Google's new "24/7" AI agent, Gemini Spark, can be shockingly good at doing things on your behalf. But I'm not sure it's worth the financial cost and potential privacy tradeoffs.

The company gave me access to Spark last week. Google advertises Spark as an AI agent that can take on tasks and work on them in the background - even tasks that have multiple steps - allowing you to put your phone down or walk away from your computer. It also advertises at the very top of the Spark website that it's "always under your direction," that "you choose to turn it on," and that "it's designed to check with you before taking major actions." Given the moun …

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Sony is sharing new details about some of its upcoming gaming-focused hardware, including pricing and August launch dates for its FlexStrike fight stick and its 27-inch monitor.

The FlexStrike fight stick will be available starting August 6th - the same day as the new PlayStation-published fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls - and will cost $199.99. Preorders begin on June 12th at 10AM ET. Initially, the FlexStrike will work just on PS5, but Sony says that PC support will be rolled out sometime after launch. The stick will come with a sling carry case and a built-in rechargeable battery.

Sony goes into more detail about the fight st …

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Get ready for some gaming news. It’s officially June, which means splashy new events from PlayStation, Xbox, and gaming hype man Geoff Keighley. But this season doesn’t just feature the big tentpole shows; there will be a bunch of smaller events, too, and they might feature some promising games as well.

But this year’s events are taking place at a difficult time for the industry. The prices of consoles and gaming hardware have skyrocketed, with all of the three major console players announcing price hikes and PC handheld makers jacking up hardware costs as well.

Game companies also have to work around the looming giant that is Grand Theft Auto VI, which is set to launch on November 19th. That time of year is usually a very busy one as studios launch their games to get ahead of the holiday shopping season, but we could see some of the industry’s biggest games give GTA VI a wide berth.

We’ll be tracking the biggest news of the June gaming events season right here.

• Your guide to June’s biggest gaming events
• Xbox and PlayStation have a lot to prove
• There won’t be Project Helix news at the Xbox Games Showcase.
• Microsoft delays Fable (again) to avoid GTA VI
• Lots of games to think about.

It's early June, which means it's video game event season once again. Now that E3 has been gone for a few years, a bunch of showcases and presentations have started to fill the void, including big productions like Summer Game Fest Live and smaller affairs like Wholesome Games Direct.

If you love following gaming news, it's a good time of year. There will be a lot to take in that will set the stage for the rest of the year's gaming releases. But without a big centralized conference like E3, it can be difficult to keep track of the many different events that will be happening over the next several days.

We've put together a list of the bigg …

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