Gaming

And Riot Games is hoping you won’t even notice, apart from the big download. Today’s update moves Valorant from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5.3, and there might even be some small performance improvements on some systems. While other PC games using Unreal 5 have run into stutter issues, Riot says its switch shouldn’t even be noticeable for most players.

System update 3.0, which Panic says is coming later this year, will let you make folders for your games, adds a Game Library app, and brings support for “storing hundreds of games on your Playdate.” Seems like a great update, especially if you have a lot of titles from the Catalog or need to organize after finishing the second season of games.

Now all Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can stream games they own (including some console-only titles) from the cloud through the Xbox PC app, just like they can on other devices, which is a feature that has been in testing with Insiders program members.

Not to be outdone by GPD, which teased a handheld so powerful it’s begging to be plugged into the wall, Ayaneo is teasing its own Strix Halo handheld — alongside a mountain of other product. There’s so much you’ll need to scrub through not one, but two “strategy sharing session” videos to see it all. The Strix Halo device will be the Ayaneo Next 2, and it’s promising its battery will be internal unlike the GPD one.

The crosswords are “human-edited” and themed on “stories from current news,” according to a popup in the Particle app.

The changes include organizing recommendations into “one convenient section” and a “fully personalized” categories tab, according to Valve. You can try it now by joining the Steam Client Beta.

A Wolfenstein show is in development, reports Variety, and sounds like it could be based on MachineGames’ fantastic games that actually told stories rather than starting from scratch. Both MachineGames’ studio director Jerk Gustafsson and the showrunners of Fallout (which got the games right) Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan are attached. Showrunner here is Patrick Somerville; the show’s not official yet.

GPD, the company behind the most potent tiny laptops, is now teasing the most potent handheld. The GPD Win 5 will somehow fit a AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 — also see Framework Desktop and Asus’ ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet — into a chassis that’s like a large PlayStation Vita with hidden keyboard.

There’s an art to building a small-form-factor PC. When my recent upgrade doubled my CPU power draw, I had to choose: buy a bigger case to accommodate a more powerful cooler, or cut a hole in the side of my old one.

When Pokémon Legends: Z-A drops in October, everyone is going to be fawning over the franchise’s updated Kalos region. But Pokémon TCG Pocket’s next set — Wisdom of Sea and Sky — is going to be all about monsters from the Johto region, and it looks like the expansion will introduce to some interesting new gameplay mechanics like attacks that don’t require energy when it releases on July 30th.

It’s only taking 2.5 percent, but that’ll set Sony back JPY68 billion (around $464 million).

The company has some criticisms of the Competition and Markets Authority’s roadmaps of “potential actions to improve competition” for Apple and Google, and Epic now says it “can’t bring the Epic Games Store to iOS in the UK this year (if ever).”

When you finish one of The New York Times’ Strands puzzles, you’ll now see stats and details about your streak. I love Strands but had to break my daily habit for my own sanity, so please don’t judge me on my poor stats.