Xbox consoles recently experienced a worldwide outage, during which people were unable to access even disc-based games that should have been playable offline. Service was restored within a day but the impact of this discovery could be significant as tensions run high surrounding the crumbling state of physical media. Microsoft, however, was quick to suppress the negative PR, telling The Verge that discs should have never been affected by the outage in the first place.

"Disc-based entitlement checks should not prevent players from accessing their games and this is by design," said Microsoft tech chief Scott Van Vliet. He went on to confirm that discs go through license checks in the form of verifying entitlements. These entitlements determine what content a user is entitled to access, including when said user is offline, since they're saved directly on the console. Van Vliet clarified that the team caught an issue that stopped the consoles "from correctly using saved entitlements during the outage."

Xbox uses the Smart Delivery system for distributing games that automatically installs the best version of the title for your hardware. Smart Delivery has an alternative implementation called full-disc support, where developers can choose to put all executables of their game on the disc instead of relying on a license to digitally download content. That means when you insert the disc, there's no need to even connect to the internet as the file should be ready to run out of the box. That's precisely what failed to occur yesterday.

The outage itself affected everything from log-ins to application launches, and from online play to this strange issue of discs not running as intended. It was tied to an external service provider suddenly going down, and remaining down, for 16 hours. Xbox relied on that external provider for license and entitlement checks, so when a console failed to connect to those servers, it simply locked out players from accessing the game. It worked as fail-close mechanism instead of the fail-open it should have been, at least for discs.

If you're even a little bit tech-savvy, this probably sounds familiar to you as DRM checks have been a part of gaming for a long time. It used to be limited to just digital releases, but disc-based media has evidently fallen to the same problems as of late. The 100GB storage capacity of Blu-ray discs is a genuine limitation, but that's rarely the cause behind stories like this. Microsoft says it's already working on releasing an update to address this issue, but has not provided a timeline.

Sony faced similar vitriol earlier when the community discovered mandatory 30-day online check-ins had been added to PlayStation 5 and 4 consoles, but that claim was later refuted. In 2024 , Steam came under fire for ambiguity over perpetual licenses as well, which just goes to show that even the Valve isn't safe from this great evil. Now that PlayStation discs will cease to exist by 2028, concerns over ownership tied to physical media are growing every day.

Back in April of this year, SNK announced the Neo Geo AES+ home console, reviving a legend for the modern era. It was priced at $250 for the base system with a controller, with a release date set for November 12, 2026. Fast forward to today, and you can now pre-order the AES+ on Amazon, along with all ten games launching for it. These games are recreations of the original cartridges, just like the console itself is a 1:1 revival of the OG hardware.

• Buy the Neo Geo AES+ for $249
• Buy the Neo Geo AES+ for $349

The Neo Geo was an icon of its era, responsible for bringing arcade gaming to the couch without compromise. At the time, all the home consoles relied on cut-down silicon from arcade machines, and even their games were highly compressed to save manufacturing costs. SNK and the Neo Geo did things differently. Its games had 300-700 megabit file sizes compared to just 4-16MB the competitors were limited to.

The Neo Geo also had dedicated Zilog and Yamaha chips for high-resolution audio. It had significantly more power than the Sega Genesis and the SNES, which relied on tilemaps, while the Neo Geo could scale, shrink, and animate massive, multi-layered 2D character sprites with zero flickers. It was also marketed as the first 24-bit console on technicality, even though it was really just a very powerful 16-bit system in reality.

Because of its $700 price tag, the Neo Geo was limited to a niche audience of enthusiasts who wanted an uncompromising arcade experience. The new Neo Geo AES+ basically takes that experience and repackages it as faithfully as possible, and ends up providing much better value, especially when adjusted for inflation.

The AES+ looks exactly like the original and features silicon-level recreation of the OG architecture thanks to re-engineered ASIC chips; there's no emulation involved here. Any game cartridge from the 90s will work on it just fine. You still get the crisp AV out if you're still nostalgic about CRTs, though HDMI is available for realists, and there are DIP switches onboard to adjust region/language settings or enable a quick overclock.

The $249 base system doesn't come with games, but SNK is re-releasing 10 classics that you can also buy on Amazon. Each of them costs $90, which is more than a PS5 game, and just $10 short of the ultimate edition of GTA VI. Just to be clear, you can emulate all of these games pretty easily, but owning the cartridge physically is a different kind of feeling, especially these days when it's become a dying breed.

The following games are available for the Neo Geo AES+ on Amazon:

• Metal Slug
• The King of Fighters 2002
• Garou: Mark of the Wolves
• Big Tournament Golf
• Shock Troopers
• Samurai Shodown V Special
• Pulstar
• Twinkle Star Sprites
• Magician Lord
• Over Top

There's a $349 Anniversary Edition, too, that comes in white and includes an exclusive all-white Metal Slug game cartridge in the box. You get a wireless Arcade Stick (instead of wired) and its accessories, along with a memory card. The wireless Arcade Stick costs $120 on its own, while a gamepad is also available for $60.

If you're a true baller, then the $1,000 Ultimate Edition might entice you since it includes the gamepad, one wired stick and one wireless stick, along with all ten of the aforementioned games and a rack to display them. Keep in mind that anything you buy will only be delivered after November 12, 2026, which is the official release date of the Neo Geo AES+.

Not to mention, if you're just a retro gaming enthusiast and not necessarily a collector, then just emulating these games on even your phone should be enough of a nostalgia hit. Nonetheless, projects like these ultimately help preserve culture and remind us of a time before the great evil of today (and tomorrow) known as digital licenses. If you buy the AES+, it will never be at risk of going down offline, and you'll own the games forever.

Xbox chief technology officer Scott Van Vliet said in a post on X that a licensing service sitting outside Xbox, which the platform depends on, began failing late on July 26 and took roughly 16 hours to clear, blocking sign-ins, library listings, and game launches across Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. Microsoft restored service at 2:30 p.m. PDT on July 27.

For part of that window, Microsoft's status page warned that players might have trouble launching disc-based games, leaving a physical copy sitting in the tray no more useful than a digital one. Discs on Xbox One and Series consoles carry encrypted XVC packages with attached licenses, rather than acting as bootable media, per Microsoft's documentation.

Automated monitoring caught the failure overnight, and on-call engineers declared a major incident, according to Van Vliet, who said the team rerouted traffic onto healthy systems while the root cause was still being investigated. Anything requiring an entitlement check broke, including listing a full library and launching an owned game, and several of Microsoft's publishing and store partners depend on the same systems, which is why some titles kept working, and others didn't. "I care less about the one-line root cause," Van Vliet wrote, saying the review will look at why a failure in one service took down that much and why recovery took as long as it did.

Microsoft hasn't explained why disc-based games were caught up in the failure, but its developer documentation splits loss of connectivity into two separate categories: complete loss of internet service, and loss of one or more online services.

Console behavior is built around the first case, where the system reads a game's manifest declaration and launches anything with a mode of play that doesn't require connectivity. The second case, where the network is fine but a specific service isn't answering, is documented only as something individual games should handle without hanging or crashing. During the July 2024 Xbox outage, players recovered access to installed single-player titles by forcing the console into an offline state through Network settings.

Xbox services also went down last week during the early access launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved, and PlayStation Network took a multi-hour outage of its own on July 24. The timing of all this isn’t brilliant, given that Sony recently announced the end of physical disc production for new games in January 2028.

A Change.org petition opposing that decision has since exceeded 348,000 signatures. Microsoft, meanwhile, is testing a disc-to-digital program that grants a digital entitlement tied to a specific disc, and multiple reports say its next console may ship without a drive, though the company hasn't confirmed that. Van Vliet joined Xbox from Microsoft's Azure organization alongside CEO Asha Sharma, weeks before Microsoft cut 3,200 Xbox roles across its 2027 fiscal year and divested five studios.

I recently tested the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ handheld gaming PC, and came away incredibly impressed with its performance. Put simply, it has no rival in gaming performance, easily eclipsing all other handhelds on the market. Even better, the battery life is also stellar.

However, if there’s one thing that it could use, it’s a storage boost. Despite the $1,800 price tag as tested for our review unit, it still only includes a 1TB SSD. After installing a handful of games from Steam and from the Xbox Store, I was left with 128GB free of the 953GB available on the SSD.

I happen to have a 2TB PNY CS2150 PCIe 5.0 SSD that I used for testing a Thunderbolt 5 SSD enclosure with Thunderbolt 5 docks. Since it was currently sitting unused, I decided to take a stab at replacing the 1TB SSD in the Claw 8 EX AI+ with the CS2150 for some extra storage headroom.

Getting the hardware setup for the transition

Fortunately for me, much of the legwork had already been finished. The CS2150 was already installed inside an Orico SSD Thunderbolt 5 enclosure, which would serve as my destination drive.

Although I could complete the entire transfer process using only the input methods on the Claw 8 EX AI+, it’s rather tedious to navigate the Windows 11 user interface and enter text on the 8-inch screen. So, I decided to use a Thunderbolt 5 dock to streamline the process. I used:

• OWC Thunderbolt 5 Dock
• Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse
• Orico SSD Thunderbolt 5 enclosure with 2TB PNY CS2150 SSD installed

I connected the Thunderbolt 5 dock to one of the two Thunderbolt 4 ports at the top edge of the Claw 8 EX AI+. I then plugged the Logitech USB-A receiver into the dock. Finally, I connected the Orico enclosure to the second Thunderbolt 4 port on the Claw 8 EX AI+.

Finding the proper software for cloning the drive

It’s been a while since I last cloned a drive, so I did a quick Google search for free drive-copy software for Windows 11. My search led me to a Reddit thread where the majority of commenters recommended the freeware version of Macrium Reflect 8.

I downloaded the software and installed it without issue. The interface in Reflect 8 was about as straightforward as you can expect, with my source C: drive showing up at the top. The destination field was empty, so I had to select the drive I wanted to use. I pulled up the CS2150, which I have named as Orico in Windows 11 as the D: drive.

After clicking Next, I was prompted with a warning about BitLocker encryption, so I clicked OK to acknowledge it (you’ll definitely want to re-enable BitLocker once you reinstall the SSD). The next screen showed a summary of the operations to be performed: copying the EFI and Windows partitions to the 2TB SSD. I clicked Finish, which brought up another prompt asking if I wanted to run the backup. I clicked OK, which displayed a warning that the D: drive would be overwritten. After clicking Continue, the process started.

After about an hour and a half, the cloning process was completed. At this point, I shut down the Claw 8 EX AI+ and disconnected all of the accessories.

Disassembling the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ and installing the 2TB SSD

Next, I removed the back panel of the Claw 8 EX AI+, which required removing six screws and using a plastic prying tool. I then removed the single screw holding the already-installed 1TB SSD in the M.2 slot and extracted it. I next removed the 2TB SSD from the Orico enclosure and installed it in the M.2 slot, securing it with the screw I had just removed.

I then reinstalled the back panel for the Claw 8 EX AI+ and secured it with the previously removed screws.

Booting up and checking my work

I powered the Claw 8 EX AI+ back on, and it booted without issue. I was also surprised to see that Windows 11 didn’t throw up any activation errors. I’ll chalk that up as a win. I went to Windows Explorer to see if I was indeed utilizing the full 2TB of storage, but I instead saw that 128GB was free of 953GB – the same predicament as before.

I might have missed a setting during the cloning process that would have expanded the partition to use all free space on the larger SSD. But the fix was simple enough. I opened up the Disk Management utility, selected Windows (C:), and chose “Extend Volume.” After that process was complete, I saw the full 2TB (actually, 1.81TB), with 1.02TB now free for additional game installs.

A Steam Deck devotee was so fed up with their family borrowing their handheld and leaving it with a flat battery that they have resorted to quite extreme measures. On the Steam Deck subreddit, ConroyyJenkinss says that they have modded the console with a range of anti-sharing measures, including a 3D-modeled spiky case and a taser, among other things.

I Built a Security System for My Steam Deck from r/SteamDeck

In the video embedded above, you can see ConroyyJenkinss augmented Steam Deck, which has basically sacrificed the Steam Deck’s comfy ergonomics on the altar of defensive design. Its hand-filling gentle curves have been nullified with a 3D-printed case that was modeled by the anti-sharing Steam Deck owner in Blender. We hope this Steam Deck chastity belt is easily detachable by the owner for when ConroyyJenkinss wants to have some fun.

The hostile architecture-inspired case has another scary trick or two up its sleeve, though. “To make it worse, I rigged up a Raspberry Pi with a small speaker, an object detection camera, and a servo motor,” the Redditor explains. “[I] wrote a py script so if the camera sees someone in frame, it plays a goofy audio clip, waits a few seconds and then the servo triggers a taser to scare them away.” So at least those tempted to touch this spiky handheld get warned before potentially being tased.

Most importantly, ConroyyJenkinss asserts that their Steam Deck anti-sharing measures have done the job. “Nobody touches my Steam Deck anymore,” concludes the dangerous DIYer. Answering some queries in the Reddit thread, the embattled Steam Deck owner admits having to remove the case and disarm the taser to use their own handheld is “a hassle but overall worth it.” Now other family members ask permission to have a gaming session on the portable console.

In recent weeks, Steam Decks have joined the ranks of the desirable devices that have been heavily impacted by the RAMpocalypse. It’s nice to share things, but we fully understand ConroyyJenkinss protecting his precious unit, especially against the devil-may-care battery drainers in the family.

Microsoft just released four original Xbox games on PC as part of its efforts to bring backwards compatibility to the platform. For years, Xbox consoles have enjoyed a similar luxury, with the latest Series X|S systems being able to play two-decade-old OG Xbox titles. However, to achieve this on PC, Microsoft used a native x86 version of its in-house Xbox 360 emulator. As you might expect, modders were quick to pounce on the opportunity to run 360 games on PC, with "varying degrees of success" so far.

How do you log in to your PC?

The discovery was initially made when data miners looked at the package contents of these backwards-compatible titles. Neo Te Aika found out that they were packaged as standard Games on Demand, or GOD files, which is the official file format used by Xbox 360 hardware. A GOD package contains the actual game, its headers, and DRM. By using a GOD extractor, modders were able to open them and convert them into a base ISO that can be played with an emulator, or on a jailbroken Xbox 360. All this would be a huge development on its own.

What followed, though, has the potential to change the original Xbox and Xbox 360 emulation scene forever. Nathan on X scoured through those same files to find something called Xe03. Also called Fission, Xe03 is Microsoft's official Xbox 360 emulator that comes baked into the Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles for backwards compatibility.

Within the Xbox 360 environment, Microsoft already had another emulator called XeFu, or Fusion, that emulates the original Xbox. So, it's basically an emulator within an emulator. That's how modern Xbox consoles have been able to play OG Xbox titles. To Xe03, it's just opening a standard Xbox 360 package, but the binary inside is coded to launch XeFu, which then takes over to run the original Xbox game

When Microsoft released backwards compatible Xbox games on PC, people expected the company to have built an x86-native OG Xbox emulator from scratch. An emulator that didn't rely on an outer layer or any external components. Instead, what Microsoft did was simply recompile Xe03 to run natively on x86 PCs instead, indirectly handing over the ultimate 360 emulator to the community.

By modifying the app container and swapping out game packages, projects like XWine1 and independent reverse-engineers bypassed the inner OG Xbox layer (Fusion) and managed to load raw Xbox 360 executables (.xex files) directly into Xe03. The results have been mixed but incredibly promising, nonetheless. The XWine1 team was able to get Plants vs. Zombies, Steins: Gate, Fuzion Frenzy, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles to boot and run with varying degrees of stability.

Fuzion Frenzy is actually one of four OG Xbox titles that Microsoft officially released so that one is particularly well-optimized. Since the hard part of reverse engineering first-party code has already been done by Microsoft, optimization remains the only challenge. As time goes on, and the specific emulator files are fine-tuned for general usage, we should expect more and more titles to run flawlessly.

Microsoft has also promised to release more official backwards compatible titles on PC, but it hasn't said anything about Xbox 360 games. Therefore, the discovery of Xe03 holds immense potential for the future of Xbox 360 emulation on PC — the community just has to focus on optimization now. This development can be particularly fruitful for handhelds that are power-constrained; Xe03 has very light minimum requirements for devices like the ROG (Xbox) Ally and Lenovo's Legion Go lineup.

Moreover, Microsoft's PC version of Xe03 also upscales the original 480p output of OG Xbox games to 4K. It also adds built-in V-Sync, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and borderless windowed modes. Since the games were distributed though the Xbox PC app, they're part of the Xbox Anywhere program so if you own the digital license of said game on console, you get it for free on PC (and other places). Microsoft will also bring Xbox Achievements support to backwards compatible titles soon.

The last two elements will likely be ignored by the modding community since the OG Xbox virtualization is the important part, enabled by the Xe03 engine that has now become the main takeaway from all this. To be clear, open-source emulators such as Xenia have existed for years and provide a highly-satisfactory Xbox emulation experience, but Microsoft's official, in-house solution should be more efficient.

What OG Xbox or 360 games would you like play on PC?

The extremely popular Woot deal that scored new customers a Nintendo Switch 2 for just $399 has returned. Right now you can grab a brand new console for just $399 thanks to an extra $50 discount at checkout. If you've used Woot before, the same code (GIFT26) will get you an extra $22 off instead, making this the cheapest Switch 2 on the market right now.

• Check out this deal at Woot

Woot is Amazon's outlet website, so you'll often see refurbished or reconditioned items for sale. However, this is a deal on a brand-new console, making it an extra special (and rare) treat.

The Nintendo Switch 2 needs no introduction. First unveiled on June 5, 2025, the ultra-popular handheld features a 7.9-inch 1080p screen, also supporting gameplay at 4K up to 120 fps when docked with a TV. You also get Joy-Con 2 controllers, which can be used in a variety of modes.

Naturally, the big allure of the Switch 2 is access to Nintendo's delightful world of IP and first-party titles, including games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and, of course, games like Legend of Zelda.

More noteworthy than the Nintendo Switch 2's specs or games, however, is the price. Owing to the global AI pricing crunch that is driving up the cost of flash memory, Nintendo recently announced price hikes, bringing the MSRP of the console to $499, a $50 increase. Today's deal means you're not only avoiding that recent hike, but you're actually saving on the original $449 MSRP too. A $399 Nintendo Switch 2 will sell out fast, so don't hang around if you're interested. Even the $427 deal is the best Switch 2 for returning customers

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.

You can also join the Tom's Hardware deals Discord for up-to-the-minute hardware deals.

In the modern age, password cracking is an activity that generally begets quite powerful hardware, usually high-powered GPUs. Hashing algorithms have gotten trickier, and brute-forcing them has become computationally expensive. It's only natural, then, that a new software project has come up to port the common hashcat cracking utility to the mighty... Gameboy Advance (GBA).

The gba-hashcat software is the brainchild of security engineer solstICE (Ice), to whom the question of "why" is seemingly answered with "why not." Running on an original GBA, the app can power through SHA256 hashes at 727 h/s. At that rate, the author estimates that one year's worth of gba-hashcat would be equivalent to one second of a modern GPU-accelerated rig.

The GBA's main processor is an ARM7TDMI chip, a 32-bit RISC affair clocked at all of 16.8 MHz. It connected to most of its data buses and memory on a 16-bit bus, though, and the machine only carried 288 KB of RAM, plus 98 KB of VRAM. Most password-cracking software makes use of precomputed tables to help speed the repeated attempts along, but given that standard GBA cartridges are limited to 32 MB in size, all that Ice could include was the ignis-1M (one million) word list that rings in at 8 MB.

The software itself is quite small, given that Ice made good use of the Butano engine, a library that allows developers to easily write GBA games using plain C++ code. The gba-hashcat user interface is quite sparse, showing only an intro screen, progress statistics, and the current password attempt. It's not like you need much more for this application, save perhaps for a "please be patient" message.

In the GitHub commit, Ice calls gba-hashcat "[their] dumbest app of all time." That's quite the statement, but X commenters were quick to request networking support so they could make a cluster of password-cracking Gameboys, an idea that may have merit considering the price of graphics cards these days. At any rate, joke all you want, but for the one really important password retrieval I was once tasked with — recovering access to an Excel payroll sheet — even the original Gameboy would have sufficed. The password was "123".

The CEO of GameStop — one of the world's largest video game retailers — has said that Sony’s decision to halt the production of physical game discs in 2028 is “totally irrelevant” to the company's business. Speaking to BloombergTech in an interview on Thursday, July 16, Ryan Cohen made the comments while responding to questions on how console makers’ going disc-less might affect GameStop amid the company's controversial bid to buy eBay.

When asked, “If the hardware makers are reportedly moving to disc-less on the console side, future game launches are digital only, where does that fit in for the business plan?” Cohen responded, “It doesn’t matter at all. Software, it mattered in the past. Software today makes up less than 12% of the business, and collectables makes up over half the business. So, it’s totally, totally irrelevant.”

Cohen's characterization doesn't exactly match GameStop's own filings, but the underlying trend does. In fiscal year 2025, the company reported total net sales of $3.63 billion. At $729.3 million, Software — which includes physical game discs, game cartridges, and digital download codes by GameStop’s classification — accounted for 20.1% of the total, the lowest among the company's product categories. Collectibles brought in $1.06 billion at 29.2 percent, while hardware and accessories — including new and pre-owned hardware, accessories, hardware bundles, interactive figures, strategy guides, and mobile/consumer electronics — remained the largest single line at $1.84 billion, or 50.7 percent.

The year-on-year growth figures also appear to support Cohen's stance, with software revenue dropping 27% in FY24 and hardware revenue dropping 12%. Meanwhile, revenue from collectibles — covering apparel, toys, trading cards, gadgets, other pop-culture products, and submission services for authentication and grading of trading cards — grew by 47%.

Much of the Bloomberg interview was focused on Cohen's somewhat controversial bid for eBay. GameStop began accumulating eBay stock on February 4 and delivered an unsolicited, non-binding proposal on May 3 to acquire all outstanding shares at $125 apiece, split evenly between cash and GameStop stock — an offer valuing eBay at roughly $56 billion, against GameStop's own market capitalization of around $10 billion. eBay's board rejected it on May 12, with chairman Paul Pressler writing that the board had determined the proposal was "neither credible nor attractive." Cohen has said he intends to take the offer directly to eBay shareholders.

RPCS3, a multi-platform open-source PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger, has revealed that 2,681 of the total 3,559 PS3 titles are now compatible with its software, meaning a huge majority of games can now be played on Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. The developers of the app said on X that RPCS3 is continually being worked on and that they’re targeting full preservation of the entire PS3 library. This is an important development for PlayStation 3 owners and enthusiasts, especially as Sony said that it will stop making physical game discs by 2028 and shut down the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita a year before that.

Ensuring that over 2,600 games are compatible with your emulation is no mean feat, especially for a project that’s mostly supported by Patreon and volunteers. The team has already achieved more than 75% compatibility with the entire PS3 library, with less than a thousand titles needing to be worked on. Of this, 816 are now playable but encounter serious glitches or performance problems, 60 reach the game’s main menu but fail to load past that, while only two titles initialize but are stuck on a black screen. If you want to check if you can now play your favorite PS3 title on your PC, you can go to the RPCS3 compatibility page and type in the name of the game.

This is a huge win for the game preservation community, as this would ensure that you can continue playing your PS3 game library even if your console no longer works. The beautiful thing about RPCS3 is that it works with a lot of different hardware — aside from support for Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, it’s also compatible with both x86 and arm64, so you can install it on some of the best handheld gaming PCs to play your PS3 games on the go.

Emulation is quite controversial among game publishers and developers, and many companies have historically taken steps against those who make these apps. However, the courts have said that emulation isn’t necessarily illegal, as long as the people who use them only play games that they’ve already paid for. In fact, the Patreon page of RPCS3 was once hit by a DMCA takedown request from Atlus, the maker of Persona 5, arguing that “no version of the P5 game should be playable on this platform; and [the RPCS3] developers are infringing on our IP by making such games playable.”

While it ultimately failed in its request, it showed how some companies think that their games should only be played on the platform that they designed it for. They argue that emulators might introduce performance issues, meaning players will not get the optimal experience when playing their games. However, RPCS3 has proven that emulators could deliver a similar (or even better) performance than the PS3, with newer versions getting a 5% to 7% boost in FPS numbers compared to previous builds and even hitting more than 1500 FPS on the Minecraft title screen.

For years, the PS5 emulation scene has remained dormant, with updates few and far between as most projects become abandonware. However, Sony's recent decision to stop physical disc production and the impending release of GTA VI later this year have created an unprecedented demand in the market. All of a sudden, an influx of PS5 emulators has popped up online, and they're swiftly hitting development milestones, including actually being able to boot recent PS5 titles.

The most prominent name in the news cycle is SharpEmu, which serves as a PS5 emulator for Windows. It's written entirely in C# and works more like a translation layer since modern consoles and PC share the same x86 underlying architecture. SharpEmu allows the PC to execute CPU instructions natively while translating OS-specific API calls and graphics.

Since it's aiming for accuracy, only some 2D titles such as Dreaming Sarah are running on SharpEmu with solid performance and no hiccups. As far as 3D titles go, that's a different story since it's significantly harder to emulate those. At first, the PS5 remake of Demon's Souls successfully booted, but it didn't go past the startup screen. Then, in a major development, Discord user RShantila was able to boot Astro Bot, which is a PlayStation exclusive from 2024, on SharpEmu.

Getting such a recent game to run is extremely promising and shows that PS5 emulation is currently outpacing PS4 emulation at the same point in its life cycle. And SharpEmu is just one project among what's starting to seem like a sea of hopes and dreams.

The other emulator gaining traction is KytyPS5, which started as a cross-platform PS4 and PS5 emulator in 2021 but was abandoned in 2022. Fast forward four years and developer Nmzik has revived the project, creating their own fork that focuses only on PlayStation 5. According to reports online, within just a few weeks, KytyPS5 can boot commercial PS5 games running in Unreal Engine 4/5, Unity, and other custom engines.

KytyPS5 was able to boot and run Silent Hill: The Short Message till the menu screen. Remember, 3D games were previously limited to just their boot screens, so this is yet another major accomplishment. However, earlier today, the project's GitHub page was updated to show two new 3D games actually running with their graphics being properly rendered, shattering all expectations set thus far.

These two games are PowerWash Simulator and Pac-Man World, both of which are playable with functional gameplay, though we don't have any idea about performance or stability. Even more impressively, and perhaps more on-topic, the KytyPS5 version 0.0.3 successfully booted the commercial PS5 version of Grand Theft Auto V far enough to display the loading screens, main splash art, and actually navigate the in-game display settings.

KytyPS5 has also recently received updates to its shader compiler for better graphics, better memory management that leads to faster load times, and better audio support as well. The emulator works on Windows for now, but a Linux version is also planned for the future.

Finally, we need to mention RPCSX, which isn't exactly an emulator but rather just a research project dedicated to better understanding both PS4 and PS5 software. The devs are still working on being able to boot games from the user interface, but in a race like this, you need every hand on deck, and the team behind RPCS3 is one of the most experienced in the field.

The PS5 emulation scene has suddenly exploded, and the pace of these developments is astonishing. At this trajectory, it won't be unreasonable to expect GTA V to actually run on SharpEmu or KytyPS5 by next month. That being said, emulation is a marathon that takes a long time to perfect, so it's almost guaranteed that the official PC version of GTA VI will be out long before the emulated version becomes playable.

A new Nintendo Switch dock shell has been designed to mimic the sleek undulating curves of the classic Nintendo 64 (N64). Dubbed the 64BITDOCK, this Switch accessory kit can be bundled with an 'N64 cart' that will help you keep your Switch Game Cards tidy. The 64BITDOCK is available now direct from the maker on Etsy, priced from $89.

In the assorted images of the 64BITDOCK from Nintendo Switch accessories specialist Krasivoe, you can see that the ‘N64’ cradles the Switch (Nintendo Switch / Switch 2 / LCD / OLED) horizontally, so the upper curves of the ‘N64’ are uninterrupted. Pleasingly, the ‘N64’ cart slot is actually useful here as a Nintendo Switch Game Card silo if you buy the optional magnetically secured storage receptacle (with 6 slots).

● Check out this product on Etsy

This is a cosmetic kit for your original Switch Dock

The 64BITDOCK is basically a snap-on cladding kit for your existing original Switch Dock. What you are buying is a set of “custom plates inspired by the iconic 64-bit console… [which] snap onto your Switch dock in seconds, transforming it into a nostalgic centerpiece while keeping all sides open to prevent overheating.”

The Krasivoe 64BITDOCK is available in light grey and ‘original’ charcoal finishes, with matching Game Card storage receptacles. For the dock plates alone, the Etsy store asks $89. If you want a Game Card cartridge holder, the price rises to $103. Worldwide shipping is $6.99.

This isn’t Krasivoe’s first retro-inspired Switch Dock makeover kit. It also sells the 8BITDOCK, 16BITDOCK, and CUBEDOCK. Fans of retro Nintendo consoles will surely know what those look like.

The market is overflowing with Nintendo Switch docks, so Krasivoe has cannily sought to offer some eye-catching differentiation in the form of this 64BITDOCK. Its $89 starting price is quite a premium offering, though, as it doesn’t even include docking hardware – it’s just a cosmetic 3D-printed shell for your original Nintendo Switch Dock. We see that you can get basic, fully functional Switch docks from $20 or $30 on Amazon, with original ‘toaster’ style replacements priced at about $40.

A Brazilian gamer who lost his Microsoft account and all his digital games has won a court order forcing the company to hand it all back, after support staff told him to simply repurchase his library. The user, who posts as Ordo_Liberal on Reddit, shared a screenshot of a small-claims ruling in the Xbox subreddit that gives Microsoft 15 days to restore access or face fines and roughly $400 (R$2,000) in damages. He said the account had two-factor authentication enabled when it was flagged and permanently suspended, and that none of Microsoft's recovery options allowed him to regain access before he filed his lawsuit.

According to the support emails he posted, Microsoft suspended the account after detecting what it described as unauthorized access, and said an investigation found the account's security information had been changed. The company treated the suspension as permanent and directed him to buy his games again rather than reinstating the ones already tied to the account.

Anyone with a large Microsoft account might want to take note here, because the suspension didn’t target a single game or console but the user’s entire account. Microsoft accounts can carry Xbox purchases, Windows licenses, store apps, 365, and OneDrive data, and a permanent suspension blocks all of it, even, as in this case, when you’ve got strong security and two-factor authentication set up.

Brazil's Consumer Defense Code and its small-claims track allow individuals to bring cases without a lawyer and without paying court costs, meaning Ordo_Liberal was able to take Microsoft to court without incurring any costs. If Microsoft misses the payment deadline, an additional 10% penalty will be imposed. While the damages awarded in this case are minor, it's notable that Microsoft has been compelled to restore the account and its contents, which runs counter to the standard platform position that customers license digital games rather than own them.

This, of course, is a first-instance small-claims judgment, not binding precedent, and it covers one account in one jurisdiction. Courts elsewhere have gone the other way. Chinese courts have recognized game accounts as inheritable property, while U.S. rulings generally treat games as revocable licenses. The case comes as both Microsoft and Sony push players away from physical media, with Xbox testing a way to convert discs into digital entitlements and Sony ending new PlayStation disc production in 2028. Microsoft hasn’t publicly commented on the ruling.

Gamers who find themselves “limited” by SteamOS capabilities can now more confidently install Windows on their Steam hardware. Valve just released the Steam Hardware - Windows Resources page on Steam, which contains Windows drivers for the Steam Deck LCD, Steam Deck OLED, and Steam Machine. This means that those who want to replace the stock SteamOS with Windows 11 on their devices can now do so more easily, and they don’t have to hunt around the internet for drivers just to ensure that all the parts and components on their console will play nicely with Windows.

The drivers on the page include those for the APU, graphics, SD Card reader, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Audio, depending on which Steam hardware you’re driving. However, Valve said, “We are providing these resources as is and are unfortunately unable to offer 'Windows on Steam Hardware' support. If you get stuck and need a way back to the default SteamOS, please follow these recovery instructions.”

This is the main reason why Valve refuses to subsidize the Steam Machine — since owners can essentially do whatever they want to the living room PC console, selling one does not automatically guarantee that the company will make back any discounts it offers through game sales. This is why even though the Steam Machine is highly rated for Steam Deck users who want to upgrade to a more powerful device, its relatively high price puts it at a disadvantage compared to competitors like the PS5 or Xbox.

Many gamers would likely prefer SteamOS over Windows, especially as it offers far less bloat than Microsoft’s operating system. Valve is in fact working on SteamOS to make it more compatible with a general release and allow it to be installed on hardware that features Intel CPUs/GPUs and Nvidia GPUs. But because many anti-cheat apps still aren’t compatible with Linux (hence, SteamOS), installing Windows on Steam hardware is currently the only way that gamers can enjoy titles that require them.

It’s unfortunate that SteamOS doesn’t have any dual-boot capabilities at the moment, as that would give gamers the best of both worlds — use Windows and accept the performance hit if they want to play games that require specialized anti-cheat apps and then switch to SteamOS for all the other titles they enjoy. Valve said that it’s already working on this capability, but hasn’t given a fixed timeline for when it will arrive.

A Change.org petition urging Sony to keep making physical PlayStation games has passed 172,000 signatures, six days after the company announced that it intends to stop producing discs for new games in January 2028. The petition, started by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian retailer PNP Games, climbed from around 12,000 signatures on its first day to more than 172,000 by the morning of July 7. Sony hasn’t responded, and the factory that prints its discs has already started moving some staff and equipment onto a different product.

Pearce launched the campaign the same day as Sony's announcement, and it gathered 40,000 names within 48 hours. The petition contends that a boxed download code is a revocable license rather than owned property, references Sony's recent removal of purchased movies from customer accounts, and lists the used-game trade among the jobs at risk. "We are not against digital," Pearce writes. "We are against digital being the only option."

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad estimated that Sony sold more than 70 million physical discs in 2025, even with digital purchases sitting at roughly 80% of full-game sales. Sony's PlayStation social accounts have stayed dormant since July 1.

Sony DADC's plant in Thalgau, Austria, produces about 600,000 discs a day, roughly half of them PlayStation titles, and has begun shifting some workers onto optical microlens production, DADC CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF Salzburg. The company has put €30 million ($34 million) into new equipment, according to Engadget, expects disc output to fall to about 10% of current volume by 2028, and plans to retrain roughly 300 staff rather than lay them off.

Optical microlenses steer and concentrate light across very small distances and appear in camera modules, AR and VR headsets, fiber-optic gear, and automotive lighting. Markus Streibl, head of micro optics at Sony DADC, said mass production could begin as early as 2027.

The PlayStation 6 is reportedly in development without a built-in disc drive, which would leave Sony's hardware team to reintegrate one if the company changed course. Sony's standalone PS5 disc drive has carried a one-per-order purchase cap since at least March last year, predating the disc announcement, and leaked PS6 specifications described in earlier reports frame any drive as an optional backward-compatibility accessory. Grand Theft Auto 6, easily the biggest game of the decade so far, will ship on PlayStation as a boxed download code with no playable disc, ahead of the 2028 cutoff.

Sony has told publishers they can still book disc runs for games released in 2027 or earlier, so existing physical libraries will keep working on supported consoles. Whether the fact that the petition is now pushing 200,000 signatures will compel Sony to move or abandon the January 2028 date is unclear; Sony delayed its 2021 shutdown of the PS3 and PS Vita stores after similar backlash, though that closure is now scheduled again alongside the disc decision.

Microsoft's gaming division, Xbox, will eliminate approximately 3,200 jobs over its 2027 fiscal year in an attempt to turn around its floundering business. The cuts include offloading four studios with plans to spin off another, though no announced first-party games are being canceled.

Around 1,600 of those jobs are being eliminated today, and the rest will occur throughout the rest of the year.

"We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses," Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wrote in a note to Xbox employees, pointing out that investments in studios and Game Pass did not add as much value as expected. She wrote that the business typically loses 64 cents for every dollar invested. "As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX." She wrote that she has a goal for Xbox to reach more than a billion people per day.

Xbox is selling Compulsion Games (South of Midnight) and Double Fine (Psychonauts, Kiln), back to their management as independent studios, along with their catalogs, intellectual property, and funding for their next games.

Meanwhile, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold to unidentified "new ownership" and will continue to work on Senua and State of Decay 3 with Xbox, respectively.

The fifth studio, Arkane, is entering consultation to review options due to France's strict labor laws. The company is currently working on Marvel's Blade and previously worked on Redfall and Deathloop.

In Sharma's letter, she wrote that changes will come to Activision, Bethesda and ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios. Some will focus more on popular franchise games. Bloomberg reports that ZeniMax will focus specifically on its biggest names, such as Fallout, Doom, The Elder Scrolls, Quake, and Wolfenstein.

Mojang and King will report directly to Sharma, who wrote that those two studios are the largest in terms of monthly active players, and bring "critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX." But in other areas, Sharma is greatly reducing the amount of management for a flatter organizational chart.

Xbox has also found its first-ever chief operating officer. Helen Chiang, the corporate vice president of the Minecraft business, was promoted to streamlining changes to how the business operates, including "end-to-end P&L responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services."

"These changes are about a bigger future for XBOX, not a smaller one," Sharma wrote. "The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we’ve seen before. This year, we’ll invest as much in XBOX as we ever have, but we’ll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making XBOX where the world plays and creates."

Microsoft's other recent moves include bringing more games exclusively to Xbox consoles, such as Gears of War: E-Day, returning to an all-caps "XBOX" brand, and more public discussion of Project Helix, the company's next home console that's also set to play PC games.

Sharma was named CEO of Xbox (then Microsoft Gaming) in February, succeeding Phil Spencer. Spencer built up Xbox with major acquisitions of Game Studios and a push to bring Xbox games everywhere with Game Pass.

Sony's one-per-order purchase limit on the PS5 Disc Drive, widely cited this week as a response to panic buying after the company said it will end physical disc production for new PlayStation games in January 2028, has been on PlayStation Direct since at least March 2025. Archived captures of the product page cited by HotHardware carry the same wording, "Due to high demand, there is a limit of 1 per order," more than a year before Sony's announcement. Meanwhile, the largest petition against the disc cutoff sat beyond 74,000 signatures on the morning of July 4th, closing in on its 75,000 goal.

Sony did add something to the product page this week: a bolded notice stating that from January 2028, newly released PlayStation games will be sold on the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only, and that discs for games released before that date will continue to play on supported consoles. We checked the live U.S. listing today and found both the new notice and the long-standing order limit, along with a line warning that household limits may apply.

The detachable drive, $79.99 at retail, is the only way to play physical games or Blu-ray movies on the PS5 Digital Edition and PS5 Pro, neither of which comes with one. eBay listings for the accessory reached $100 to $130 this week, according to HotHardware, which also noted that Best Buy stocks the drive at retail price with no order limit. Sony hasn't said whether it intends to keep manufacturing the drive after the disc cutoff, or how long the PlayStation Direct restriction will remain in place.

A Change.org petition organized by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian game retailer PNP Games, gathered more than 74,000 signatures in three days, and Push Square counted at least 15 separate petitions urging Sony to reverse course. The backlash has already spread beyond petitions, with various companies poking fun at Sony's decision, including GitHub, which announced that it'll begin offering CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a jab at the decision.

Regardless, Sony's disc manufacturing plans appear to be set in stone. PlayStation output accounts for roughly half of the volume at Sony DADC's plant in Thalgau, Austria, with new game disc orders making up around 20% of that share, CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF in comments reported by Wccftech. The site's roughly 300 workers are being retrained to produce optical microlenses, with mass production of the new line set to begin in early 2027, a year before the disc cutoff takes effect.

Brian “Biscuit” Watson, a game developer whose work spans four decades, recently went on YouTube to tell some of his stories. One of the most interesting revelations he shared on The Retro Collective was the existence of the PlayStation 1 controller prototype, called the PlayStation Puga, that housed an entire PlayStation 1 console. Watson said that this “handheld” was specifically built for the Brazilian market, which had tight import regulations, and was also intended to be manufactured within the country. It was also supposed to come with 4GB of memory that could hold 10 games, and four AA-sized batteries apparently power it and connect to your TV via an included cable.

The prototype was working really well, but it encountered issues with game titles that were intended for inclusion. “The unfortunate problem is that Sony licensing couldn’t get their act together about the royalty terms for each of the games. So, it’s like they’re trying to get in touch with Rockstar and a few other places, and they were wanting way too much in the way of royalties,” Watson said. “But what really stuck in my craw with that one was even if it was a Sony game, they had to negotiate with a separate unit of Sony, and they were never happy about how much royalty they were getting.”

Since the gaming controller and console combo was designed to sell at a low price, they expected to make only 10 cents per unit sold and were unhappy with the pricing. Since it seemed Sony would not be able to ship any games with the PS1 controller console, it canceled the entire project.

Watson actually showed the completed controller to the present audience, but it unfortunately doesn’t run. It does boot into the debug stub, but he doesn’t have any of the other required software to make it run. Still, it’s equipped with an Arm-based processor running at 650 MHz and emulated the PlayStation 1 pretty well. It also lasted about 20 hours on a single set of four AA batteries, which is an impressive feat for the time (and still is today). Nevertheless, the project was not wasted at the emulator built for that system eventually found its way into the Sony Xperia Play.

An unlucky gamer has taken to Reddit after their brand-new Steam Machine was hit with a "red line of death" after just 20 minutes of use. u/me_hill posted on the r/steammachine subreddit, saying that they played No Man’s Sky for just five minutes and then updated the machine before it bricked itself. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the Redditor could do much to troubleshoot the issue. The Steam website says that their particular issue, which is marked by the right half of the LED bar turning into a breathing red light paired with a solid red light on the indicator LED, indicates GPU failure, a possibly fatal issue harkening back to the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death.

Well, the Steam Machine was pretty cool for the 20 minutes that it worked from r/steammachine

Valve was only able to produce a limited number of Steam Machine units for its initial run, which is why it had to resort to a randomized queue to deter scalpers. While the company did not say how many consoles it had available, it’s likely still in the thousands (if not tens of thousands), meaning there’s some chance that it will ship units that will fail within the first year. For now, it seems that this Redditor’s post is an isolated incident and it’s unclear what caused the failure. u/me_hill said that they already put in a ticket to Steam support, but they haven’t updated yet on whether the company has responded already.

The Steam Machine is one of the most anticipated console releases in the past few years, which has been delayed for several months. It was also released at a relatively high price of $,1049, making it even more expensive than the PlayStation 5 Pro, as Valve cannot afford to subsidize the hardware with video game sales. It was initially thought that the living room PC console would launch at around $750, but as the company announced it amid a memory shortage, its engineers said that the company had to increase the price by around the same level that the Steam Deck experienced in May 2026.

This is certainly a disappointment for u/me_hill, who probably initially felt quite lucky as they were one of the selected few given the privilege of buying the first batch of Steam Machines. In an ironic twist of fate, they were also incredibly unlucky to become one of the first victims of the “red line of death,” an early nickname for the failure and a nod to the “red ring of death” that indicated a critical hardware failure on the Xbox 360 launched around 20 years ago. Nevertheless, other Redditors commented that this is par for the course for customers who buy the first run of a product, with the Redditor themselves saying, “That’s early adoption, I guess.”

We’re hoping that Valve can address this issue for u/me_hill as soon as possible, and that they don’t have to wait months before they can get their hands on a replacement unit, despite its limited stock. In the meantime, they’ll have to settle with their existing equipment (or maybe even get one of the best budget gaming laptops instead) while they’re waiting for their Steam Machine to be fixed.

Yesterday, Sony revealed that the PlayStation Store will be shutting down for PS3 and PS Vita consoles in July 2027. The irony seemed to be lost on the company, pairing up a disc-killing announcement for the future of PlayStation with news that literally serves as proof of why that's a bad idea. Regardless of the rationale, digital archivists are now kicking into gear to preserve PS3 game data with whatever time they have left, and it seems like RPCS3 is leading the awareness campaign.

RPCS3 is a huge name in the emulation scene. These guys are responsible for the most prominent PS3 emulator out there right now, having recently made a breakthrough in performance for all tiers of hardware. RPCS3 is open source, so naturally the project gravitates towards a preservationist culture where everything must be protected for future generations to come.

Emulators are only as good as the software available to run on them, so these efforts are inextricably tied together. The RPCS3 team suggests using no-intro.org, which is a database that tracks everything that needs to be saved. It doesn't directly host any ROMs; rather, it hosts metadata such as cryptographic signatures (hashes like CRC32, MD5, SHA-1), exact file sizes, serial numbers, and revision histories.

It serves as a ledger for the community, so it knows what has already been verified and backed up, and what still needs to be found before it's permanently removed from storefronts. RPCS3 is actually built around no-intro.org since it features automated integrity checks for PSN content. It can check your dumped .pkg file and tell you whether it's corrupt and precisely what's missing if it is.

For instance, to troubleshoot a niche, digital-only PS3 game that doesn't emulate well on RPCS3, the team would need to look at the original, optimized copy of the game first to understand how it should work. Since the game isn't popular, there's a high chance no one ever bothered to dump it — no-intro.org actively tries to prevent this from happening thanks to its contributors knowing exactly what to archive.

Once PSN goes down for PS3 next year, we will be at risk of losing a goldmine of content that was never preserved in its physical form. With the state of the gaming and hardware industry in general, there hasn't been a warning call like this in ages that has reminded people just how illusory an all-digital future could be.

Hardware is so expensive right now that even researchers from Google are suggesting cloud gaming as the way forward, or that leasing silicon would be more viable than buying it. PlayStation stopping disc production in 2028, with Xbox rumored to follow, means that it won't be long before ownership becomes an ephemeral concept cloaked by debates on efficiency and convenience, all while the actual art itself becomes lost media.