Gaming

Yes, it’s bigger than the 3.8-liter Steam Machine and the 4.5-liter Framework Desktop, but nicnic’s DIY desktop oozes style — and fits Valve’s open-source “Inkterface” e-paper status screen. If you don’t care for slime green, why not print your own in any color you like? The files are free.

The game launches on Switch 2 on October 27th. Microsoft says there will be a “digital upgrade path” for players who own the game on the original Switch, though it’s planning to share more details on that later.

VILE: Exhumed had been banned last year following pressures from payment processors affecting Valve and other platforms, though the game was made free to download from its website. From the website, you can now sign up to be notified about an upcoming CD-ROM release, as reported by Polygon. It will cost $9.99 plus taxes and shipping when it’s available.

And it’s got its own little kickstand to prop it up separately?? WANT. Check out more photos of NefariousnessWhole25’s prototype (and a few other cool Steam Machine faceplates from Reddit) in our gallery below.

The new Pokémon book Pokécology has lots of fun details about various pocket monsters, but as Bulbapedia notes, some of the math might be off. I don’t know enough to check the numbers in the thread myself, but I know enough about Pokémon to say that maybe Spheal is just being a goofy guy.

Xbox Insiders will be able to choose if they want game chat and party chat audio in their captures, according to a blog post. Players can individually control if their voice is included in a capture.

Big Walk came out this week, and it seems like a hoot if you have friends or family to play with. It’s $14.99 (down from $19.99) on Steam. Peak, which popularized the “friendslop” subgenre of co-op games, is even cheaper at Fanatical. You can grab the game for $3.75 (usually $8) today.

Lenovo hasn’t replied to us yet, but we can see Lenovo’s BIOS page no longer shows the “N3CN42WW” version, only the earlier “N3CN40WW.” Earlier this week, PC Gamer reported that “N3CN42WW” was leaving some users’ devices stuck on a black screen.

The newly privatized company is now saddled with $18 billion of debt, with annual interest payments of about $1.8 billion. Big changes are coming to justify the deal.

It’s launching a new B550 X series “engineered to be the most powerful refresh of the AM4 platform,” which is now 10 years old, as PC Gamer reports. The new motherboards were designed around the Ryzen 7 8500X3D that AMD recently relaunched as component shortages continue to drive up prices.

The humble drawing app has gotten several useful upgrades over the past few years, but Mark Russinovich, the Microsoft Azure CTO, has found a way for Paint to play Doom… kind of. Instead of actually running the game, DoomPaint loads rendered frames into the app from the Windows clipboard at a very playable 35fps.

The company has been on a pretty solid run, and it looks like that could continue with the next Fire Emblem. Nintendo just showed off 20 minutes of Fortune’s Weave, getting into both the continent-spanning story and the nitty gritty of the strategy combat. It hits the Switch 2 on September 17th.

Deadline reports that Dave Bautista is in talks to take over the role, which has been vacant ever since original star Ryan Hurst was seriously injured on set. There’s no official word on casting from Amazon just yet.

Storing your many items in Pokopia is a huge chore, even if you like organizing. But the free update on August 5th will introduce a new shared storage item — anything stored inside will be accessible from other iterations of that item. That means a lot less running around trying to remember where you put all your copper.

According to Variety, the series will be a spin-off of Amazon’s 2024 Secret Level anthology series, which includes a Warhammer episode. It’s in development alongside the live-action Warhammer project Cavill’s also working on, and reportedly features the Deathwatch, “an elite group of Space Marines that specialize in hunting down alien threats.”

Nintendo’s next big Switch 2 exclusive — Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave — is also the subject of the company’s next Direct showcase. It streams August 4th at 10AM ET and will last around 20 minutes, according to Nintendo. The game, meanwhile, is launching on September 17th.

Batman: Caped Crusader - Chronicles lets you and up to three friends tackle mysteries based on the Caped Crusader Prime Video show. It’s a clear example of Amazon’s recent push to tie its gaming efforts more closely with its streaming properties.

As spotted by Android Authority, the new, unofficial Gen1Recomp port for the trio of classic Pokémon games also lets you easily add mods, like one that updates the games with cool 3D voxel graphics. You’ll need to use your own game ROM, though.

The servers for Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, which launched in 2024, will close down on October 30th, Kotaku reports. The shutdown follows an earlier announcement that the game would “progressively transition away from blockchain functionality.”

If you’re one of the folks who picked up a Virtual Boy headset for the Switch, Nintendo has a solid update coming your way: on August 4th two unreleased games are launching for subscribers, along with the option to adjust colors. Meanwhile, Super Mario Sunshine is being added to the Gamecube classics collection on August 13th.

Sony sold 1.6 million PlayStation 5 consoles, about a third fewer than last year at this time, and says it has plenty of memory for the foreseeable future:

Big Hops, an indie 3D platformer that launched earlier this year, was a blast solo, but now you can play the entire game co-op on Steam as part of a beta. As many as eight people can play at once, and it looks chaotic and wonderful.

In an SEC filing, EA said that as of today, it had obtained “all regulatory approvals required to complete the Merger.” The deal, announced in September, is expected to close “on or about the close of trading” on August 4th.

After announcing it’s shutting down Roblox Connect, Roblox said in its latest earnings report that it’s working on adding “integrated voice calls” and video chat, as alternatives to tools like Discord.

Apple recently started allowing alternative app marketplaces in Brazil following a long legal dispute, during which Epic originally announced that the store would be launching in the country.

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s been rolling the app out “over the past month” to supported TVs running Hisense’s VIDAA OS. The company announced earlier this year that the app was on the way.

The musical puzzler Lumines is making a return to smartphones with a new version billed as a remaster. It follows the excellent Lumines Arise from last year, and is available now on both Android and iOS; it’s a free download but costs $7.99 to unlock the full version.