Most of the Steam Deck imitators on the market right now use AMD silicon, specifically the Ryzen Z-series chips. These are the same chips AMD makes for regular laptops, but with different power settings better suited to a compact handheld system. There are handhelds based on Intel silicon (MSI’s Claw is the main one), but Intel hasn’t yet tried making silicon marketed specifically for that purpose.
Today, the company is throwing its hat in the ring with two Intel Arc G-series processors, which will allow gaming handhelds to leverage the company's genuinely quite good Arc B-series integrated GPUs. Intel says that several Arc G-series handhelds will arrive "starting in June 2026, with broader availability throughout the year." These systems will include a new MSI Claw model, a Predator Atlas 8 from Acer, and a device from OneXPlayer.
Intel normally uses its "Arc" branding for integrated and dedicated GPUs, but in this case, the "Arc" brand encompasses the entire chip, including the CPU, GPU, NPU, and other components.
Valve's Steam Deck handheld has been largely unavailable to buy since mid-February, a victim of the RAM and storage shortages that have been driving up prices for most consumer tech since the fall of 2025. The good news is that the Deck is back in stock on Valve's site and ready to ship in three to five days; the bad news is that it appears to have returned because somebody wished for it on a monkey's paw.
The 512GB version of the OLED Steam Deck now sells for a whopping $789, $240 more than its previous $549 price. The 1TB version (which also includes an anti-glare screen coating, a slightly nicer case, and an "exclusive startup movie and keyboard theme") will now run you $949, a $300 increase from its old $649 price. The old $399 base model with 256GB of storage and the older LCD screen has been discontinued, though this had been announced well before these price increases took effect.
These prices are particularly hard to swallow for a nearly 3-year-old revision of an over-4-year-old handheld PC. If there's a saving grace for Valve, it's that most competing handhelds from the likes of Asus and Lenovo are also pushing or exceeding that $1,000 mark. Of the Deck's major competitors, only the $600 Asus ROG Xbox Ally (and its AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, which is very similar to the Deck's semi-custom AMD chip) is significantly cheaper than the Steam Deck.
Shiny new Nvidia apps like the GeForce Experience and the "Nvidia app" have come and gone, but the old Nvidia Control Panel and its rotating green Nvidia logo have existed as an option for managing basic settings since it was originally introduced in 2006.
That's ending with version 610.47 of Nvidia's Game Ready and Studio drivers for GeForce GPUs. Nvidia says the old Control Panel will no longer be installed by default, since "all actively supported Nvidia Control Panel features for GeForce users have been modernized and transitioned" to the new Nvidia app.
"The NVIDIA app contains all of the modern functionality of the NVIDIA Control Panel available for GeForce RTX GPUs, and much more, while running faster and more efficiently," writes Nvidia Technical Marketing Content Editor Andrew Burnes in the drivers' release notes.
The A Minecraft Movie sequel officially has a title: A Minecraft Movie Squared. What's more, we now know that Kirsten Dunst will star as Alex, the game's female character option, and that Matt Berry is set to play an even bigger role in this film. He voiced Nitwit in the first movie, but in this one, he'll be playing a human character. Who exactly he'll be hasn't been revealed yet, but in the clip below, he can be heard dismissing a costume choice because "Steve would not be wearing that," suggesting he might be playing the Herobrine, a creepy pasta evil counterpart to Jack Black's Steve.
The director, Jared Hess, and Mojang Chief Creative …
The GameSir G7 Pro 8K increases the polling on a top-rated controller, and while the price increase is minimal, the controller's still not for everyone.
A speedy 18-inch Mini LED that needs to be seen to be believed. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
My eyes have seen the PC gaming promised land, and it's a beautifully bright world without a shred of blurriness. It's warm, it looks lovely, and it's impeccably sharp. Also, it's expensive as hell.
I've dipped my toe in this world by testing a pre-production version of the upcoming Asus ROG Strix Scar 18, which was recently announced ahead of Computex 2026. It's a gigantic 18-inch gaming laptop that comes with a top-of-the-line 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX CPU and can be fully kitted out with an RTX 5090 Laptop GPU and 128GB of RAM. Asus sent me a model to test that's maxed out on all specs except storage (it's got "just" 4TB). And of …
IO Interactive’s 007 First Light is here, and it’s just as stunning a James Bond mov — err, video game — as we hoped it would be. Pardon the confusion, the title’s engaging tutorial really feels like you’re watching a great Bond movie at times. Whether you’re a longtime Hitman fan who’s been eagerly waiting for the studio’s latest game or not, there are deals to be had on both the PlayStation 5 and Steam PC versions.
Costco members, for instance, can already take advantage of an online-only deal on the disc-based PS5 version, which knocks it down to $62.99 (originally $69.99). It’s not a big discount, but it’s currently the best out there across major retailers. If you have a desktop PC or handheld gaming PC powerful enough to run the game, the Steam version is a little cheaper at Fanatical. The standard digital edition is going for $60.89, while the deluxe digital edition, which includes in-game cosmetics, is down to $69.59 (about $10 off).
First Light is similar in a sense to recent Hitman games. It’s a third-person stealth sandbox game, after all, but it has a little more in common with Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series thanks to its hand-to-hand combat system, quippy protagonist, and wide variety of missions that either have you on foot using fun gadgets or behind the wheel of a muscle car.
Earlier this month, I finally achieved the elusive goal I had set for myself in Bungie's Marathon. I collected six of the game's rarest items, allowing me to attempt and then successfully clear the raid-style Compiler boss. I felt a massive weight lift off my shoulders - nearly 185 hours of playtime and I had managed to complete Marathon's pinnacle activity. A day later, I took my first break from the game.
I had been playing Marathon virtually every day since it launched in March, and I needed to put it down. Treating a Bungie game like it's a grueling second job is nothing new. Certainly not for me or the many fellow Destiny players that …
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