Thanks to today's Nintendo Direct focused on third-party games, we now know the identity of two of the four Xbox titles that Microsoft pledged to release on "the other consoles." One of them is Pentiment, which is coming to Nintendo Switch on February 22 (i.e. tomorrow). The other is multiplayer title Grounded, which will arrive on Switch on April 16.

Pentiment debuted on Xbox, PC and Xbox Cloud Gaming in late 2022, and it was well received by critics. The RPG has an eye-catching historical art style that fits the story a small team at Obsidian wanted to tell. Still, it's a bit of a niche game and one that game director Josh Sawyer admits would never have been possible without Game Pass.

"The old mentality of publishers and developers is generally focused on larger investments with higher [return on investment], and that's not the point in this environment, in this ecosystem," Sawyer told Waypoint Radio, as noted by Eurogamer. "[Game Pass] is the only way in which I conceive of [Pentiment] being viable."

That makes it particularly intriguing that Xbox picked Pentiment as one of the four games it's bringing to other consoles (it's worth noting that the number of Game Pass subscribers hasn't actually grown much over the last couple of years). Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said earlier this month the titles in question had all been on Xbox and PC for at least a year and that they had reached their "full potential" on those platforms. 

Two of the games are community-driven (i.e. multiplayer titles), and Grounded is clearly one of those. The Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-inspired survival game has been around for a few years. It debuted in early access in July 2020 before its full release in September 2022.

The other two games crossing the great divide are "smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build," Spencer said. Pentiment more or less falls into that category and had been rumored as one of the games to hit Switch and/or PlayStation. The other two Xbox games expected to come to other consoles are Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves.

Amazon has been looking to bolster Twitch's bottom line for a while. After laying off around 500 workers and reducing how much streamers make from Prime subscriptions, the streaming service is increasing the price of its subscriptions for the first time.

Twitch says it's "updating prices in several countries to help streamer revenue keep pace with rising costs and reflect local currency fluctuations." The first markets to feel the impact of those changes are the UK, Canada, Australia and Turkey.

As of March 28, Tier 1 subscriptions and gift subs will be more expensive in the UK, Canada and Australia. A base/gift sub is going up from £5 to £6 in the UK, $7 CAD to $8 in Canada and $8 AUD to $9 in Australia. Tier 2 and 3 prices will remain the same in those countries.

In Turkey, Twitch is significantly increasing the price of all three tiers. For instance, a Tier 1 sub will soon cost 43.90 lira ($1.42) instead of 9.90 (32 cents) — the value of the Turkish lira has plummeted over the last 15 years.

These price changes only apply to subscriptions bought on the web. Twitch says it will update prices on its mobile apps in the coming months. It's currently more expensive to buy a sub on the Twitch iOS app. The service also expects to update pricing in other countries later this year.

On the plus side, streamers will have the same revenue share, so they'll earn more from subscriptions in the UK, Canada, Australia and Turkey. Twitch recently announced changes to streamer payouts from Prime subscriptions. They'll soon earn a (generally lower) fixed amount for each Prime sub, dispensing on the subscriber's location. Meanwhile, it'll soon be easier for smaller streamers to qualify for the Partner Plus program and benefit from a better subscription revenue split.

After months of rumors, OnePlus has announced its second smartwatch. It will formally debut the OnePlus Watch 2 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. The company is notorious for drip feeding details about its products and while it has yet to reveal some key information about the wearable, OnePlus has offered up a few juicy morsels.

For one thing, the company has made the lofty claim that the OnePlus Watch 2 will run for up to 100 hours on a single charge. That’s with “full Smart Mode” enabled rather than a battery saver mode, according to OnePlus. 

Obviously, we’ll need to see how well the OnePlus Watch 2 actually fares in the wild, but that purported battery life far exceeds that of most mainstream smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch Series 9 (18 hours) and Pixel Watch 2 (24 hours with always-on display enabled). OnePlus president Kinder Liu says the company's goal for the device is to "win the title of the Best Flagship Smartwatch of the year with its market-beating battery life."

The wearable apes the design language of the OnePlus 12 series, according to the company. It has a stainless steel chassis and a sapphire crystal watch face. The OnePlus Watch 2 will be available in two colorways, Black Steel and Radiant Steel.

OnePlus promises "unparalleled reliability for everyday use and meticulous health monitoring" too, but it's keeping other key details under wraps for now, including pricing and the release date. One other factor the company hasn't confirmed is what operating system the OnePlus Watch 2 will use. Reports have suggested that it will run on Wear OS, which will hopefully help the smartwatch fare much better than its poorly received predecessor. Liu indicated the company was aware of the tepid response to the OnePlus Watch, noting that it took a "three-year hiatus and a reflective pause" between wearables.

The PlayStation Portal has turned out to be a bit of a surprise hit for Sony. The portable peripheral is often out of stock and hard to come by, even though it does just one thing: stream games from your own PlayStation 5. The device does not run games locally — unless you find a way to modify it to do so.

Two Google engineers claim to have done just that by getting PPSSPP, a PlayStation Portable emulator, to work natively on the Portal. A photo shows Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories running on the system. Andy Nguyen, one of the engineers, says that no hardware modifications were required to make the emulator run and that the project took “more than a month of hard work” to see through.

Nguyen has discovered PS4 and PS5 exploits in the past, as The Verge notes. It’s not yet clear whether Nguyen will detail how to get PPSSPP working or release a jailbreak so that other folks can install the emulator on the Portal with relative ease. “There’s no release planned in the near future, and there’s much more work to be done,” Nguyen wrote on X. However, Nguyen hinted at posting some videos this weekend to show the emulator in action.

The Portal is clearly popular and it’s evident that players yearn to be able to do more with the system. As things stand, they can't even stream games from Sony's cloud gaming service. Perhaps these factors might be enough to convince Sony to give many fans what they truly want: a proper handheld successor to the PSP and the Vita.

Apple Music is building on its annual Replay feature by offering a monthly version. The annual Replay playlist will still be available, but the monthly option should offer a more granular look at your listening history.

Simply visit replay.music.apple.com and sign in with the same Apple ID you use for Apple Music. You'll be able to view your top songs, albums and artists, as well as your personal milestones for each month. Apple will archive these stats as well, so you can revisit them later.

I don't exactly need Apple to tell me that I spent much of the last few weeks listening to Deacon Blue, Charlotte Cardin and Gang of Youths' blistering cover of LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" on repeat. Still, being able to revisit my February 2024 replay years from now should provide a nice little reminder as to what I was absorbing in this period of my life.

The Biden administration is granting $1.5 billion in funding to GlobalFoundries to bolster semiconductor production under the CHIPS Act. The company, which spun out from AMD in 2009 and also has access to $1.6 billion in loans from the CHIPS Program Office, will split the cash between three projects.

First, GlobalFoundries will build a new fabrication facility in Malta, New York, where it aims to produce "high value technologies not currently available in the US," the Department of Commerce said in a statement. GlobalFoundries says it will use the facility to build chips for a range of industries and applications, including the automotive, aerospace, defense and AI spaces. Construction is expected to start in 2025.

Secondly, GlobalFoundries plans to expand its existing facility in Malta by incorporating tech from its Singapore and Germany plants with the aim of making more semiconductors for use in cars and trucks. This expansion, combined with the new fab, will enable GlobalFoundries to triple the capacity of its Malta campus over the next decade or so. Once all phases of both projects are complete, GlobalFoundries expects to increase wafer production to 1 million per year across the plants.

Last but not least, the remaining funding will go toward modernizing an existing fab in Burlington, Vermont. The aim is to build the first US plant capable of high-volume manufacturing of next-generation gallium nitride on silicon semiconductors for electric vehicles, smartphones, the power grid and other key technologies. The plant will use entirely carbon-free energy, while an on-site solar system will provide up to nine percent of annual power needs.

Through public-private partnerships, GlobalFoundries plans to invest more than $12 billion into the sites over the next 10-plus years. New York is also supporting the Malta projects with $575 million in performance-based Green CHIPS tax credits, while the New York Power Authority is investing at least $30 million.

The Department of Commerce says the three projects are expected to create 1,500 manufacturing positions and around 9,000 construction jobs over the next 10 years. The positions are slated to pay fair wages and offer benefits including childcare.

Aligned with the broader aims of the CHIPS Act, the investment is designed to improve domestic semiconductor supply chains. GlobalFoundries says that there are only four companies that can deliver "current and mature foundry capabilities" at its scale outside of China, and it's the only one of those based in the US.

Last year, the company reached a direct supply agreement with GM to provide the automaker with US-built processors and help it avoid the kinds of chip shortages that caused a significant slowdown in car manufacturing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. GlobalFoundries agreed to create an exclusive capacity corridor for GM chips. GlobalFoundries struck a chip deal with Ford in 2021 as well.

It’s rarely a bad idea to have an extra controller on hand. Being able to switch to another gamepad when the battery runs out is always welcome, and you don't want to be caught short when a buddy wants to hop into a local multiplayer game with you. Being able to toss an extra controller and a phone clip into your bag for cloud gaming is useful too. So you may be pleased to find out that the official Xbox Wireless Controller is on sale. It’s down to $44 in its white, black and red variants, and it's available in other colorways for $49.

The price hasn’t quite hit the previous record low of $39, but it’s still a decent deal. The peripheral usually retails for $60.

The latest version of the controller is designed for the Xbox Series X/S. It retains the layout that Xbox fans have become used to over the last two decades. The face buttons and triggers are responsive and the joysticks are smooth. While it doesn’t have the adaptive triggers and immersive haptics of Sony’s PS5 gamepad, the Xbox Controller’s d-pad is clickier than the one on the DualSense.

The peripheral also pairs easily with Windows PC, phones and tablets via Bluetooth, while the dedicated Share button for capturing screenshots and gameplay clips is handy. One thing worth bearing in mind is that the Xbox controller runs on AA batteries. So, unless you want to be regularly swapping out batteries, it may be worth picking up a set of rechargeable AAs or a rechargeable battery pack.

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While it's not quite on the level of Black Friday, there are often solid bargains to be found over President's Day weekend. Case in point: several iPad models are on sale. There's a particularly good deal on the 10th-gen iPad, which is $100 off to match a record low price of $349 at both Amazon and Best Buy.

We gave the 10th-gen iPad a score of 85 in our late-2022 review. This base variant does not include a cellular connection and it uses the A14 Bionic chip rather than one of Apple's more powerful silicon chipsets. It also has a relatively paltry 64GB of storage. Still, as an entry-level iPad for browsing the web, catching up on emails and watching video on that capable 10.9-inch Liquid Retina display, the 10th-gen model more than does the trick.

If you have a compatible router and decent internet plan, you should get fairly zippy connectivity from this iPad thanks to its Wi-Fi 6 support. The first-gen Apple Pencil works with the tablet as well to help you sketch or doodle on the screen.

If you don't mind making some tradeoffs to save some more cash, you can instead pick up the 9th-gen iPad for a near-record low of $249. This model still has a Home button (Apple moved Touch ID to the lock button on the 10th-gen tablet), meaning it has a smaller display of 10.2 inches. While it has a slower A13 bionic chip, the 9th-gen iPad is still a solid option for basic tasks.

Last but not least, the fifth-gen iPad Air is on sale too. The price has dropped to a record low of $449 if you opt for the purple variant. Although the storage remains at 64GB, the iPad Air offers a significant upgrade over the standard iPads, since it uses Apple's more powerful M1 chip. It supports the more feature-filled 2nd-gen Apple Pencil as well.

It's worth noting that Apple certainly has iPad upgrades in the pipeline. The company may refresh the lineup as soon as next month. But if you can't (or don't want to) wait, these are still good deals.

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The Xbox Series S is our recommendation for the best cheap game console for several reasons, not least because it's an excellent entry point into modern gaming. Even better, the most budget-friendly Xbox is on sale at Target. The price of a starter bundle has dropped from $300 to $220, making the Series S an even sweeter deal.

The Xbox Series S Starter Bundle comes with three months of Game Pass Ultimate access (a value of $51). As such, it has pretty much everything you need to dive into modern games, save for a display and a decent internet connection. The latter is particularly key as the Xbox Series S is an all-digital console. There's no disk drive, so you won't be able to pop in an Xbox 360 or Xbox One disk and play that. Instead, the Series S relies entirely on digital downloads and cloud streaming.

The Series S isn't as powerful as its sibling, the Xbox Series X. While you'll often be able to play at a resolution higher than 1080p, the Series S won't natively hit 4K visuals. The Series S has half as much built-in storage as the Series X too given its custom 512GB solid state drive.

That means you'll either need to delete games often to make room for new ones or make more use of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate's cloud streaming feature. The subscription service includes access to a ton of games, from first-party titles (such as the Halo series, Starfield and Forza Horizon 5) to blockbuster third-party games (various Assassin’s Creed titles, Hitman World of Assassination, Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order) to killer indies (Cocoon, Jusant, Venba and Tunic).

Microsoft also just revealed when it will start bringing Activision Blizzard titles to Game Pass after completing its purchase of the publisher in October. Diablo IV is coming to the service on March 28, adding even more value to one of the best subscription services in gaming.

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Times are a-changing at Xbox. The brand's leaders have confirmed plans to bring more Xbox games to other platforms, most likely PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. 

On the latest edition of the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says his team is bringing four of its games to "the other consoles." He didn't name the titles, but contrary to previous rumors, Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are not coming to PS5 or Switch for now. 

"The teams that are building those games have announced plans that are not too far away. As we know, game teams put a lot of energy into their announcements with the partners," Spencer said. "So I don't want to take anything away from those teams. So I won't be talking about the titles specifically. But I think when they come out, it'll make sense."

Reports have suggested that Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Halo and Gears of War would be among those crossing the great divide. Spencer did confirm that the Xbox games that are coming to PlayStation and Switch have been on Xbox and PC for at least a year already. "A couple of the games are community-driven games, new games, kind of first iterations of a franchise that have reached their full potential, let's say, on Xbox and PC — there's always growth, franchises that we obviously want to continue to invest in," he said. 

"Two of the other games are smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives and all the fanfare that goes around that, but games that our teams really wanted to go build that we love supporting creative endeavors across our studios regardless of size," Spencer added. "And as they've realized their full potential on Xbox and PC, we see an opportunity to utilize the other platforms as a place to just drive more business value out of those games, allowing us to invest in maybe future iterations of those, so equals to those, or just other games like that in our portfolio."

This story is developing; refresh for updates.