Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a story about the old bugaboo we used to call DRM.

Digital Rights Management was the beast under every gamer’s bed in the mid-2000s, an invisible bit of software baked into game discs that dictated and tracked player behavior under the guise of preventing piracy. DRM software, like SecuROM, limited the times a game could be downloaded and forced players to regularly connect to the internet for authentication checks, at a time when less than half of American adults had reliable broadband connections. DRM features soured the releases of BioShock, Mass Effect and Spore, and by 2010, anti-piracy software had rendered Assassin’s Creed 2 and Splinter-Cell: Conviction unplayable. When Microsoft attempted to release the Xbox One with always-on DRM features in 2013, intense vitriol from fans forced the company to reverse its plans at the 11th hour. There were lawsuits. DRM was a curse word.

Meanwhile, Valve was building out Steam. When it landed in 2003, the digital PC storefront was designed to streamline the patch process for games like Counter-Strike and make it easier for Valve to implement anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures. Steam was made to be a DRM machine. In 2004, with the release of Half-Life 2, Valve made Steam a requirement for every player, and even those who’d purchased new, physical copies of the game had to boot up the launcher first. There was some low-level grumbling, but PC players were used to being lab rats, and Half-Life 2 was good enough to drown out the dissent. Steam adoption skyrocketed. So, naturally, Valve turned it into a store for third-party games.

While other publishers were fighting with players over DRM features in individual titles and consoles, Steam quietly added dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of games each year. Today, Steam has 132 million monthly active users and an estimated 103,000 games, more than any other mainstream distribution service. Nearly all of these titles are playable only while connected to Steam — even after paying full price, even after downloading, even in offline mode. This has done nothing to stop Steam from becoming more essential to more players each year.

“Competition is good, but the PC market has no competition,” Super Meat Boy co-creator Tommy Refenes told Engadget in 2018. “There is only Steam.”

The widespread adoption of anti-piracy software marked an era in video games where players felt like they didn’t really own the products they were buying. And then, this practice became normal. Broadband saturation continued to climb, the market for physical media dissolved into pixelated dust and streaming entertainment media found its foothold. Today, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Epic Games and most major publishers have their own digital stores with proprietary DRM features. However, Steam is entrenched as the industry’s largest DRM machine because it’s the most popular digital games storefront, period. And if the last 20 years are any indication, that’s not going to change any time soon.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of our collective Steam libraries, representing trillions of dollars in purchased games, expelling a dusty sigh of relief. Because if Steam disappears, all of our games do too.

It’s a chilling thought — Steam’s demise would enact immediate, catastrophic chaos across the video game industry, gutting players’ libraries and cutting off one of the most direct points of sale for developers of all sizes. Steam feels too big to fail, and Valve operates it as such. Valve is a private company valued at $6.5 billion in 2021, and CEO Gabe Newell, himself, is a billionaire. The studio is similar to Nintendo in that it’s able to ignore gaming trends and carry on doing whatever it wants at any given time, while Steam prints money and its most ardent fans cheer the studio on with friendly memes. Hail, Gaben!

Steam popularized the 70/30 revenue split, giving developers on the platform 70 percent of the money their games generate and pocketing the rest. Apple and Google copied this formula with their mobile app stores. When it debuted in 2018, the Epic Games Store shaped its entire marketing campaign around taking on Steam and dismantling its rev-share ratio, claiming it was exploitative and unfair, especially to indies. Epic offered every developer an aggressive split of 88/12, and CEO Tim Sweeney literally dared Valve to match it.

Valve barely blinked. The studio shifted its Steam payout schedule slightly, offering a 75 percent cut on games that made more than $10 million, and 80 percent on anything that brought in more than $50 million. Epic eventually shifted its attention away from Valve and moved to a more vulnerable target in the rev-share space: Apple.

“If you were running a store without competition and you were making billions of dollars a year, how much time and energy would you dedicate to making it better?” Refenes asked in 2018, during the launch of the Epic Games Store. “How much money would you spend to improve the experience for everyone that uses it, if the end result is you would make the same or possibly less money? My answer is, The minimum amount of time, effort and money required.”

Valve has become more hands-off with Steam as it’s aged. In the platform’s early days, developers would pitch their games to actual people at Valve, who would launch a handful of projects on the storefront every week, ensuring plenty of attention for each title. For small studios, getting a game on Steam was like hitting the jackpot. This changed in 2012, when Valve implemented Greenlight, a process that allowed players to choose which games would make it to Steam (after developers submitted a $100 entry fee). Greenlight eventually evolved into Early Access — a system still around today and the standard on other platforms too — and the number of games on Steam rose astronomically in just a few years.

In 2013, Steam added 435 new games, according to Steamdb. In 2017, it added 6,947 games. This was a tumultuous period for developers, especially those who started production when Steam was a curated space, but ended up releasing their games into an unregulated and oversaturated marketplace.

Indie developers Ben Ruiz and Matthew Wegner began building the stylish brawler Aztez in 2010, and it received a ton of pre-release hype. Aztez finally went live on Steam on August 1, 2017, but was immediately lost in the crowd.

“There were 40 other games that launched on August 1,” Wegner told Engadget in October 2017.

Ruiz added, “If I was paying attention to Steam, maybe I wouldn’t be so blindsided by what happened, but I’m also not necessarily sure what I would’ve done differently. If I’d have known like, oh, it’s a saturated market now — what the fuck do you do? …There’s a billion indie games that come out on Steam every single day.”

Today, Steam is a self-sustained game-distributing machine with more than 100,000 titles and counting. Getting on Steam no longer equates instant success for any developer, but it’s a necessary aspect of most release plans. There are other options: GOG, operated by The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 publisher CD Projekt, is one of just a few digital distributors committed to DRM-free game purchases; large publishers like Ubisoft, EA and Microsoft all have Steam-like storefronts and the Epic Games Store has a superior revenue split for developers. Still, giants like Microsoft and EA find it necessary to simultaneously release their games on Steam, handing Valve a cut of each purchase in the process.

As a private company raking in endless piles of Steam cash, Valve has the freedom to operate on its own timeline. The company famously has a flat hierarchy with no strict management structure, and developers are encouraged to work on pet projects or just generally follow their hearts.

As a result, Valve is an incredibly rich company that doesn’t produce much. Its games are legendary, but there’s a running joke in the industry that Valve can’t count to three: Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 came out in 2007. Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009. Portal 2 came out in 2011. In 2020, the VR game Half-Life: Alyx landed as an entrée into Valve’s Index headset, which came out the previous year and cost $1,000. The studio is still ignoring an extremely disruptive bot invasion that began consuming TF2 in 2020, despite consistent pleas for support from dedicated players. In December 2023, Valve replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with Counter-Strike 2, interrupting an ESL Pro League tournament in the process.

Meanwhile, many of the writers who helped create Valve’s most iconic franchises left the studio around 2017, after years of inactivity. In 2018, Valve hired all 12 developers at Firewatch studio Campo Santo, who were at the time working on a very-rad-looking new game, In the Valley of Gods. There have been no updates from that team since.

Steam’s unwavering success has helped turn Valve into a senior resort community for computer science nerds, where game developers go to live out their final years surrounded by fantastic amenities, tinkering and unsupervised. It’s a lovely scenario, really. It’s just not particularly productive.

Matt T. Wood worked at Valve for 17 years, helping to build Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, CS:GO and both episodes of Half-Life 2. He left in 2019 and is now preparing to release his first independent game, Little Kitty, Big City.

“Valve talks a lot about, like, you can do anything you want,” Wood told Engadget in 2023. “And it’s like, well — that’s never true. Valve has a direction, and they have a trajectory. And so, for me, it was realizing that the direction that Valve was going in was not a place that I wanted to be long-term. …They were sitting on their laurels a little bit, and it’s like they weren’t really challenging themselves, taking risks or doing anything. Steam’s making a lot of money so they don’t really have to.”

Little Kitty, Big City is coming to Steam, of course.

Valve is supremely skilled at making money off of other people’s work, and Steam epitomizes this trait. The company did the same thing with Steam Machines back in 2014 too: Valve created a Steam Controller, but it never actually built a Steam Machine. Instead, Valve licensed its name to PC manufacturers, and these companies built boxes to beam Steam into people’s living rooms. Valve offloaded manufacturing costs while collecting market data about actual demand for quasi-PC, quasi-console hardware. Valve never ended up making its own box (unless you view the Steam Deck as a Frankenstein hybrid of the Steam Controller and Steam Machines, which I do).

The Steam Deck is the most exciting thing to come out of Valve in decades, and that’s largely because the company actually seems dedicated to improving and supporting it. Valve seemingly gave up on VR hardware after the Index, but less than two years after the release of the Steam Deck, Valve dropped an OLED version featuring a gorgeous screen and other improvements.

The Steam Deck is, of course, all about Steam. Just like Half-Life 2 was a clever ruse to get more people registered on Steam back in 2004, the Steam Deck is positioned to dominate the handheld PC market in 2024, and it comes with Steam installed.

Today, digital distribution is the backbone of the industry (which I guess makes DRM the spinal fluid), and Steam is the undisputed leader in this space.

Steam’s legacy is a vast and varied landscape of games serving millions of individual libraries, some thousands of titles deep — all of which can disappear with a snap if Valve decides to stop, sell or pivot. It’s a storefront that set the standard and refused to stop growing. It’s entire studios of artists and writers devoured, and beloved franchises left to rot. It’s a stranglehold that allows Valve to ignore market pressure from consumers, creators and competitors.

Behind the curtain of the video game industry, there’s Steam, constantly churning, powering everything.

To celebrate Engadget's 20th anniversary, we're taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

Razer’s Blade family of gaming laptops are among the most premium on the market. And while there aren’t a ton of major changes on the 2024 Blade 14, for the first time ever, it will be available in both classic black and Mercury (aka silver) at launch. Now this might not sound like a big deal, but it means you can get a portable rig with strong performance that doesn’t shout about it like a lot of other gaming laptops do. When you combine that with an exquisite chassis milled from a single block of aluminum and a wealth of ports, you end up with a system that straddles the line between a beefy gaming machine and a portable all-rounder.

Design: Now in silver from the jump

On the outside, Razer is definitely taking the approach of “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” That’s not a bad thing on a laptop that’s pretty much the closest thing to a MacBook Pro for gaming. The entire system feels incredibly solid with only the slightest bit of flex on spots like the lid. And unlike a MacBook, the Blade offers a wide variety of ports including four USB (two 3.2 Type-A and two Type-C with USB 4), a 3.5mm audio jack and a full-size HDMI 2.1 connector). 

Plus, there’s a dedicated power socket so you don’t need to hog an extra slot while charging. The Blade 14 even supports USB-PD (power delivery) so you can use third-party chargers in a pinch, though you won’t get full performance this way due to a lower 100-watt limit (versus 230 watts when using Razer’s included brick).

The two small downsides to the Blade 14 are that its super sturdy frame weighs a touch more (4.05 pounds) than similar laptops like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (3.31 pounds). You also don’t get an SD card reader like you do on the bigger Blade 16. That’s a bummer for anyone planning to occasionally use this thing as a photo or video editing machine, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Display and webcam: Bright and blazing-fast

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Though there’s only a single display option for the Blade 14, it’s a good one. It features a 2560 x 1600 LCD panel that supports AMD FreeSync and a gamut that covers 100% of the DCI-P3 spectrum. It’s also more than bright enough at over 450 nits while the matte anti-glare coating helps keep reflections to a minimum. This means not only do games and movies look great with vivid hues, it’s also accurate enough for editing. The only thing I wish there was a config with an OLED panel like there is on the Blade 16.

Meanwhile, above the display, there’s a 1080p webcam with an IR sensor for Windows Hello. But my favorite thing about this component is that Razer included a tiny physical shutter, which should reduce concerns about government agents spying on you.

Performance: Class-leading speed

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

The Blade 14 is available in two basic configurations: a base model with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS chip, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage and an NVIDIA RTX 4060 GPU. There’s also an upgraded model with 32GB of memory and an RTX 4070 (which is the version we reviewed). In short, this thing flies, delivering about as much performance as you can get out of a 14-inch laptop. In PCMark 10, the Blade 14 scored 7,436 versus 6,170 from an ASUS ZenBook 14 OLED with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip. But more importantly, it can handle almost any game you can throw at it with ease.

In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p and ultra settings, the Blade 14 hit 101 fps compared to 67 fps from an MSI Stealth 14 Studio with an RTX 4060. When I increased the resolution to 1440p, it still pumped out a very playable 66 fps. Meanwhile in Returnal at 1080p and epic presets, Razer enjoyed a similar lead reaching 92 fps versus 78 for the MSI. So unless you feel like moving up to a larger 15- or 16-inch system with room for an RTX 4080 or above, this performance is essentially as good as it gets in this segment.

Battery Life: Better than expected unless your gaming unplugged

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Gaming laptops are notorious for short run times. However, on PCMark 10’s Moden Office rundown test, the Blade 14 turned in a respectable time of 6 hours and 46 minutes. That’s more than an hour longer than the MSI Stealth Studio 14 (5:19) and nearly good enough to last through an entire workday. But it still falls way short of more typical ultraportables without discrete graphics like the ZenBook 14 OLED (12:43).

That said, even with some power-saving tricks like automatically reducing its display to 60Hz when running on battery, you’re still going to want to keep the Razer’s power brick handy. When I played Teamfight Tactics, the Blade’s battery dropped from 85 to 45 percent after a single 40-minute game.

Wrap-up

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

With a starting price of $2,200 or $2,700 as configured, the Blade 14 is on the pricey side. But that’s not really new for Razer’s laptops and there’s no doubt this thing delivers a thoroughly premium experience, with its excellent build quality, beautiful display and great performance. It’s equally adept at gaming or editing on the go, and with the silver model being available at launch, you can get a machine that blends in better outside of LAN parties. The main thing that would stop me from buying one is the existence of ASUS’ refreshed ROG Zephyrus G14, which has similar specs and a much lower starting price of $1,600. But if you have the means, the Blade 14 won’t do you wrong.

Let's all take a breath. Layoffs are still churning in the video game industry, even as the frigid winter air is beginning to thaw. Amid the turmoil of these past few months, there are still things to be excited about: new games and hardware, the evolution of established franchises, and plenty of small teams building surprises to shake up the status quo. Look at all of the rad things happening over at Playdate for just one example of positive momentum in video games (we'll talk more about this next week).

Breathe in, breathe out.

Now, let's dive back into the news cycle:

This week's stories

PlayStation layoffs

The layoffs crisis in video games isn’t slowing down, and the latest company to announce drastic staffing cuts is PlayStation. Sony on Tuesday fired roughly 900 people from its PlayStation division and fully shut down its London Studio, which had been building a co-op multiplayer game for PS5. Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerrilla all lost employees, despite being behind some of the platform’s most successful games in recent memory. First-party studio Firesprite was also hit by the layoffs, and it reportedly had to cancel a live-service Twisted Metal project. It’s barely March, but already more than 7,000 video game workers have been laid off in 2024; last year, more than 9,000 people in the industry lost their jobs to layoffs.

Happy Pokémon Day!

February 27 was Pokémon Day, and in celebration, Nintendo revealed two new games: Pokémon Legends Z-A and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. Pokémon Legends Z-A is set in Lumiose City, which you might remember from Pokémon X and Y on the 3DS, and it looks like it features Mega Evolutions. Pokémon Legends Z-A is due to hit Switch in 2025. The other title, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, is a mobile game that should land on Android and iOS devices by the end of the year. It’s exactly what it sounds like — Nintendo is putting the physical card-opening mechanic inside your phone, complete with flashy animations and addictive sound effects when you rip off the digital packaging. You’ll also be able to engage in quick battles. Nintendo has clarified that Pocket will not have NFTs, but it is described as “free to start,” so expect microtransactions.

Random PR roundup

It’s been a strange and slow week here in Engadget video game land, so I thought we’d have some fun this episode. As tech reporters, we receive ridiculous emails from startups and PR agencies literally every day, and even though we don’t end up covering many of the proposed products, some of the messages themselves deserve a moment in the spotlight. Many of the pitches we get are just silly or tone deaf, but some of them are outright dystopian. And honestly, I thought you all might enjoy seeing some of the weirdness that hits our inboxes.

This is all meant in good fun — I appreciate the communications teams who are just trying to sell their stuff in creative ways. The real enemy here, as always, is capitalism.

So, here are some emails that recently found their way into my inbox and made me go wut:

GameScent - New Groundbreaking Device Enhances Player Immersion by Releasing Gameplay Corresponding Scents

“As players dive into a game, GameScent’s patent-pending adaptor captures audio in real-time. These real-time audio cues are processed by GameScent's innovative AI to release scents that correspond with the on-screen action. Inhale the smoky aroma of battle, the exhilarating scent of speeding race cars, the calming fragrance of a forest, or the fresh smell of rain after a storm.”

Unsurprisingly, this little doodad comes with replaceable scent cartridges, though it's unclear how to actually buy those at the moment. Scents include gunfire, explosion, racing cars, blood, sports arena and other brotastic flavors.

Is this... cool? There's definitely a fun idea here about the future of immersion, right? Or I've completely lost the plot. Either could be true.

Seeking Products for Pickleball Stories? (Samples Available)

Ma'am, this is Engadget.

Deconstructeam Delivers a Valentine's Day Surprise of Cosmic Proportions

This was for the game The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, and the surprise was a huge dildo. I thought the whole email was cute, actually — it was tasteful and coyly advertised a giveaway in partnership with a well-known adult toy company. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a sexy game and it stars a muscular behemoth the size of a planet, so it all made sense. It just didn’t fit in our general news feed, ya know?

(Story Idea:) Here’s Doom Running On A Robotic Lawn Mower: Yes, A Robotic Lawn Mower! (You Have To See It To Believe It!) (Video Included)

"I am reaching out with a great story that is sure to go viral… This spring, Husqvarna will make the iconic 1993 video game DOOM, available to play on the company’s robotic lawn mowers."

I find this email charming because it’s just a traditional, infomercial-style email with lots of unnecessary exclamation points and parenthesis. I respect it. But seriously, are we still doing this Doom thing? Next you’ll be asking me if this lawn mower can run Crysis and making jokes about Leeroy Jenkins, and I’m just here in 2024, begging for some new references.

The best part of this one is the fact that, after I added it to my list of silly emails, we actually hit this as news on Engadget dot com. Who's the joke now? (It's me).

Meet My Regina | PC Preview – Dickhead-Destroying Extravaganza Cookie Cutter

“I’ve got something to show you, Jessica.

She’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever held between my legs.

She’s small but tough and can take a beating.

And everyone knows she’s smart because she has a British accent.

She’ll giggle if you tickle her just right.

And she even glows in the dark!

Are you ready to meet her?

Well, are you?

Don’t be shy now.

Good. Well, here she is!”

I asked to be removed from this list.

Bonus Content

• In more layoffs news, Until Dawn studio Supermassive Games fired about a third of its workforce, or roughly 90 employees, and the team is reorganizing. Also, indie studio Die Gut Fabrik, which created Sportsfriends, Johann Sebastian Joust and Saltsea Chronicles, has halted production amid funding issues and developers there are looking for other jobs.

• Nintendo is suing Yuzu, a popular and long-running emulator that allows players to put their Switch games on other platforms. Nintendo argues that the app is "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale,” and says it illegally circumvents DMCA protections. Nintendo wants Yuzu shut down and the company is seeking damages.

• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth finally comes out on February 29 and our review from Mat Smith is live now. He’s a really big Final Fantasy nerd, and he really liked Rebirth.

Now Playing

Home Safety Hotline is the perfect game to play at your desk, on the PC, so you can let the mid-90s computer interface fully engulf your senses. In this game, you take calls from people complaining about pests and paranormal creatures invading their homes, and using a detailed reference guide, you identify what’s going on and help them sort it out. Or, you get it wrong and get fired while a family of three screams for their lives on the other end of the line. There’s also a broader meta-horror unfurling in the background, and I’m having a lovely, spooky time sorting through all of it. Home Safety Hotline is out now on Steam.

The White House has announced an investigation into cars built in China and other unnamed "countries of concern." The Biden administration notes that cars are "constantly connecting" with drivers' phones, other vehicles, American infrastructure and their manufacturers, and that newer models use tech such as driver assist systems.

"Connected vehicles collect large amounts of sensitive data on their drivers and passengers; regularly use their cameras and sensors to record detailed information on US infrastructure; interact directly with critical infrastructure; and can be piloted or disabled remotely," the White House said in a statement. Officials are concerned that "new vulnerabilities and threats" could arise from connected vehicles if foreign governments are able to access data from them. They are especially wary that said countries of concern could use such information in ways that put national security at risk.

The Department of Commerce will lead the investigation. "We need to understand the extent of the technology in these cars that can capture wide swaths of data or remotely disable or manipulate connected vehicles, so we are soliciting information to determine whether to take action under our ICTS [information and communications technology and services] authorities," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said.

Through its advance notice of proposed rulemaking [PDF], the agency is looking for feedback from the public to help determine "the technologies and market participants that may be most appropriate for regulation." The investigation will help the Commerce Department decide whether to take action. It's the first time that the agency's Bureau of Industry and Security is carrying out an investigation under Trump-era Executive Orders "focused on protecting domestic information and communications technology and services supply chains from national security threats," the White House said.

"China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market, including by using unfair practices. China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch," President Joe Biden said. "Connected vehicles from China could collect sensitive data about our citizens and our infrastructure and send this data back to the People’s Republic of China. These vehicles could be remotely accessed or disabled."

As The Washington Post points out, cars built in China aren't especially common on US roads as yet, but they're becoming an increasingly familiar sight in other markets, such as Europe. While many of the vehicles that are causing concerns are EVs, its cars' cameras, sensors and software that are the focus of the probe.

It's not the first time that the US has investigated Chinese companies over concerns that they pose security risks to the country's infrastructure. A few years ago, it banned the import and sale of telecom networking equipment made by Huawei and ZTE (after stopping government employees from using the companies' phones). The government also required telecoms to remove and replace Huawei and ZTE gear in existing infrastructure at great expense.

Video game company Electronic Arts will lay off 5 precent of its workforce according to a report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. More than 650 EA employees will lose their jobs as a result of the move, part of a broader restricting that will see the company cutting back on office space and ending work on some video games.

EA’s cuts are the latest in a long line of layoffs that have rocked the video game industry since last year. In 2023, more than 10,500 video game workers lost their jobs, and more than 6,000 people in the industry were cut in January 2024 alone. The video game companies that have laid off workers so far include Microsoft, Riot Games, and Unity among many others. On Tuesday, Sony announced that it was laying off 900 people from its PlayStation division, roughly 8 percent of its headcount.

In a memo sent to EA employees, CEO Andrew Wilson wrote that the company is “streamlining our company operations to deliver deeper, more connected experiences for fans everywhere.” EA expects to finish making the cuts by early next quarter, the memo says. The cuts, Wilson adds, will let EA focus more on its “biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities.”

Samsung’s upcoming microSD card will offer a dramatic speed boost. The company’s 256GB SD Express microSD — Samsung’s first SD Express card — can read data at up to 800 MB/s, significantly faster than the microSDs you can buy today. However, we don’t yet know how much it will cost, and the card won’t be available until later this year.

The 256GB SD Express microSD will have (theoretical) sequential read speeds of up to 800 MB/s, which is over 2.5 times as fast as the read speeds in UHS-II microSD cards and 1.4 times faster than SATA SSDs. So, at least in theory, Samsung’s new card should be noticeably faster than the cheapest solid-state drives.

Samsung added heat management capabilities to help keep temperatures in check. “To ensure stable performance and reliability for the small form factor, Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology maintains the optimum temperature for the SD Express microSD card, even during long usage sessions,” the company wrote in a press release announcing the new card.

Samsung (perhaps unsurprisingly) is shoehorning the almighty “AI” buzzword into the card’s zippier speeds. “With our two new microSD cards, Samsung has provided effective solutions to address the growing demands of mobile computing and on-device AI,” Samsung VP Hangu Sohn wrote.

The company’s Galaxy S24 series goes big on AI, but Samsung hasn’t included a microSD slot in its flagship phones for the last four generations. (Nor has most of the rest of the smartphone playing field.) So, while future AI-powered devices could benefit from the extra speeds, Samsung’s current batch of high-end phones aren’t on that list. In addition, although SD Express is backward compatible, not many devices (yet) support SD Express, which requires an extra row of pins on the host device. In other words, the card’s full potential won’t be realized until we have new gear to support it.

Samsung

Although unrelated to the speedy SD Express card, Samsung also unveiled a new 1TB microSD with UHS-1 speeds. “Samsung’s new 1TB microSD card stacks eight layers of the company’s 8th generation 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND within a microSD form factor, realizing the high-capacity package that used to be possible only in SSDs,” the company wrote. The 1TB card includes protection against water, extreme temperatures, drops, X-rays and magnets.

Samsung’s zippy 256GB SD Express microSD card will launch “later this year,” while the 1TB UHS-1 microSD arrives in the third quarter of 2024. The company hasn’t said how much either will cost.

It’s that time of the month again. Sony just revealed the PlayStation Plus games lineup for March. There are some decent gets here, including the Destiny 2: Witch Queen expansion and the well-reviewed action brawler Sifu. All four titles are available for both PS4 and PS5 users.

Let’s start with Sifu. The game has been heralded as a modern take on old-school beat-em-ups, with a major emphasis on actual kung fu fighting styles. You play as a young martial arts student hunting down the people who murdered your family. Who doesn’t like a good revenge tale? The game feels great, with satisfying and visceral combat. The only downside for some is that, at launch, it was extremely difficult. Developer Sloclap, however, eventually added difficulty settings for new players.

The Destiny 2: Witch Queen expansion experienced plenty of delays before finally hitting digital store shelves back in 2022. The expansion pleased MMO fans with a brand-new story to work through, complete with plenty of new missions. There’s also new PvP maps, gear, weapons, dungeons and raids.

EA Sports F1 23 is the Formula 1 sim to beat, as it was the official game of the 2023 FIA Formula One World Championship. There are plenty of circuits placed throughout the world, including Qatar and Las Vegas. You can race as any of the top 20 drivers and top ten teams. There’s a robust career mode, cross-platform multiplayer and, of course, all kinds of blazingly-fast vehicles to choose from. You can play this and get hyped for the 2024 racing season, which officially begins on March 2.

Finally, there’s the stealth horror game Hello Neighbors 2. Just like the original, the title has you investigating creepy neighbors to unearth their dirty secrets. Though advertised as a horror title, the cartoony visuals make it appropriate for gamers of all ages. Reviews have praised the large open world, when compared to the original, and the improved physics engine.

Multiplayer shooter The Finals is also getting a cosmetic bundle as part of this drop, with 12 new weapon skins and two outfits. All four of the aforementioned games will be available to PlayStation Plus members on March 5 until April 1. As always, some titles are leaving the platform this month. You only have until March 4 to add Foamstars, Rollerdrome and Steelrising to your catalog.

Apple has reportedly pulled down the shutters on Project Titan, its initiative to build the future of transportation. If the reports are accurate, the project chewed through billions of dollars and several high-profile leaders as its mission shifted and shifted again. What may have started as a control-free autonomous vehicle was eventually scaled down to a generic EV but, ya know, made by Apple. But, I’ll be honest, I never believed we’d see an Apple Car in the real world, because it seemed so impossibly far-fetched as to be fictional.

I'm not saying Titan itself didn't exist, because every company has speculative projects, and I'm sure the reporting around what it achieved is accurate — Tim Cook definitely wrote "Car?" on a whiteboard at some point. If any company could walk in, learn the skills needed to build and launch a car and do it well (and profitably), it would be Apple. Other tech companies, like Sony, are making a real noise about entering the field, albeit in partnership with Honda. But, from a lot of logical angles, the idea that Apple would start making cars was impossible to fathom.

There’s a line in The Unbearable Lightness of Being where kitsch – a German word for bad or tacky art – is defined as a denial of the realities of life. Apple fits that description because while it’s wildly successful, it’s often despite decisions made that fly in the face of common sense. A watch that lasts for less than a day on a charge. A slippery, easily-dropped phone with a glass front and back that’s nightmarishly difficult to repair. A mouse that is still being sold with the charging port on its underside so you can only charge it when it’s not in use.

Even the most environmentally-friendly car still needs oil and grease to lubricate its workings, wheels that leave rubber on the road, brake pads that wear down. Seats that have to deal with spilled coffee and toddler vomit when you’re on a long road trip, the grime you only seem to find when you’re loading IKEA boxes into your trunk. Can you imagine Apple’s design team, who were behind the FineWoven case, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming toward bigger batteries, USB-C and waterproofing, thinking about such considerations?

Not to mention that while Apple can exert a lot of control over its devices now, cars aren’t so neatly closed off. Imagine how hard it would be for a company obsessed with control to cede so much to the auto shops of the world. Yes, you need to take your Tesla back for major repairs but can you imagine not being able to replace your tires when you get a flat? Unless, of course, Apple is planning to build garages in every major population center to overcharge you when it comes time to get an oil change.

And that’s before you get to the idea that Apple, who is quite obsessive about its brand, would have its logo plastered on the internet every time one of its cars so much as kissed a lamppost. Car accidents are currently an unfortunate fact of life that we, as a society, are not prepared to tackle the way we should. But all it would take is one fatality in an Apple car and the company would be demonized — and opened up to a raft of lawsuits all looking to get a piece of Apple’s cash pile.

A car also would muddy the company’s stance on environmental matters, and I can already picture the internal contortions. The executives driving their convertible Mercedes into Apple Park’s rarified subterranean parking garage would, I’m sure, quite like an Apple car. But I imagine the company’s teams who have to look at figures around energy consumption, emissions and climate change don’t. If Apple’s fine words about looking after the environment mean anything, it would throw its weight and expertise behind something better like scooters or e-bikes.

I’ve also struggled to fathom out how Apple would justify charging $100,000 for a limited-run EV when its real wins have come in the mass market. EVs take enormous amounts of capital and labor to assemble and it’s nowhere near as profitable as what Apple does today. In Q3 of 2023, WV — the world’s biggest car maker — made a net profit of about $4.7 billion, or about a quarter of what Apple made in the same period. How many luxury EVs would Apple be able to get out of the door and how many would it need to sell in order to justify that initial investment?

In fact, I suspect a lot of people piled a lot of unreasonable hopes on Project Titan's shoulders despite Apple's repeated scaling back. 'We'll make a car without a wheel, it'll be great,' you can imagine them saying, 'okay, maybe it'll have a wheel...' they added, years later, 'oh okay so, how about it's just a car that's not as autonomous as a Mercedes.' It hardly screams the sort of class-leading ambitions you normally see with an Apple product, does it?

And yes, there may have been lots of pretty renders of what an Apple car would look like made by talented graphic designers looking to bulk out their portfolio. And lots of wishful chat on social media about Apple buying another EV maker like Tesla or Rivian to slap its brand on top of — despite the fact that Apple buying a name-brand company outright has only happened once or twice in a decade. But, until the NDAs lapse and we get a tell-all book with internal imagery, I’m going to say that, despite the reported billions of dollars poured into it, the Apple Car never got close to being a real thing.

Those on the lookout for a good deal on a new TV could do worse than to consider Samsung's The Frame lineup. The latest versions of the smart TVs are currently on sale. The 50-inch model has dropped by $400 to $898 at Amazon and Walmart. That marks a record-low price for this size.

When you aren't watching a show or movie, a Frame TV displays artwork, making it look like a hanging picture instead of an ominous black mirror. It's likely to be a classy upgrade from an older TV you've been hanging onto, and one that's a neat party trick when unassuming guests see it switch into TV mode for the first time.

You can display your own collection of images and photos on the TV. In addition, you'll have the option to subscribe to Samsung's Art Store and access more than 1,400 artworks from emerging and well-known artists alike.

The latest models have an anti-reflective matte finish to add to the illusion, while the bezel is customizable and magnetic, so you can swap it out whenever you like. Samsung also attempted to reduce cable clutter by having a single tin wire that connects to an external receiver into which you might plug game consoles and/or a cable box.

Let's not forget that The Frame is a QLED 4K TV too. Samsung says it delivers 100 percent color volume and vivid images. The display has a 60Hz refresh rate and it supports Google Assistant and Alexa. It runs a variety of apps, including the likes of Apple TV+, Samsung TV Plus, Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, Disney+, Hulu, Xbox, NVIDIA GeForce Now, ESPN and Max — in other words, all the major streaming services and some cloud gaming options.

The Frame is available in a variety of formats, from 32 inches to a whopping 85 inches, so you're bound to find a size that fits your needs. Meanwhile, Walmart is running a broader flash sale on Samsung TVs, so if you're perhaps looking for an option with a higher refresh rate, you might be able to snap one up for a discount.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

After roughly a decade, multiple leadership changes and a regular spot in Apple rumor reports, the Apple Car project, internally known as Project Titan, could well be dead. A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says Apple has officially canceled the car, breaking the news to nearly 2,000 employees working on it.

Apple will reportedly move “many employees working on the car” to the company’s artificial intelligence division where they will focus on generative AI projects, which Apple is expected to share more about later this year.

Leaks over the years revealed the company’s ambitions to expand into a brand-new product category. At the beginning of the project in 2014, Apple wanted to build a fully self-driving car without pedals or a steering wheel, with a remote command center ready to take over for a driver. More recently, Apple pared down its ambitions, with the most recent reports suggesting Apple’s car would be a more standard electric vehicle.

Now, we may never know. Would you have bought an Apple car?

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Which iPhone should you buy?

Amazon accused of using AI to ‘replicate the voices’ of actors in Road House remake

PlayStation is laying off 900 staff across Naughty Dog, Insomniac and other studios

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Pokémon Legends: Z-A for Switch returns the series to Lumiose City

It could be the first Pokémon game for Nintendo’s next console.

The Pokemon Company

The Pokémon Company revealed the franchise’s latest Legends entry on Tuesday. Pokémon Legends: Z-A returns the series to Lumiose City, last seen as a region in Pokémon X and Y on the Nintendo 3DS. The Pokémon Legends: Z-A trailer — an extended teaser — doesn’t show any gameplay footage, and its shots of Lumiose City use wireframe models to tease a city in mid-development, according to the announcement.

Continue reading.

TikTok is muting more songs following its Universal Music royalties fight

Millions more tracks are likely to vanish.

TikTok is being forced to take down more music from its platform. Universal Music Group (UMG) recently yanked recordings it owns or distributes from TikTok, including tracks from superstars like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd. The standoff is now impacting songs published by UMG, with millions more tracks to be muted on TikTok by the end of this week. Due to an issue called split copyrights, if a Universal Music Publishing Group-contracted writer has contributed to a song, that track may have to be removed from TikTok. So artists who have collaborated with Taylor Swift, Adele, Justin Bieber, Mariah Carey, Ice Spice, Elton John, Harry Styles and SZA may see their songs disappear from TikTok too.

Continue reading.

Google is reportedly paying publishers to use its AI to write news stories

What could go wrong?

Google has quietly struck deals with publishers to use new generative AI tools to publish stories. The deals, reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, are apparently part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), a six-year-old program that funds media literacy projects, fact-checking tools and other resources for newsrooms. Adweek says publishers can use the beta tools to create aggregated content more efficiently, indexing recently published reports generated by other organizations, like government agencies and neighboring news outlets, then summarizing and publishing them as a new article.

Publishers in the program are apparently not required to disclose their use of AI nor are the aggregated websites informed that their content is used to create AI-written stories on other sites. Publications like CNET and Sports Illustrated have been widely criticized for attempting to pass off AI-authored articles as written by human staffers.

Continue reading.