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Sony’s new fight stick and gaming monitor launch in August

1 June 2026 at 17:36

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 …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Summer Game Fest 2026: All the news from gaming’s busiest week

1 June 2026 at 16:30
Geoff Keighley on a gray background.

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.

Asus just announced the OLED Xbox Ally X of my dreams

1 June 2026 at 11:00
The Xbox Ally X20, and the glasses you’ll have to buy with it. | Image: Asus

If you asked me what I'd change about the Xbox Ally X handheld - aside from fixing Windows, I mean - I'd tell you two key things.

First, give me a bigger, better screen. Even a little bit bigger, so games feel less claustrophobic and with less ugly bezel. Second, get rid of the "Library" button. I am so tired of an accidental press booting me out of my game and into the Xbox library without a simple way to get back.

With the just-announced ROG Xbox Ally X20, Asus did both - and then some. It's now a slick translucent handheld with drift-resistant GuliKit TMR joysticks, a transforming D-pad that goes from 8-way to 4-way by dropping its cor …

Read the full story at The Verge.

AMD’s new pitch: our old tech is so good you should just keep using it

1 June 2026 at 01:00
AMD CEO Lisa Su holds a Ryzen chip. | Image: AMD

Computex 2026 is underway in Taiwan, and we're expecting all manner of flashy computers with jaw-dropping prices (or no prices at all) as the entire industry navigates RAMageddon.

But for desktop PC gamers, AMD has a different pitch. It's relaunching three old components alongside a big new promise: You won't need to buy a new motherboard until 2030.

Today, AMD is promising it will keep supporting its AM5 desktop motherboard socket with new Ryzen processors through 2029, which likely means you can keep upgrading to newer CPUs till the end of the decade without changing your board.

Even if you're still on the older AM4 socket, you may hav …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The QD-OLED gaming monitor that started it all got a big upgrade

1 June 2026 at 00:00
The AW3426DW familiar specs, updated design language, and a bunch of QD-OLED enhancements. | Image: Alienware

Alienware is taking to this year's Computex 2026 in Taipei to announce some cool gaming monitors, most notably two exciting OLED options that are coming at different points this year. First off, the company is debuting the successor to its very first QD-OLED gaming monitor from 2022 with a refreshed design and high-end specs that's coming in July (price hasn't yet been shared).

The AW3426DW is a 34-inch curved 3,440 x 1,440 resolution with an 1800R curve, just like its predecessor. But the new model has the latest QD-OLED Penta Tandem screen tech that boosts the peak brightness to 1,300 nits from 1,000 nit in the previous version. Its refre …

Read the full story at The Verge.

This extravagant gaming laptop could ruin other screens for you

A pre-production 2026 Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 gaming laptop sitting on a black cut mat in front of a blue illuminated backdrop. The large black laptop is emanating colorful lights from its keyboard and underglow around its chassis.
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 …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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