The Ayaneo Next II pushes past 3 pounds, is 13 inches wide, and costs up to $4,300. In 2023, we marveled at the sheer mass of Lenovo’s Legion Go, a 1.88-pound, 11.8-inch-wide monstrosity of a Windows gaming handheld. In 2026, though, Ayaneo unveiled details of its Next II handheld,…
SpaceMolt envisions a world where AI plays with itself and the humans just watch. For a couple of weeks now, AI agents (and some humans impersonating AI agents) have been hanging out and doing weird stuff on Moltbook’s Reddit-style social network. Now, those agents can also gather together on…
Analysts expect Valve might be hit particularly hard by soaring RAM, storage prices. After writing two November stories analyzing price expectations for Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine, I really didn’t think we’d be offering more informed speculation before the official price was revealed. Then Valve wrote a blog post this…
Hamster Corp.’s new “Console Archives” does what Nintendon’t. In 2018, we lamented as Nintendo officially replaced the Virtual Console—its long-running line of downloadable classic games on the Wii and Wii U—with time-limited access to a set of games through a paid Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Now, Hamster Corporation is…
C:ArsGames looks at a vanguard of the multimedia FMV future that never quite came to pass. It’s Christmas of 1994, and I am 16 years old. Sitting on the table in our family room next to a pile of cow-spotted boxes is the most incredible thing in the world:…
Romero, Carmack, and colleagues discuss an oft-forgotten piece of PC gaming history. If you know anything about the history of id Software, you know how 1992’s Wolfenstein 3D helped establish the company’s leadership in the burgeoning first-person shooter genre, leading directly to subsequent hits like Doom and Quake. But…
Firaxis’ Ed Beach and Dennis Shirk talk major overhauls in “Test of Time” update. It has been difficult at times for new mainline releases in the Civilization series of games to win over new players right out of the gate. For Civilization VII—which launched just shy of one year…
Visual upgrades include new UI, realistic snow cover, better lighting. Back in November, Cities: Skylines 2 publisher Paradox made the surprising announcement that longtime series developer Colossal Order would be ceasing work on the series as part of a “mutual” breakup. Now, we’re getting our first glimpse into the kinds…
Despite proof-of-concept video, EA’s Frostbite Engine servers are difficult to pick apart. On January 12, EA shut down the official servers for Anthem, making Bioware’s multiplayer sci-fi adventure completely unplayable for the first time since its troubled 2019 launch. Last week, though, the Anthem community woke up to a…
No display? No problem for the UART-to-web-server “Doombuds” project. Over the years, hackers and modders at large have made it their mission to port classic first-person shooter Doom to practically anything with a display. Recently, though, coder Arin Sarkisan has taken the “Can it Run Doom?” idea in an…
