockiness and limited colors, remained charming.

As for the gameplay, the puzzles were not so much "clever" as "infuriating," "obvious," or (more often) "rather obscure."

Finding the glowing gem discussed above requires you to swim into one small spot of a multi-screen river, with no indication in advance that anything of importance is in that exact location. Trying to "call" a hunter who has captured you does nothing… until you do it a second time. And the less said about trying to throw a puzzle at a Labian Terror Beast, typing out various word permutations while death bears down upon you, the better.

The whole game was also filled with far more no-warning insta-deaths than I had remembered. On the opening screen, for instance, after your janitorial space-broom floats off into the cosmic ether, you can walk your character right off the edge of the orbital space station he is cleaning. The game doesn't stop you; indeed, it kills you and then mocks you for "an obvious lack of common sense." It then calls you a "wing nut" with an "inability to sustain life." Game over.

The game's third screen, which features nothing more to do than simply walking around, will also kill you in at least two different ways. Walk into the room still wearing your spacesuit and your boss will come over and chew you out. Game over.

If you manage to avoid that fate by changing into your indoor uniform first, it's comically easy to tap the wrong arrow key and fall off the room's completely guardrail-free elevator platform. Game over.

Get used to it because the game will kill you in so, so many ways: touching any single pixel of a root monster whose branches form a difficult maze; walking into a giant mushroom; stepping over an invisible pit in the ground; getting shot by a guard who zips in on a hovercraft; drowning in an underwater tunnel; getting swiped at by some kind of giant ape; not putting the glowing gem in your mouth; falling into acid; and many more.

I used the word "insta-death" above, but the game is not even content with this. At one key point late in the game, a giant Aliens-style alien stalks the hallways, and if she finds you, she "kisses" you. But then she leaves! You are safe after all! Of course, if you have seen the films, you will recognize that you are not safe, but the game lets you go on for a bit before the alien's baby inevitably bursts from your chest, killing you. Game over.

This is why the official hint book suggests that you "save your game a lot, especially when it seems that you're entering a dangerous area. That way, if you die, you don't have to retrace your steps much." Presumably, this was once considered entertaining.

When it comes to the humor, most of it is broad. (When you are told to "say the word," you have to say "the word.") Sometimes it is condescending. ("You quickly glance around the room to see if anyone saw you blow it.") Or it might just be potty jokes. (Plungers, jock straps, toilet paper, alien bathrooms, and fouling one's trousers all make appearances.)

My total gameplay time: a few hours.

"By Grabthar's hammer!" I thought. "Lee was right!"

When I admitted this to him, Lee told me that he had actually spent time learning to speedrun the Space Quest games during the pandemic. "According to my notes, a clean run of SQ2 in 'fast' mode—assuming good typing skills—takes about 20 minutes straight-up," he said. Yikes.

And yet

The past was a different time. Computer memory was small, graphics capabilities were low, and computer games had emerged from the "let them live just long enough to encourage spending another quarter" arcade model. Mouse adoption took a while; text parsers made sense even though they created plenty of frustration. So yes—some of these games were a few hours of gameplay stretched out with insta-death, obscure puzzles, and the sheer amount of time it took just to walk across the game's various screens. (Seriously, "walking around" took a ridiculous amount of the game's playtime, especially when a puzzle made you backtrack three screens, type some command, and then return.)

Judged by current standards, the Sierra games are no longer what I would play for fun.

All the same, I loved them. They introduced me to the joy of exploring virtual worlds and to the power of evocative artwork. I went into space, into fairy tales, and into the past, and I did so while finding the games' humor humorous and their plotlines compelling. ("An army of life insurance salesmen?" I thought at the time. "Hilarious and brilliant!")

If the games can feel a bit arbitrary or vexing today, my child-self's love of repetition was able to treat them as engaging challenges rather than "unfair" design.

Replaying Space Quest II, encountering the half-remembered jokes and visual designs, brought back these memories. The novelist Thomas Wolfe knew that you can't go home again, and it was probably inevitable that the game would feel dated to me now. But playing it again did take me back to that time before the Internet, when not even hint lines, insta-death, and EGA graphics could dampen the wonder of the new worlds computers were capable of showing us.

Space Quest II, along with several other Sierra titles, is freely and legally available online at sarien.net—though I found many, many glitches in the implementation. Windows users can buy the entire Space Quest collection through Steam or Good Old Games. There's even a fan remake that runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Android is getting its biggest visual update in years, and rather than unveiling it for the first time at its big annual developer conference, Google announced Material Three Expressive at a pre-show event broadcast on YouTube the week before. If a major design language shift for the world’s most popular mobile OS doesn’t qualify as a headliner at I/O, then what does? You guessed it: AI.

We expect Google to talk all about Gemini during I/O, which kicks off on Tuesday, and how it’s improving it and bringing it to products in areas that consumers will see even more.

If you’ve paid attention to the past couple of I/O keynotes, this won’t be a surprise. Android was barely mentioned in 2023, and CEO Sundar Pichai said AI so many times that we lost count. Last year’s keynote was more of the same, except that Pichai saved us some trouble and counted mentions of AI for us. All of this reflects the very obvious, inescapable shift that Google and every other tech company have made recently to pump out AI features at a breakneck pace.

But in a way, less news about the newest Android OS at I/O is actually a good thing.

Google has made a big effort in recent years to bring new features to more phones — even if they aren’t running the latest OS. Companies like Samsung and Motorola roll out new OS versions on their own schedules, so adding new features through Google Play and app updates means they’ll reach people faster. One key criticism of Android in previous years was slow feature rollouts that often entirely failed to reach many users. Google also adopted a new schedule this year for Android 16, moving to a major release in Q2 and a minor release in Q4, which should help more devices take advantage of new features.

If this year’s I/O really is an AI show, then there’s a risk it’s going to feel like one we’ve seen before.

The past two years of software and hardware from seemingly every consumer tech company have been nonstop AI pep rallies. We’ve seen a lot of previews of features that are supposedly just around the corner. Then, when it’s time to actually ship them… well, ask Apple how that’s going.

To Google’s credit, it has certainly shipped lots of AI features. The company has a lot of surfaces for it, too — from the XR platform we’re expecting to hear more about (that’s the glasses it has teased several times), to Chrome, Gmail, and Meet. There’s a lot of ground to cover.

I get the feeling, though, that we’re reaching a tipping point, one where promises of all the time and effort that AI will save us are wearing a little thin. But if nothing else, I appreciate that Google went out of its way to give Android time to shine before the big show — rather than relegating it to a handful of mentions between AI feature updates.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

The truth is, in most cases, your hardware isn't the issue. Even systems that aren't top of the line should be more than capable of handling everyday tasks without breaking a sweat. What really drags things down is the software. Over the years, it has grown bloated, cluttered, and oddly careless about how it uses the resources available. Despite all the advances in processing power and memory, much of today's software doesn't seem to be built with that power in mind. It leans on it, assuming there's always more to spare, while giving surprisingly little in return when it comes to actual performance.

Fast machines, slow software

Modern computer hardware is on a completely different level compared to what we had a few decades ago. Today’s CPUs are built with layers of complexity: multiple cores, large caches, and clever designs that manage performance and efficiency in real time. Even a typical smartphone now has more computing muscle than the supercomputers that once filled entire rooms in the 1980s.

GPUs have advanced even further. NVIDIA, for instance, has taken what used to be a graphics-focused component and turned it into a massively parallel processing engine. Their RTX series includes specialized units like Tensor Cores, which accelerate AI and machine learning tasks, and RT Cores, which handle real-time ray tracing to produce realistic lighting and reflections. These cards are capable of performing trillions of calculations per second, and in some cases, that number stretches into the hundreds of trillions.

With that kind of performance available, you’d expect computers to feel effortless. Opening apps should be quick. Interfaces should stay smooth, no matter how much is going on. Moving between tasks shouldn’t involve any friction. But that’s often not the case.

It’s a strange contrast to earlier eras of software development. When systems like Windows NT 3.51 were being built, developers had to be extremely careful with every bit of memory and processing power. Entire operating systems were made to run in environments that had less RAM than what a modern browser might use to load a single tab. The constraints forced efficiency in a way that’s hard to imagine today:

The Windows Experience™

The feeling of a performance disconnect is perhaps most widely encountered within the operating system itself, especially modern Windows. While Microsoft frequently introduces new features, the core user interface responsiveness in Windows 10 and Windows 11 has become a frequent source of user frustration. Common complaints highlight noticeable delays: context menus appearing slowly after a right-click, or file explorer windows visibly redrawing elements in stages instead of rendering immediately.

Around two years ago, developer Julio Merino ran an experiment that perfectly illustrated this frustration. He compared the responsiveness of older operating systems on significantly less powerful hardware to that of modern Windows running on high-end machines.

In one demonstration, he showcased a machine from the year 2000 with just 128MB of RAM and a 600 MHz processor, running Windows NT 3.51. Despite its age and limited specs, applications launched almost instantly with a single click.

He contrasted this responsiveness with interactions on a far more modern and powerful machine: a 6-core Mac Pro running at 3.5GHz with 32GB of RAM. On the newer system, he observed UI elements rendering in visible chunks, revealing a noticeable lag in responsiveness despite the dramatically better hardware.

Another viral example of Windows frustration comes from developer Theo Browne. He shared a case where simply opening a folder full of stream recordings, a basic file browsing task, took eight minutes, and Windows Explorer crashed when he tried to right-click. The issue turned out to be Windows automatically parsing metadata, which became a serious bottleneck with a large number of files. In his case, the fix was disabling automatic folder type discovery.

Even on a fresh install, Windows often feels weighed down by bloatware, preloaded apps no one asked for, aggressive telemetry, and a swarm of background services doing who knows what. This clutter adds friction to everyday tasks, and the fact that third-party "debloat scripts" are not only popular but considered essential by many users says a lot. People frequently describe Windows as "almost unusable" or "significantly degraded" until they strip out the extras.

And then there's the search experience. You type something into the search bar, looking for a local file you just saved, and what does Windows do? It takes its sweet time, maybe shows you results that are vaguely related, potentially ignores the file you actually need, and helpfully pulls up Bing web searches. Because when I type "quarterly report Q3," obviously what I really want is to wade through web results, not instantly find the file named "Quarterly Report Q3 Final.xlsx" sitting in my Documents folder. Meanwhile, a simple, free utility called "Everything" completely embarrasses the built-in search. It instantly finds any file or folder name on your entire drive as you type. I find it ridiculous that a free program made by a single developer offers a vastly better experience for such a basic task than the built-in feature from one of the world's biggest tech companies.

The lost "gold" standard of software

There's a gut feeling that the entire philosophy behind shipping quality software has been tossed aside and replaced with something far worse. Many remember a time, not even that long ago, when software, especially something as critical as an OS or a big-name game, went through hell and back with internal testing before it dared show its face to the public. They called it hitting "Gold" or RTM (Release To Manufacturing): a final, blessed build that was considered stable, feature-complete, and ready for the presses.

Think Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000; these were operating systems launched with an expectation of enterprise-grade stability because their development included punishing QA cycles and "dogfooding," where Microsoft employees themselves had to live with it. Updates, when they came, were chunky, well-tested Service Packs, not some frantic daily "patch-a-thon."

Contrast that with today's "Windows as a Service" circus. The Windows Insider Program, for all its telemetry-gathering usefulness, feels less like a supplementary testing ground and more like Microsoft has outsourced its entire QA department to millions of unpaid volunteers. Major updates roll out, and like clockwork, the forums light up with users screaming about new bugs, broken features, and performance that's gone to hell. It's a relentless cycle of releasing, then scrambling to patch what was clearly unfinished. You see this in games as well; the "release now, fix it later (maybe)" attitude has become depressingly common. The infamous launch of Cyberpunk 2077 is the poster child for this disaster. After years of monumental hype, it landed as a catastrophic, buggy mess, especially on last-gen consoles. It was so bad that Sony pulled it from its store! CD Projekt Red spent years and fortunes patching it into the game it should have been at launch. It makes you wonder if other big studios, seeing that dumpster fire, are finally wising up. The news about GTA 6 getting delayed a bit longer could very well be Rockstar deciding they'd rather take the heat for a delay than risk a Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 scenario.

That same "never truly finished" mindset bleeds into how Windows itself is being developed. The push to replace the old Control Panel with the modern Settings app started way back in 2012 with Windows 8. Thirteen years later, and even as recently as last month, updates were still rolling out. After more than a decade, you'd think managing your PC from one consistent place wouldn’t be too much to ask. But here we are.

The web is bloated

The performance discussion isn't limited to desktop operating systems. Despite enormous improvements in internet speeds and device processing power, the modern web frequently feels sluggish and resource-hungry. Websites can be slow to load, experience jarring content shifts during loading, or feel less interactive than they should.

The increasing complexity of web applications contributes to this, but so do common development practices. Using heavyweight JavaScript frameworks has become standard, and while tools like React or Next.js are invaluable for building complex web applications, they are often applied even for simpler sites like informational pages or blogs. This approach can result in large code bundles, slow initial page loads (even with server-side rendering, subsequent interactions can involve latency), and requires significant JavaScript execution before a page is fully usable. This perceived overuse stems partly from development trends and convenience, rather than a necessity dictated by the project's core requirements.

Even applications built using web technologies for the desktop, such as those using Electron (which powers applications like Slack and Discord), are frequently associated with "bloat." Bundling an entire web browser instance for each application inherently adds overhead in terms of memory and CPU usage compared to building a purely native application, contributing to slower startup times and higher resource consumption.

However, there are striking examples that prove performance is still achievable on the web with different priorities. Take, for example, the website for McMaster-Carr. This site, which sells hardware and industrial parts, achieved near-legendary status online and went viral last year because people couldn't believe a site that looks so "ancient" could outperform modern, slick sites built with the latest tech stacks.

So, how did McMaster-Carr do it? By focusing on fundamental, proven techniques: hardcore Server-Side Rendering (serving up pre-built HTML), aggressive prefetching (literally loading the next page before you even click the link when you hover), layering caching techniques (browser, server, CDN), optimizing assets ruthlessly, inlining critical CSS, and using minimal, modular JavaScript only where needed. They use the web platform intelligently. They don't care about framework trends; they care about speed and usability. And they nail it.

No, Linux will not save us

The search for less bloated, more performant computing experiences sometimes leads users to explore alternative operating systems like Linux. Many Linux distributions, particularly those featuring lightweight desktop environments such as XFCE or LXQt, are known for running well and feeling significantly faster on older hardware compared to modern Windows. This is possible because they offer greater modularity and less default overhead than the more monolithic design of Windows, allowing users to run a system that consumes minimal resources. The performance gain on resource-constrained machines can be substantial, making older hardware feel usable again for general tasks.

However, for a lot of people moving over from Windows, switching fully to Linux isn't always so simple. The biggest issue usually comes down to software compatibility. A bunch of popular professional apps, like Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects), Microsoft Office, AutoCAD, CorelDRAW, and even tools like QuickBooks or certain engineering programs, don't have native Linux versions. On top of that, many modern PC games, especially those with tough anti-cheat systems like Easy Anti-Cheat or BattlEye, either won't run at all or are hit-or-miss when using compatibility layers like WINE or Proton.

This practical challenge, rather than any inherent slowness in Linux itself, is frequently the reason why a "Linux experiment" for a Windows user ends up being short-lived.

Why is this happening?

So, with all this powerful hardware and clear examples of how to build both fast websites and fast OS components, why is so much modern software such a sluggish, resource-hungry mess? Here I outline a few key reasons:

1. The "Consumer as Beta Tester" Model: There's a strong argument that many large software companies have shifted their primary QA efforts from extensive internal testing to relying on public beta programs (like the Windows Insider Program) and telemetry from live releases. This means features and updates can reach the general public in a less polished state, with users effectively becoming the final line of bug testers. This wasn't the prevailing model when "Gold" master releases, rigorously tested before shipment, were the norm.
2. Focus on Feature Velocity Over Efficiency and Polish: The pressure is often on getting new features shipped yesterday. It's faster and easier to layer abstractions, pull in heavy libraries, and use resource-hungry frameworks than it is to spend time optimizing performance bottlenecks, writing efficient low-level code, or ensuring rock-solid stability before release.
3. Abstraction Overkill: Every layer of abstraction adds overhead. While helpful for managing complexity, the cumulative effect can be a significant performance drain if not carefully managed and optimized.
4. Developer Skill & Priorities: Deep optimization is hard. Understanding memory management, threading, efficient algorithms, and compiler outputs is challenging and less common (or perhaps less rewarded in many corporate structures) than knowing how to integrate two APIs or use the latest framework feature.
5. Business Models: Ads, telemetry, engagement-tracking features, tying into various cloud services – these all add code, processes, and network calls that aren't directly part of the core functionality the user wants, but serve the business.
6. Complexity: Modern requirements like stringent security, connecting everything to the internet, and handling incredibly high-resolution displays and complex graphics add inherent challenges and potentially necessary overhead.

Conclusion: Stop blaming your hardware (mostly)

So the next time your computer feels sluggish during a basic task, before you reach for your wallet to buy the next-gen CPU or GPU, consider this: your hardware is almost certainly a beast compared to the machines of the past. The problem isn't always the silicon; it's a combination of flabby, thoughtless, bloated code, and a development culture that often seems to prioritize shipping features over shipping a truly polished, gold standard product.

Performance, stability, and overall quality need to be first-class features again, not afterthoughts or something relegated to a dedicated optimization team that swoops in long after the bloat and bugs have set in. We need less abstraction for abstraction's sake, more focus on efficiency and user experience, and a renewed respect for the user's time and machine resources—and that includes delivering software that works well out of the box.

Until that shift happens, we'll continue to see powerful machines brought to their knees by inefficient code, and users will continue to feel they need an upgrade.

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From the new options, the first one lets Xbox players hide the system apps that appear when they seek through the 'recently played games and apps list' on Home. The company says that this should keep players focused on their games and entertainment while also reducing clutter.

Next, players will be able to pin up to three games or apps straight to the 'recently played games and apps list'. Even when other games are played, the pinned titles will remain available up front in Home for quick access.

Lastly, Microsoft is also working on letting players have a more minimal look in Home, reducing the number of tiles that appear in the 'recently played games and apps list'. It's still said to be working on refining this Reduce Tile Count option, so it won't be rolling out to Insiders just yet.

As for why the company has gone this route for adding more tweaking options, it said:

"We’ve heard from many of you that Home should feel more like your space. Whether it’s surfacing your favorite games, hiding what you don’t use, or simply making Home feel less crowded, this update is a direct response to that feedback."

Microsoft will be rolling out the new options to Xbox Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha rings first. The company is looking for feedback from users on the new functionality as well as what needs changing before they begin rolling out more broadly. Anyone interested in testing out the new Home updates can use the Xbox Insider app to enroll in the ongoing Insider Previews.

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GSC Game World's hit open-world survival shooter, STALKER 2, has just received a new update titled Patch 1.4, which has been implemented for the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions (via Windows and Steam).

Much like the Patch 1.2 and Patch 1.3 updates, Patch 1.4 is purely about improving the game with over 700 fixes and improvements, but this update is mainly focused on upgrading the enemy AI during combat.

These AI improvements include enemies now properly taking cover, enhanced flanking pathfinding maneuvers before engaging in melee combat, kicking players while they're crouching, using grenades more often to flush players out of cover, and more.

This patch also includes major changes and bug fixes to the combat, balance, Quests, and technical performance.

Seeing as the full list of patch notes is too big to list here (you can read on the STALKER 2 website), here is a list of the biggest changes made with STALKER 2's 1.4 Patch, as stated on the game's Steam page.

Warning: Some of the patch notes contain spoilers for the game's story in the Quests section.

STALKER 2 1.4 Update: Patch notes

Highlights

• Mutants can now use corpse-eating animation if there are dead bodies nearby.
• Mutants now have an “alert” state if something is happening near or approaching them.
• Improvements to human combat:
  • Fixed numerous bugs and problems with cover usage for NPC. Now they can properly use available covers, always try to hide before shooting, and don't rush forward when not needed.
  • Characters use trees as cover.
  • Updated combat and cover animations to look more fluent and fast.
  • Improved flanking pathfinding and transition to close combat.
  • Close combat has become tougher on Veteran and Stalker difficulties.
  • Fixed issues in communication and actions synchronization between characters in the squad.
  • Characters now communicate tactical actions and reactions more clearly in combat.
  • Human characters throw grenades when they want to flush out the target, not on the cooldown.
  • Squads now have a finite number of grenades, depending on their rank and faction (bandits have significantly less than military).
  • Human characters are able to attack mutants in melee. They use kick melee attacks against smaller mutants.
  • Human characters can kick players who are crouched.
  • Human characters look around for a brief moment, searching for enemies after combat ends, then proceed to the post-combat activities like looting and healing wounded.
  • Humans are no longer able to snipe with shotguns. Fixed problems with pellet dispersion and non-natural ballistic distances.
• Increased number of generic heads for NPC randomization
• Burer can now use his telekinetic abilities to catch and throw grenades
• Improved Weapon stat displaying in the inventory. Updated weapon stats bars and their calculation logic.
• Added new weapon stat — handling.

AI and Combat

• Fixed erratic behavior of A-Life NPCs after attacking enemy lairs.
• Fixed an issue where A-Life NPC didn't move after transitioning to offline.
• Improved mutant behavior during combat.
• Fixed an issue where a Flesh mutant was hiding to ambush the Player after they avoided a jump attack.
• Fixed an issue where a swarm of rat mutants were ignoring the Player after loading a save made near them.
• Improved path building for NPCs in offline to avoid them getting in restricted areas.
• Fixed an issue where an NPC was able to stay alive after falling in a wounded state underwater.
• Fixed an issue where mutants' bodies were jumping/shaking/stretching after being killed by shotgun or grenade.
• Fixed an issue where patrolling NPCs could clip with each other.
• Blind Dogs are now playing peaceful barks when not in combat with Player.
• Fixed issues where NPCs were clipping or going through doors while in combat.
• Fixed an issue where mutants were able to get stuck searching for enemies after escaping combat during emission.
• Fixed an issue when NPCs could be stuck in ambush pose.
• Adjusted aim for the NPCs that are in low cover.
• Fixed an issue when the NPCs could stay idle after receiving critical damage.
• Adjusted shooting range of NPCs depending on their weapon.
• Adjusted shooting from cover for the NPCs.

Balance

• RPM-74: increased armor piercing value
• Explosions now cause more damage on high-ranking targets
• Increased RPG damage
• Decreased lethal distance for grenades
• Increased concussion distance for RPG
• Added some silencers into stashes.
• Added Khors the possibility to upgrade Zircon Suit.
• Fixed an issue where Player was able to install physical protection upgrades twice for PSZ-9I Falcon armor.
• Rebalanced stashes in Zaton region.
• Improved regeneration and spawn of random anomalies after emission.

Bug Fixes, Crashes, and Performance

• Made performance optimization of light and shadows in multiple regions and locations.
• Improved LODs for grass in multiple regions.
• Performance optimization for light garland at 100 Rads Bar.
• Some other Under the Hood CPU performance and optimizations tweaks were made.
• Fixed an issue where bullet hit decals would not appear on certain parts of Mutant and NPC bodies.
• Fixed an issue where a Vortex arch-anomaly was throwing NPC corpses under terrain.
• Fixed an issue where an anomaly spawned by an Electric Poltergeist was invisible.
• Fixed an issue where stamina was spent even if action wasn't available.
• Fixed generic issues where NPCs were unable to reach a scripted animation pose if it was located too far.
• Fixed an issue where Zombies were able to fall under level geometry.
• Fixed an issue where sounds of raindrops were playing for certain props located underground.
• Fixed an issue where Player was able to stuck behind the door in Sidorovich's bunker.
• Fixed an issue with the HUD opacity option not working.
• Fixed an issue where dynamic shadows cast by flashlight appeared jagged.
• Fixed an issue where some effects could stuck on the player after loading a save.
• Fixed an issue where some effects could not be applied to the player after loading a save.
• Fixed an issue where increment in Psi Protection was displayed on armor stat bar when selecting Radiation Protection upgrade on some exosuits.
• Fixed an issue where Player was able to get to Prypiat ahead of time by jumping over the railroad cistern on Yaniv.
• Fixed an issue where a broken weapon didn't have a red background when equipped.
• Fixed Trader items being sorted after cancelling trade.
• Fixed an issue where no technicians in the game were able to install "Extra Barrel Upgrade" to SVDM-2 and Lynx sniper rifles
• Fixed an issue where mutants with telekinetic abilities were unable to pick up or throw items or corpses directly at Player.
• Fixed an issue where Bayun didn't deal any damage during his Jump Attack.

Main & Side Quests, Open World Encounters

• Fixed an issue where the objective Find Spirit could not end if the player talks to Spirit again right after finishing the dialogue during The Boundary mission.
• Fixed an issue where Faust was not appearing on the roof of Comm Center during the boss fight in Once More Unto The Breach mission, if the Player distracted him with a grenade.
• Fixed an issue where Scar didn't approach Visiograph to start dialogue with the Player during the Visions Of Truth mission.
• Fixed an issue where Snork's collar wasn't counted as collected if Snork's corpse is already despawned in the In The Name Of Science mission.
• Fixed an issue where the Player was able to get stuck closed behind two bunker doors in airlocks during The Last Step mission.
• Fixed an issue where Max Saturday was already dead and despawned for some users during The Lost Boys mission.
• Fixed an issue where a part of the world was missing at the exit from an underground teleportation room near Death Valley in certain conditions during the Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death mission.
• Fixed an issue with an unresponsive Korshunov in A-pose after the bossfight during the Down Below mission.
• Fixed an issue when the A Matter Of Honor mission wasn't completed if the player killed all Duty members after repelling the Monolith attack.
• Fixed an issue when Skif could die from bleeding in the cutscene after the boss fight with Korshunov during the Down Below mission.
• Fixed an issue where the door leading out of Noontide base was locked during the Just Like The Good Old Days mission.
• Fixed an issue that prevented re-entering the tunnel after it was opened by a scanner during The Boundary mission.
• Fixed an issue with missing Richter during The Boundary mission.
• Fixed an issue with the inability to progress the walkthrough of Just Like The Good Old Days mission if the fuse was thrown out of the inventory.
• Fixed an issue where the Ganja mission The Freedom Colosseum was absent if the player character teleported to Rostok via the guide.
• Fixed an issue with the inability to talk to Dubniy during the Hot On The Trail mission.
• Fixed an issue with a locked bunker during the The Boundary mission.
• Fixed an issue when it was unable to talk with Roosevelt in the mission Legends of the Zone.
• Fixed an issue where the "Get to the helicopter pad" journal objective was not ending during the Law And Order mission.
• Fixed an issue where the Player's Camera could get stuck panning at Darwin's corpse, if the Player did save/load during an encounter mission at Ruined Bridge, Backwater region.
• Removed redundant invisible collision in the middle of Ganja's bar at Rostok base.
• Fixed an issue where Richter and Warlock's comments in the A Tough Awakening mission could get stuck, resulting in permanent Emission weather after the Hot on the Trail mission.
• Fixed an issue where friendly NPCs were not interactable during the Dawn Of A New Day mission if the Player threw grenades inside Rostok Depot.
• Fixed an issue where the emission shelter at Noontide base didn't protect the Player after save/load during the Just Like The Good Old Days mission.
• Fixed an issue where repeatable missions from multiple vendors were stuck on the reward stage.
• Fixed an issue where the Player couldn't talk to Squint during A Needle In A Haystack mission if they sold his artifact.
• Fixed an issue where Gray's Last Hunt mission was not finished if the deer mutant was despawned.
• Fixed an issue where the Player was unable to give a briefcase to Sultan during The Mysterious Case mission, if they killed ambushing stalkers before talking to them.
• Fixed an issue where the game didn't progress after talking to Senkevych in the Like A Moth To The Flame mission due to the missing radio operator NPC nearby.
• Fixed an issue where a marker was missing on Richter during the Bring the collar to Richter journal stage of the A Minor Incident mission.
• Fixed an issue where the Player was able to get stuck in a basement near a cemetery during the Eye of the Storm mission.
• Fixed an issue where Scar was not appearing at the Malachite secret entrance after clearing out X17 in the Visions Of Truth mission.
• Fixed an issue where the Player could leave X17 lab via the elevator without a way back during the assault in the Visions Of Truth mission.
• Fixed an issue where Akopyan refused to talk with the Player during A Big Score mission.
• Fixed an issue where the Player wasn't able to progress the story after reaching Generators during emission in the Through The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death mission.
• Fixed an issue where the Player was able to break the cutscene with the pod and get stuck in the room with Richter during The Last Wish mission.
• Fixed an issue where the dialog with Scar was not available for some users during the Visions Of Truth mission.
• Fixed an issue when the On the Edge mission could start after the death of all stalkers in Zalissya.
• Fixed an issue when the All That Is Left mission could not be finished if the player agreed to throw the Warden's body into an anomaly.
• Fixed an issue where Strelok was dashing too often and almost didn't attack the Player during his boss fight.

Technical Updates

• Improved pathing for NPCs.
• Minor polishment and improvement for scripted NPC animations.
• Human characters that turn on flashlights are now slightly more illuminated and visible in the dark.
• Improved sound obstruction for grenades thrown outside from indoors location.
• Added a new emission shelter in Chemical Plant's dining room.
• Added emission shelter to technician room at Ranger Station, Zaton region.
• Improved facial animations and realism.
• Improved impact sounds for the bolt.
• Removed redundant blur effect on Player's vitals stat panel during trade.
• Added Player's vitals stat panel in the trade menu.
• Added new death animations and sound effects for electricity, acid, bullet, and rat bites' damage.

STALKER 2 is available for purchase on Xbox Series X|S and PC via Windows and Steam. It is also available on the Xbox Game Pass library, allowing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to play it on Xbox, PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Intel revealed its Arc Battlemage desktop graphics cards in December 2024, and since their launch, the B580 and B570 have been almost perpetually sold out.

Why are they so popular? It comes down to price and performance.

The more powerful Arc B580 GPU with 12GB of VRAM debuted at a $249 MSRP, while the Arc B570 with 10GB debuted at $219. Demand and scalping have driven prices up, but they're still the best value on the market.

With enough power to handle an impressive 1440p experience, Intel is providing gamers with a couple of stellar mid-range GPUs in a market saturated with expensive AMD RDNA 4 and NVIDIA RTX 50-series cards.

An Intel Battlemage B770 GPU could be on the way

id Software's DOOM: The Dark Ages is available now, letting players dive into a medieval-tinged world of demons, fantasy, and cosmic horror.

A huge part of any DOOM game is the soundtrack, and the entire soundtrack composed by Finishing Move is now available, so you can listen to your favorite tracks on Spotify and YouTube.

Personally, my favorite is "Unchained Predator," which was used during the reveal trailer for the game back in 2024.

In addition to streaming the tracks, you'll also get a copy of the soundtrack if you buy the Premium Edition of DOOM: The Dark Ages.

If you're like me and you picked up a Steam copy but can't figure out where the art book and soundtrack are, don't panic. DOOM: The Dark Ages' digital art book and soundtrack are filed under "Tools," so you'll need to filter your library to make those visible, as they're almost certainly not visible right now.

From there, just navigate to the art book and soundtrack, then load it up. You'll have the option of exporting the music files, but make sure you've got an additional 5GB space free on whatever drive you plan to keep the music on.

In my review of DOOM: The Dark Ages, I wrote that "It's an action-packed romp in the vein of prior games, but with an infusion of dark fantasy and cosmic horror. The pace has been slowed down, and many of the tools have changed, providing a fresh take on the experience, but it's still DOOM."

According to a reliable leaker, KeplerL2, Microsoft plans to use AMD's upcoming ARM-based Sound Wave chips for the 2026 Surface lineup. At this point, very little is known about the processor and the Surface devices that will be powered by it. Sound Wave is expected to pack six cores, built-in RDNA 3.5 graphics and a relatively small TDP of 5W to 10W, optimal for devices like small tablets or laptops.

Such a low-power part looks like an interesting choice, considering that the current Snapdragon X processors have a TDP of up to 23W. Lower TDP means less power, so it might indicate that Microsoft is thinking about using AMD's upcoming ARM processors for lower-end devices, like the Surface Go or the Surface Laptop Go, which currently use Intel chips. This will also mark the return of AMD chips to the Surface computers, which were abandoned after the less-than-stellar Ryzen processors for the Surface Laptop 3 and Laptop 4 generations. After that, Microsoft ditched AMD chips and focused on Intel and Qualcomm solutions.

AMD is not the only company working on ARM chips (the company gave up on ARM after the Opteron A1100 SoC from 2016). There are plenty of rumors about Nvidia joining the party with its own ARM chips for Windows PCs in 2026, which means we will have plenty of competition and exciting developments in the Windows on ARM segment, which was pretty much non-existent until 2024.

Source: KeplerL2 | via Windows Central

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Initially, Microsoft launched four experience centers: two in the United States (New York City and Redmond), one in London, UK, and one in Sydney, Australia. The one in London was closed earlier this year, and now, Microsoft has closed the doors of its Australian Experience Center for good.

One of Neowin readers noticed that the center is no longer working, and the official Microsoft website confirmed it:

The Microsoft Experience Centre in Sydney will be closing to the public on 10 May, 2025. If you’re interested in learning about our products or need support, you can always visit us at Microsoft.com. Online customer support is available to assist you with any questions you may have.

Now, with the Sydney center closed, Microsoft has only two Experience Centers open: one on 5th Avenue in New York City and one at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. There, visitors can purchase various products, such as Surface or Xbox, participate in in-person events and workshops, get product support, and more. As of right now, there is no information on whether Microsoft plans to close the remaining two of its Experience Centers.

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Announced today, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition is coming to PC and current-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Catch the trailer below.

Across all platforms, the company is touting enhanced lighting technologies that will add godrays, screen space reflections, and global illumination, alongside better textures and models for NPCs, weapons, and environments. 4K pre-rendered cinematics, advanced shaders for liquid effects, and upgraded skyboxes are included in the package too.

On PC, GSC Game World has support for the Steam Deck with full compatibility, Steam Workshop integration for mods, cloud saves, and controllers. Meanwhile, for consoles specifically, the developer listed these enhancements:

• Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro: Quality (native 4K/30 FPS), Balanced (upscaled 4K/40 FPS), Performance (upscaled 4K/60 FPS), Ultra Performance (upscaled 2K/120 FPS).
• Xbox Series S: Quality (native 2K/30 FPS), Balanced (upscaled 2K/40 FPS), Performance (1080p/60 FPS).
• Keyboard & Mouse Support: Available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S for a tailored experience.
• Mod.io Integration: Create and share mods across PC and consoles via mod.io (https://mod.io/).

GSC Game World is making the new enhanced remaster free for those who own S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy on Xbox Series X|S or PlayStation 5. Anyone who owns the original games will get the new version for free on a PC. The enhanced edition will also ship with copies of the originals.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition will be available on May 20, 2025, across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. The full bundle will cost $39.99, while each entry will also be available separately for $19.99.

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X user @momomo_us spotted a bunch of RTX 5060 listings on Best Buy with price tags ranging from $339.99 to $409.99. OC Editions (cards with slightly better clocks than the standard models) cost from $80 to $109 more than the MSRP, which is $299. This brings the RTX 5060 with its 8GB of VRAM to the same level as the RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB of video memory. That is quite a premium to pay for one or two hundred extra MHz on the core out of the box.

Best Buy has already removed those listings, and chances are that the prices were temporary placeholders (unlikely). Also worth noting is that not all manufacturers are asking that much. PNY, for one, listed its OC RTX 5060 for $299, as Nvidia intended. However, there is no guarantee that the price will remain the same after the launch on May 19.

The RTX 5060 was announced to a lukewarm reaction right from the get-go. Most users mocked Nvidia for offering 8GB of memory in 2025, and benchmarks showed that modern gaming on an 8GB GPU is not easy. Later, Nvidia added fuel to the flame by setting the review and driver embargo on the launch day, May 19. It coincides with Computex in Taiwan, which means plenty of reviewers attending the venue will not be able to publish their reviews on the launch day.

This led to many believing that Nvidia is pulling it under the rug in hopes that budget-conscious gamers will pull the trigger on the card without independent reviews, which are not expected to be very flattering. For reference, according to Valve, Nvidia's 60-series graphics cards are the most popular GPUs on Steam.

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While Nintendo offered an official spec sheet for the Switch 2 last month, neither it nor an accompanying blog post from chip-making partner Nvidia provided many specific numbers for the upcoming console's raw CPU and GPU horsepower. Today, though, Digital Foundry is offering what it calls "rock-solid confirmation" of the system's final tech specs, adding detail and clarity to years-old leaks and educated speculation on the system's internals (which turned out to be largely reliable in the end).

Unlike the Switch—which basically used an off-the-shelf Nvidia Tegra T1 chip—Digital Foundry says the Switch 2 is using "very much custom silicon designed specifically for Nintendo and for mobile gaming." You can see what that means in terms of raw hardware performance in the tables below.

Glancing at those numbers, it's easy to pick out a large difference between the system's performance in docked and undocked modes; its GPU clock and memory bandwidth both increase substantially when plugged into a TV. Those differences could help explain why the Switch 2 dock uses an active cooling fan, unlike the much simpler TV-connection dock on the original Switch.

To put the gap in a bit more context, the Switch 2's miniaturized Ampere GPU is rated for 3.072 TFLOPs when docked, versus just 1.71 TFLOPs while undocked. While those kinds of numbers aren't great for direct comparisons to other gaming devices, they do highlight just how much potential graphics horsepower Switch 2 players will be giving up when playing away from a TV.

Oddly enough, the Switch 2 CPU clock speed actually increases when the console is played outside the dock. While there's no official explanation for this oddity, Digital Foundry theorizes it could be an attempt to partially make up for the system's lower memory bandwidth when undocked.

Digital Foundry also notes that the Switch 2's stated clock speeds can be tuned to higher theoretical maximums: 1.4 GHz for the GPU and 1.7 GHz for the CPU. Nintendo could eventually make use of this headroom for improved graphical performance and faster loading screens, as it did on the original Switch in 2019. And while developers can adjust the GPU clock rate used by their games, it's unclear if they'll be able to directly overclock to the theoretical maximum themselves.

System resources

As on the original Switch, 25 percent of the CPU cores and overall memory on the Switch 2 is reserved by the system for OS features and is thus inaccessible to game developers directly. Digital Foundry also notes that some GPU resources are reserved by the system OS, though it didn't provide a precise measurement for this amount.

Using Game Chat on the Switch 2 could have a significant effect on system performance, according to Digital Foundry.

Credit: Nintendo

This time around, those system-level features include Game Chat, which offers the ability to stream gameplay and/or webcam video from up to four friends to a single system. Even with significant resources set aside by the OS, though, Digital Foundry notes that Game Chat has "a significant impact on system resources," leading Nintendo to provide developers with a testing tool that "simulates API latency and L3 cache misses" that can happen when Game Chat is in use.

Aside from the core pixel-pushing hardware, the Switch 2 also adds a new separate File Decompression Engine, which can handle loading game data off of the system's 256GB of on-board UFS memory and MicroSD Express expansion cards without taxing the CPU. And while the Switch 2's portable screen includes support for variable refresh rates up to 120 Hz, there is currently no official support for VRR on HDMI displays connected to the system's dock.

While it's fun to look at numbers, the real proof of the Switch 2's hardware power will be in the performance of its games. We look forward to having more direct comparisons of software performance when the console launches next month.

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DOOM: The Dark Ages launched on May 12 for those who received early access via the Premium Edition or Collector's Bundle; it goes live for all on May 14.

With the advance launch comes a rather long list of known issues and some potential fixes, posted in the game's Community section on Steam.

The majority of the issues appear to be related to PC. More specifically, it seems like NVIDIA's drivers are causing a lot of chaos, especially if you're using an RTX 40- or RTX 50-series graphics card.

I covered NVIDIA's release of Game Ready driver 576.40 on May 12, and listed at the top of the DOOM FAQ is a notice that this exact driver (released to support DOOM: The Dark Ages) might cause persistent crashing when playing the game.

The recommended fix is to restart your PC, reinstall the driver, and relaunch the game.

It's not all bad news, and many of the PC-related issues can be fixed

There's some good news. Many of the known issues listed by developer id Software have solutions.

This is the second-largest round of layoffs at Microsoft after the company cut off 10,000 workers in January 2023, which represented 5% of the total workforce worldwide. Then, the Mixed Reality division responsible for developing the HoloLens took the biggest hit, with nearly half the jobs eliminated.

At the moment, there is no information about which departments are most affected. CNBC reports that the decision was made to reduce management layers across the company. It arrives just two weeks after Microsoft reported strong Q3 2025 financial results, with revenue reaching over $70 billion.

Following the news about layoffs, Microsoft shares dropped by 0.26% to $448.07 per share and continue declining.

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