There's some good news if you've been waiting to get your hands on a Steam Deck. Valve says it has boosted production and will be shipping more than twice the number of units each week than it has over the last few months.
The company planned to start shipping the device in December, but supply chain issues forced it to delay the Steam Deck until February. It now appears Valve has found the parts and production capacity it needs to build units at a faster pace and get them out to customers more quickly.
Hello! Some great news on the production front. We just sent the last batch of Q2 emails, and we’ll start sending Q3 reservation emails on the 30th. Production has picked up, and after today we'll be shipping more than double the number of Steam Decks every week! pic.twitter.com/kAHE0zRrV7
Were you to reserve a Steam Deck now, you likely wouldn't receive it until at least October. However, since Valve is ramping up the volume of shipments, it may be able to bring down the wait time. Hopefully, it will soon get to the point where it can ship a Steam Deck within days of someone deciding to order one.
Valve says those who had an expected shipment window of Q3 will start receiving reservation emails on June 30th. When you do eventually get your Steam Deck, though, it's probably best to avoid swapping out the built-in storage. Valve hardware designer Lawrence Yang warned that the power requirements of off-the-shelf SSDs could cause a Steam Deck to overheat and shorten the lifespan.
My first playthrough of Endless Dungeon ended in disaster. The “Crystal Bot” I was supposed to defend was overrun by a ravenous swarm of bugs after I left it open to attack by pulling my two heroes away to protect a resource point. Naturally, I started a new run immediately after I had a moment to curse my luck.
Endless Dungeon falls somewhere between a sequel and remake of 2014’s Dungeon of the Endless, the game that helped developer Amplitude Studios make its name. Like its predecessor, Endless Dungeon tasks you with protecting a crystal from hordes of enemies while finding your way through a mysterious multi-level dungeon. But where Dungeon of the Endless took place on a strange alien planet, this one is set on a station left behind by the Endless, the ancient alien race that connects all of Amplitude’s projects.
Also new to Endless Dungeon is that it’s a twin-stick shooter and features a roguelite progression, meaning you’ll need to start from the beginning of the game each time you fail your objective but you’ll carry over some of the things you earned to make your next run easier. Additionally, Amplitude has built the game from the start with multiplayer in mind.
Amplitude Studios / Sega
“We had a lot of ideas for Dungeon of the Endless that didn’t make it into the game,” says lead game designer Arthur Prudent during a press event Sega held last week. “This time we wanted to do something more accessible. That’s why we wanted the player to have direct control. That forced us to change a lot of things.”
Each run of Endless Dungeon begins with you picking a team of misfits to delve into the depths of the station. In the demo I played, you could take two characters with you. The final game will feature eight playable heroes, with a full team consisting of three squadmates.
When playing online, you and two other friends control one character each. In singleplayer, you can only play as one hero at a time. However, you can issue orders to your two party members. Each hero has their own backstory and playstyle, as well as special and ultimate abilities. Zed, one of my favorites, carries a minigun into battle with her and can clear rooms with an explosive line attack.
Once you have a squad assembled, the bulk of Endless Dungeon’s gameplay involves attempting to get the cute Crystal Bot I mentioned before to the end of a level so that it can descend further down the station and you can find what’s at the center. The catch is that each time you attempt to move the robot, an endless horde of enemies will attack until the bot is either destroyed or you successfully get it to its destination. Waves of enemies will also periodically attack you while you explore each level.
Amplitude Studios / Sega
What makes the action in Endless Dungeon thrilling is that it’s a tower-defense game where you don’t know the entire layout of a level when you start. You have to explore each level to find all the enemy spawn points. My first run ended when I left one of the corridors leading to my Crystal Bot undefended. Some levels will feature locked doors, with a central switch you can trigger to unlock them all at once, allowing you to shape the path enemies take.
Every level consists of multiple rooms, and in each room, you can build turrets to thin out enemy waves. In addition to the usual assortment of damage-dealing ones, you can build turrets that slow your enemies and shield your other assets to make them more resistant to attack. Gone from Dungeon of the Endless is that game’s light mechanic where enemies would spawn in rooms where you didn’t spend Dust to power them. That makes planning your defenses both more and less difficult since you need to find the enemy’s dedicated spawn points.
Building turrets requires a resource called industry. Alongside food and science, it’s one of three primary resources you’ll collect to build structures, heal your heroes, research new turrets and more. A fourth resource called Dust Shards lets you upgrade your Crystal Bot and restore power to rooms left without any.
Amplitude Studios / Sega
Managing your resources in Endless Dungeon is its own tightrope act. As you explore each floor of the station, you’ll find rooms with spots for generators that can add to your food, industry or science stockpiles. If you have enough industry points, you can build additional extractors, with each subsequent one costing more than the last. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
That’s because Endless Dungeon plays out in real-time but your generators only add to your resource pool when you open a new room. Moreover, they’re one of the first things the denizens of the station will attack on their way to your Crystal Bot. To make things even more complicated, even if you build an industry generator on every spot you find, you won’t have enough materials for all the turrets you need to defend everything. In short, expansion comes with risks in Endless Dungeon, and the game constantly asks you to make those kinds of decisions.
For instance, collecting Dust Shards involves uprooting your Crystal Bot and moving it, meaning it must leave behind any turrets you built to defend it. Obtaining upgrades from a research terminal is similarly perilous since starting one will trigger a wave of enemies.
Amplitude Studios / Sega
My second and third runs end about as well as my first one, and I’m no closer to completing the demo than I was when the preview began. “The game is supposed to be hard,” Prudent tells me and everyone else taking part in the event. Each time you fail a run in Endless Dungeon, you find yourself back in a bar that plays smooth jazz in the background. It’s here that you get a chance to talk to all the characters you can take on your runs and unlock the things that will make your next playthrough go smoother.
Amplitude Studios wasn’t ready to preview those systems when I played the game. Without experiencing them, it’s hard to say if Endless Dungeon will have the staying power of games like Hadesor Rogue Legacy 2, but what I played last left me excited to see where the studio takes the game. Endless Dungeon doesn’t have a release date, but when it does arrive, you’ll be able to play it on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch.
Valve loves to warn people about about the risks of do-it-yourself Steam Deck maintenance, and that now extends to upgrading the storage. In a response to a PC Gamerarticle on modding the Steam Deck, Valve hardware designer Lawrence Yang warned against upgrading the device's NVMe SSD. While it's technically possible, the M.2 2242 drives (22mm wide by 42mm long) you frequently find in stores are hotter and more power-hungry than the 2230 models (22mm x 30mm) the handheld was meant to support. You could "significantly shorten" the longevity of the system, Yang said, adding that you shouldn't move thermal pads.
The PC Gamer story referenced modder Belly Jelly's discovery (initially reported by Hot Hardware) that it was possible to fit an M.2 2242 SSD in the Steam Deck, albeit with some design sacrifices. There were already concerns this might lead to overheating problems. Yang just explained why it's a bad idea, and outlined the likely long-term consequences.
The alert might be a letdown if you feel limited by Valve's maximum 512GB storage and don't think a microSD card (typically much slower than an SSD) is an adequate substitute. With that said, it's not shocking — mobile devices like this often have size and thermal constraints that make it impractical to upgrade at least some components.
Hi, please don’t do this. The charger IC gets very hot and nearby thermal pads should not be moved. In addition, most 2242 m.2 drives draw more power and get hotter than what Deck is designed for. This mod may appear to work but will significantly shorten the life of your Deck. https://t.co/Kmup7Zov13
GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 is one of those games that will forever be held up as a milestone in the art. It wasn’t the first FPS on a console, or even the first FPS on the Nintendo 64, but it was unquestionably the best. And the most influential. GoldenEye 007 inspired the development of Half-Life and reportedly prompted the creation of the Medal of Honor series. It also holds very fond memories for everyone of a certain age who would hunch over someone’s 14-inch bedroom TV to play the local deathmatch for hours at a time.
Its success, and legacy, means it’s one of a handful of titles that would merit a feature-length making-of documentary. Drew Roller’s GoldenEra tries to encompass everything about the title, from its genesis as a small project at Rare’s rural farmland campus to the monster it became. In one way, the story of GoldenEye 007 mirrors that of Citizen Kane – created by neophytes so unaware of what would be achieved, they went on to break new ground in the process. And while many of the team would go on to make some pretty good games, nothing would come close to their debut in terms of impact and acclaim.
GoldenEra has been able to get many of the original team on the record, including David Doak, Karl Hilton, Brett Jones, Duncan Botwood and Steve Ellis. Their testimony is supplemented by a number of journalists and talking heads from across the games industry that helps bulk out the gaps. After all, Rare (then working in partnership with Nintendo, now owned by Microsoft) has always been more secretive about what it does than other studios. And so there do seem to be missing chunks of testimony that would have helped paint a richer, fuller picture here.
And if there’s a problem with the film, it’s that it’s a lot harder to make the drama compelling given that software design is relatively staid. Not to mention that the impact a game has has to be measured in different ways to, for instance, a movie or album. After all, you can fairly clearly spot the examples of pop phenomenons, since they often swallow the culture around them for weeks or months at a time. Our relationship with video games is often a lot more personal, beyond the usual visual cues of people queuing up to buy the title on release day.
This is, perhaps, where GoldenEra starts to feel a little saggy, since it tries to cover the breadth of GoldenEye 007’s fallout without much depth. This means that the back third essentially becomes a series of five minute segments covering Perfect Dark, Free Radical Design and Timesplitters, GoldenEye fan films, the modding community that have kept the title alive and what happened to Rare. There’s even a little detail about the proposed remake of GoldenEye 007, as well as plenty of snark handed out to the subsequent James Bond games that are all, universally, not very good. But as much as you or I might take issue with the scattershot approach, it’s one way of folding in all of the many and varied ends to this particular story.
Nintendo has announced when its next games showcase will take place. A Nintendo Direct Mini is scheduled for June 28th at 9AM ET. It most likely won't feature news on Mario, Zelda, Pokémon or any of Nintendo's other franchises, though. The company said the stream will focus on third-party titles that are on the way to Switch.
Right now, it's unclear what to expect from Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase (to give the broadcast its full title). However, it could a be fairly meaty affair, since it clocks in at 25 minutes and Nintendo usually zips through announcements during Directs.
A new #NintendoDirectMini: Partner Showcase is on the way! Watch on-demand via our YouTube channel beginning Tuesday, June 28 at 6am PT for roughly 25 minutes of info on upcoming third-party #NintendoSwitch games.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 27, 2022
This isn't pegged as an Indie World Direct, so it may center more around titles from major publishers and larger studios. One of the more notable third-party games slated for a Switch debut, No Man's Sky, already has a release date of October 7th, so that may not get a heavy focus. There's always the chance of more details on Hollow Knight: Silksong, which is slated to arrive sometime within the next year.
Maybe you were finally able to get your hands on a PS5 not too long ago, but now you find yourself quickly running out of space on it. Now's a good time to invest in an SSD that can expand your console's storage because one of our favorites from Samsung is back on sale for an all-time-low price. The Samsung 980 Pro drive in 1TB is 33 percent off and down to $140. A few other drive we recommend from brands like PNY, Patriot and Crucial are also on sale right now, too.
Normally priced at $210, Samsung's drive comes in a compact, M.2 form factor and supports read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s. It uses a special thermal control algorithm and a nickel coating to manage heat levels, plus a heat spreader label to help manage the temperature of the NAND chip. It's also compatible with Samsung Magician, which is management software that lets you monitor its overall health and keep it up to date.
The biggest issue for PS5 owners is that the drive's standard configuration doesn't come with a heatsink, which you'll need to install it in the console. However, you can get the SSD with said heatsink for only $170 right now, which is 26 percent off its normal rate.
Also on sale is our favorite PS5 SSD, the Patriot Viper VP4300: the 1TB version is down to $130 and the 2TB model is on sale for $255. This drive supports sequential read speeds of up to 7,400 MB/s, plus it comes with a heatsink preinstalled so it's ready to use with the PS5. If you've got a tighter budget, a couple of Crucial and PNY drives might be better fits. Crucial's P5 Plus SSD in 1TB is 20 percent off and down to $128, while PNY's XLR8 CS3040 SSD in 1TB is a whopping 42 percent off and down to $105.
If you've been waiting for Google's highest-end Pixel 6 model to drop below the $800 mark before you buy, you now have your chance. Woot is selling the 128GB Pixel 6 Pro for $780 ($119 off) today only. That's better than an Amazon discount we saw earlier this month, and a good deal if you're looking for a powerful large-screen phone.
Much of what we said about the Pixel 6 Pro at launch remains true today. It mates top-tier (if polarizing) design with superb cameras, a good screen and Google's definitive Android 12 experience, including smart Assistant features. It's also relatively light for a phone this size at 7.4oz, if not quite as featherweight as Samsung's Galaxy S22+ (6.9oz).
Software updates have tackled many of the Pixel 6 Pro's early problems, although the fingerprint reader might still be too finicky for some tastes. The bigger concern simply revolves around timing. Google has already teased the release of the Pixel 7 Pro this fall — you might want to hold off if you're interested in its improved performance and other as yet unannounced upgrades. If you're just looking for a good value, though, the current-generation phone is hard to top.
Those looking to upgrade their home's WiFi system can save a bunch on Nest WiFi packs right now. Amazon has most of Nest WiFi configurations on sale, with some at new all-time lows. You can pick up one router for $115, a two-pack with one router and one access point for $149, or a three-pack with one router and two access points for $199. While that's a new low on the router by itself, you'll get the deepest discounts on the multi-packs, which are nearly half off their normal prices.
Google's mesh system earned a score of 84 from us when it first came out and there's still a lot to like about it. Each module has an attractive, minimalist design and setting up the system is pretty simple. Each router can cover up to 2,200 square feet and you'll get an additional 1,600 square feet of coverage with each access point you add. That will likely be the biggest factor in deciding which pack you get; those who live in apartments or smaller homes could get away with a single router, while those with multi-story houses should consider springing for a multi-pack.
In addition to supporting Gigabit internet, the Nest WiFi system also has the convenience of built-in Google Assistant support. In fact, each access point acts almost like a Nest Mini smart speaker. You can tap the top of the point to play and pause, and ask the Assistant to do things like read off calendar alerts and set reminders. And if you don't want to use voice commands, or just want a bit more privacy, you can flip the switch on the back of the access points to turn off the microphone. The only caveat to the Nest WiFi is that it's not a WiFi 6 system, and that could be a dealbreaker if you're set on getting a more future-proof device. However, if you're just looking for a new WiFi setup that's fast, reliable and quick to set up, Google's Nest WiFi fits that bill.
Carl Pei thinks there’s something wrong with the smartphone industry. Like a lot of us, Pei has started feeling like new phones just aren’t as special as the devices of five or 10 years ago.
He thinks the big players are all circling the same ideas in smartphone design. (Something true for at least a decade now.) And that’s where his new company, Nothing, comes in. Pei wants to bring some originality back to mobile tech design. “Maybe we can turn down the brain a little bit and turn up the intuition,” said Pei. Check out our full interview with the former co-founder of OnePlus.
While we haven’t properly tested the device yet , the Nothing Phone 1 is already available to pre-order — you just need an invitation. Word of warning: Nothing has already said the Phone 1 won't officially come to North America beyond a closed beta for a handful of private community investors. The device should work but won't have full support.
Contrary to reports, it’s still in its early stages.
Company co-chief Ted Sarandos confirmed at the Cannes Lions festival that Netflix is adding an ad-backed tier with a lower price. He stressed the option wouldn't bring ads to Netflix "as you know it today" — as with rivals like Peacock, you'll still be able to avoid marketing altogether.
Sarandos didn't share further details. However, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and NBCUniversal are the "top contenders" to help Netflix build the ads-included plan. A Netflix spokesperson told Engadget the company was "still in the early days" of developing the ad-based tier and hadn't nailed down its approach. It's all "speculation" at present, the representative added.
In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports Apple is readying a new HomePod speaker that will look and sound similar to the original 2018 model. As you may recall, the company discontinued the HomePod in 2021 without announcing a direct replacement. According to Gurman, the new model may feature Apple’s forthcoming S8 chip and an updated display on the top of the speaker that may include multi-touch functionality. While the original had a display of sorts, it didn’t really show information beyond a Siri ‘orb.’
It has delayed the FDA's ban on its vape pens and pods.
Juul has successfully convinced the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to delay the Food and Drug Administration's ban on its products. The agency recently banned Juul from selling and distributing its e-cigarette pens and pods in the US after a comprehensive two-year review.
Despite Juul's accusation that the administration's ban was "arbitrary and capricious," the FDA said it was banning the company's products because it didn't submit sufficient evidence proving that potentially harmful chemicals don't leach from its proprietary pods into the vapor users inhale.
A bacterium classified as the largest ever discovered needs no special tools to be visible to the naked eye. Thiomargarita magnifica, as it's called, has a filament-like appearance and can be as long as a human eyelash. The BBC explained it’s bigger than some more complex organisms, such as tiny flies, mites and worms.
LG is jumping into the EV charging business with the acquisition of a South Korean EV battery charger developer called AppleMango, it announced. The move will allow it to create "fully-featured" charging stations with a user-friendly interface and real-time control and management, it said. In particular, it will be able to leverage its "sturdy, dust- and water-proof" outdoor digital display tech.
LG is well-established in electric mobility, developing batteries, screens and sensors for electric cars. It recently joined forces with Magna International to develop e-motors, inverters and onboard chargers for automakers. The acquisition will expand that, allowing it to marry the new charger capabilities with its current in-house EV charging management systems. It'll also allow LG to "create synergy" with its current EV battery business and products like energy storage and energy management systems.
AppleMango was established three years ago in 2019 and has developed proprietary tech like a slim and fast EV charger. LG will also work with partners GS Energy, which operates EV charging stations and IT provider GS Neotek to develop the necessary infrastructure. LG took a 60 percent stake in AppleMango, GS Energy a 34 percent stake and GS Neotek a 6 percent share, according to TechCrunch.
LG plans to install an EV charger production line at LG Digital Park in South Korea by the end of 2022. The goal is to supply a variety of customers with custom EV charging solutions, including private residences, shopping malls, hotels and public buildings.
