Ars Technica Gaming

Last month, we passed along Modern Vintage Gamer's (MVG) confident assertion that Doom is functionally impossible to run on the Neo Geo, owing to the console's sprite-based display hardware and lack of a frame buffer. We all should have known better than to tell a dedicated group of hackers that something is "impossible," though, as two recent projects have made great progress toward functional Doom ports on stock Neo Geo hardware. Both of these projects have significant graphical compromises t

About a month ago, Valve announced that it would expand its long-standing Steam Deck Verified program to the now-shipping Steam Machine, offering a separate rating of Steam games' compatibility and playability for the fresh living room-focused hardware. Now that those ratings started appearing on Steam store pages last night (under a "Learn More" link next to Steam Deck Compatibility), we've found that Valve is frustratingly "still learning about" Steam Machine compatibility for dozens of games

In announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs across the Xbox division yesterday, CEO Asha Sharma focused on discussing cuts to the Xbox platform team and redundant layers of middle management. Now, though, word is filtering out about significant staffing cuts at remaining Microsoft-owned game developers including id Software and Bethesda. Apogee and 3D Realms founder Scott Miller—who helped publish some of id's earliest games—wrote on social media yesterday of "insider reports" that a majority of id ha

On Monday, Nintendo announced that it will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next February. That decision comes in response to European regulations that will soon require easily replaceable batteries in most consumer electronics. Rather than redesigning multiple original Switch models to comply with that regulation (as it is doing with the Switch 2), Nintendo has decided it will just stop selling the older console in the region. Those new battery rules won't affect the availability of t

Last month, Xbox executives laid out some "hard truths" about Microsoft's struggling gaming division that they said would require a difficult "Xbox reset." This morning, Microsoft revealed the brutal shape of that "reset," announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs and the divestment of five smaller studios that the company has spent years acquiring and shepherding. Half of those 3,200 layoffs are effective today, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wrote, while the other half will come by the end of Microsoft's 2

If I had to pick a chunk of the 1990s that feels the most 90s-ish to me, it'd be the two-year stretch between 1996 and 1997. 1996 saw me graduating from high school and starting college; 1997 saw me meeting my future wife and falling in love. While I tried to figure out how to navigate the University of Houston's still mostly pre-digital first-semester registration process (we had to sign up for classes over the phone, with touch-tone buttons, like cavemen!), the larger world kept turning in way

Some gamers are concerned about the future of game ownership after Sony's announcement today that it won’t produce physical discs for PlayStation games as of January 2028. On that date, “new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only,” Sony said in a blog post. Ditching discs is “a natural direction” for Sony “to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs," the post said. During Sony’s fisc

It seems to some of us like just yesterday—even though the transition began more than half a decade ago—that gamers were getting adjusted to spending $70 on AAA game releases at launch instead of $60, but as preorders begin this week for the wildly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, they're finding that at least that title will sell for $80. Additionally, disclaimers make it clear that the physical release of GTA6 will not include a physical disc. Instead, it will be a box with a download code ins

The Steam Machine is almost here. Valve chose possibly the worst time to announce new PC gaming hardware in late 2025, just as the AI boom sent storage and RAM prices through the roof. The upheaval delayed its new Steam Machine release, but Valve has announced its TV-friendly gaming PC will go on sale June 29 with a reservation-based system and a starting price of $1,049. The Steam Machine will come in two variations: one with 512GB of storage and a more expensive one with 2TB. They'll retail fo

For years, Valve's physical Steam gift cards have been the closest you could come to buying a Steam game at a brick-and-mortar store. Now, Valve says it is phasing out the production of new retail gift cards, citing a losing battle against scammers exploiting the hard-to-track payment method. PC Guide was among the first to note the end of Valve's retail gift card program, which was quietly announced in a recent update to a Steam support page. Since launching the retail cards in 2012, Valve says

One of the benefits of building an AMD PC is that the company has historically supported its processor sockets for longer than Intel does, allowing the same motherboard (and RAM kit, if you want) to power your PC through multiple CPU upgrades. Today at Computex, AMD announced chips for the current AM5 socket and the improbably-still-around AM4 socket that will help extend their lives a little further, a nod to just how expensive it has become to build a new PC or perform a major upgrade these da

When the Steam Deck OLED launched three years ago, we were glad to see that the new, more brilliant screen fixed the biggest flaw of Valve's original handheld hardware. So we're unsurprisingly excited about today's announcement that Asus is preparing a new, OLED-equipped ROG Xbox Ally X20 for the coming holiday season. Still, it's a bit worrying that Asus is positioning the new upgrade as a niche collector's item rather than its new handheld gaming standard. The X20 expands the 7-inch screen fou

These days, Nvidia primarily sells AI data center products, and its traditional consumer devices feel like more of a side project. But the company occasionally still releases something designed for consumers. After a couple of years of rumors, Nvidia has announced an Arm-based chip designed to power Windows PCs. Dubbed RTX Spark, the new chip combines a 20-core Nvidia Grace CPU co-developed with MediaTek, up to 6,144 Blackwell-based GPU cores (the same architecture as the RTX 50-series GPUs), an

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

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 use

If you owned a Windows computer in the late '90s or early '00s, you probably remember 3D Pinball for Windows - Space Cadet, a surprisingly competent virtual table included for free with multiple Microsoft OS releases through Windows XP. Despite the game's authenticity to real pinball, Space Cadet wasn't based on an extant physical table, but was merely one part of the Full Tilt! Pinball software collection sold by Maxis starting in 1995. In the intervening years, hobbyists and enthusiasts have d

I don't like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I know it's confusing, and I hope you will still respect me. I had to say that a lot back in 2015. When the game first came out, the community of critics and enthusiasts I was a part of went bananas for it, much in the same way the current crop of journalists and influencers rallied around Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in 2025—another game that didn't really work for me, if I'm being honest. The Witcher 3 was showered in accolades

When we reviewed the new Steam Controller last month, we noted how the satisfying click of the magnetic charging puck easily connecting to the back of the controller lets users “save the hassle of fiddling with a power cord.” But one Reddit user’s experience highlights how the exposed contacts on that puck can be a fire hazard if Steam Controller owners aren’t careful. On the r/SteamController subreddit, user Toikka shared how the metal portion of the charging puck “started sizzling due to a sho

Almost exactly two years ago, we were gawking at prototypes of 1,000 Hz monitors and wondering who really needed a display that could support such ludicrously smooth frame rates. Now that those prototypes are starting to develop into retail products, we're still wondering how much of a market there is for gaming displays that can update with a new frame every single millisecond. The latest entry in the ultra-fast refresh race is LG's 24.5" UltraGear 25G590B, which the company announced this week

"Build a civilization to stand the test of time." That was the promise on the box of Sid Meier's Civilization, the first in a long-running strategy game franchise that has evolved over 35 years and seven mainline entries. Civ 7 introduced a new approach to play wherein players would change civilizations from their initial selection twice by the end of a game. Lots of players said, "Wait a minute: we're literally not building a civilization to stand the test of time anymore." After such a negativ