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Forget Pricey Tablets From Apple and Samsung, This Galaxy Tab A9+ Plus Is Going for Nothing Before October Prime Day

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If you’ve been perusing for a fancy new tablet, do take note that the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ just got its price chopped down over at Amazon. Usually this Samsung tablet starts at  $220, but right now you can score the 11-inch Android for just $159. The 28% discount amounts to a savings of $61. That’s for the 64 GB model by the way. Double your storage, and you can still save as the 128 GB model dropped from $270 to just $209. That one is a 23% discount which works also out to you saving $61. Both versions are available in either black or silver.

This 2024 Galaxy tablet has a nice and large 11-inch LCD screen which can display in resolutions of up to 1200p with a refresh rate of 90 Hz. According to the product page, the Galaxy Tab A9+ can deliver a “cinema-like audio experience,” which is, uh, an obvious embellishment. No one is expecting something you can hold in your hands to match that of an AMC theater. What this is really saying is the tablet has Dolby Atmos support. You can expect terrific sound that’s loud and clear as far as tablets go coming from the on-board speakers.

See at Amazon

The build of the Galaxy tablet is slim and light, yet durable —exactly what you’d hope for on a device you’d likely to take with you out and about. Bring it from home to your office, down to a coffee house, then over to a friend’s no problem.

Storage we covered. You have a choice between either 64 GB or 128 GB. The price jump from one to the next is an even $50. If you expect to be downloading a bunch of movies or TV shows or storing tons of photos, you may decide it’s best to splurge. Otherwise if streaming and documents saved to the cloud will be the main way you use it, just stick with the cheaper 64 GB.

Full Flexibility

Android OS is able to run multiple apps at the same time, allowing you to view them side-by-side. This is excellent when multitasking, letting you work more efficiently. You can even view multiple tabs in you web browser next to each other. Transferring files is easy as Quick Share allows you to send stuff to another nearby device with just a couple button presses.

If you have little ones at home, they can enjoy your Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ as well. The Samsung Kids app is filled with all sorts of playful and colorful content to keep them entertained.

See at Amazon



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Investors including Saudi 's PIF are reportedly in "advanced talks" for a $50bn leveraged buyout of EA
Game Reviews

Investors including Saudi ‘s PIF are reportedly in “advanced talks” for a $50bn leveraged buyout of EA

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A group of financial investors are in “advanced talks” with EA to go private with a valuation worth around $50 billion (£37.5 billion).

According to the Wall Street Journal (£), the investors – thought to include equity firm Silver Lake, Affinity Partners, and Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF) – could announce a deal as soon as next week. If true, this would make it the biggest leveraged buyout ever.

News of the potential deal sent EA’s share prices rocketing, closing 15 percent higher on Friday.

Saudi Arabia’s PIF increased its stake in FIFA publisher EA back in 2023. The PIF initiative was designed to diversify the country’s revenues via investment in foreign companies, with a large arm focused on the video games industry. It’s chaired by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the controversial ruler blamed by the CIA for the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has upheld the country’s notoriously poor human rights record.

Despite this, the PIF holds a notable stake in a swathe of gaming companies, including Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive, Nintendo, Embracer, Nexon, Capcom, and Ubisoft, after boss Yves Guillemot secured PIF funding, leading to new DLC for 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage set in 9th century AlUla, an ancient Arabian city.

Affinity Partners was founded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

EA has declined to comment.



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A side-by-side image shows the Beast and Bell from the 2017 remake and Aerith from FF7 Rebirth.
Game Reviews

FF7 Remake’s Third Chapter Is ‘Going Extremely Well’

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Square Enix arguably broke the internet about 10 years ago when it finally revealed it was working on a long-anticipated remake of Final Fantasy 7. Now, in 2025, two parts of this trilogy project have arrived on PlayStation and PC, with ports expected on Switch 2 and Xbox in the near future.

Speaking with a number of outlets, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s director Naoki Hamaguchi shed some light on FF7 Remake’s upcoming arrival on Switch 2 and Xbox, what it took to get the game running on less powerful hardware, how Rebirth is shaping up on Switch 2, and which Final Fantasy he’d be eager to see remade next.

The key to the Switch 2’s FF7R port was nailing the lighting

Speaking to ScreenRant, Hamaguchi zeroed in on “character expressions” and “lighting” as being essential to delivering a quality experience on Nintendo’s hybrid console:

Our aim was to align more towards the lightning we see in the PS5 version, and then we also kind of balance this by aligning more towards the sort of switch to post-effect and fog. And in this way the user is not really able to make out a huge difference

In an interview with Inverse, Hamaguchi said that a Switch 2 port seemed likely early on once “Nintendo first shared with [Square Enix] the new hardware […] the thought came to me that Final Fantasy 7 can likely run on these specs.”

According to Hamaguchi, the Xbox version was already in the works before the team got their first look at the Switch 2 hardware. And, contrary to what you may think, the underpowered Series S wasn’t much of an issue. Though the team has run into some memory problems on Series S, Hamaguchi still describes Microsoft’s budget console as “quite high in terms of specs.”

FF7 Remake isn’t the only part of the remake project headed to Switch 2. The more graphically ambitious Rebirth is also expected to arrive at some point in the future. Hamaguchi described Rebirth as being in a “working state” on Switch 2. “Our desire was to be able to ultimately offer and serve all of the platforms available,” Hamaguchi told ScreenRant. He declined to say, however, whether or not the third installment will arrive as a multiplatform title on day one.

Development on part three of FF7 remake’s trilogy is ‘going extremely well’

The FF7 remake project is still ongoing, with a yet-unnamed third entry on the horizon. Hamaguchi describes development as “going extremely well.” “A lot of the content is already playable,” he told Automaton, “and the game’s direction and form are firmly set in place. Right now the team is united around refining everything.”

FF7’s remakes have certainly impressed a number of fans, but concerns over the sales of the last entry and the general direction of the various plot changes do remain. For his part, Hamaguchi has described Rebirth as “doing very well on both PS5 and PC” in terms of sales. He also shared with ScreenRant how the recent live-action Beauty and the Beast remake inspired his decisions in reinterpreting FF7 for the remake trilogy:

When development [on FF7 Remake] was happening, the Beauty and the Beast movie remake was released. That movie, the original, was one I watched as a child. And then they now had the live-action that’s a remake…I saw the overall story and the world itself was not altered, but it was completely deconstructed in a way to really entertain today’s viewers, which was deeply satisfying.

Although FF7’s remake chapters have occupied his time, Hamaguchi has spent some time daydreaming about other possible remakes in the classic JRPG series. Speaking to Windows Central, the director described FF6 as his favorite, saying “That would be very cool to take on as a remake. I’ve put my heart and soul into the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series for over a decade now. Working on something completely new would be quite fun as well.”



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Forza Horizon 6 will be set exactly where we expected it to be set
Game Reviews

Forza Horizon 6 will be set exactly where we expected it to be set

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The next grand open-world setting for the next Forza Horizon game will be Japan, Microsoft has accidentally announced, and it will be released in 2026.

The announcement came via an Instagram post on the official Forza Horizon account. This let slip, ahead of a Tokyo Game Show 2025 Xbox briefing today, that “The Horizon Festival is heading to Japan. Coming 2026.” The post has since been removed. Whoops!

Image credit: Playground Games / Microsoft

The full announcement is expected to occur in the Xbox briefing that’s only moments away – due to begin at 11am UK time. How much of the game we’ll see, we don’t yet know, nor how much of Japan it will allow us to explore.

Forza Horizon 5 was released four years ago now, in 2021, and this year debuted on PlayStation 5, in the spring. Tom thinks it’s one of the greatest racing games of all time. Given that, the question of whether this new instalment could launch on PlayStation 5 is probably more “when?” rather than “if?”. Or, “How long will Microsoft keep it exclusive to Xbox for?”





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Helldivers 2 Could Have Ended Up As A Free-To-Play Game
Game Reviews

Helldivers 2 Could Have Ended Up As A Free-To-Play Game

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Helldivers 2 was, at one point, going to be a free-to-play game that would have been “completely” different than what we got in 2024. And this pivot is part of the reason why Helldivers 2 has some nasty performance problems.

When Helldivers 2 launched on PS5 and PC early last year, it quickly became a massive hit for PlayStation and developers Arrowhead. And since then, the sci-fi co-op shooter has remained popular as more updates have expanded the game, adding new weapons, enemies, locations, and more. But in recent months, players have complained about performance issues and technical problems.  Arrowhead’s CEO, Shams Jorjani, isn’t shying away from these criticisms and is directly addressing them in the official Helldivers 2 Discord server. And it’s here that he also revealed that at one point in time, Helldivers 2 was a much smaller game that was planned to be free-to-play and not a paid experience.

On September 25, while talking to fans about Helldivers 2 and its ongoing performance issues on console and PC on Discord, Jorjani explained that the shooter had a lot of built-up “tech debt” from various pivots that happened during development.

“[Helldivers 2] started as a AA game,” said the CEO. “[It] then grew in scope, then pivoted to a launch title for PS5, then pivoted to F2P, then back to premium ( I might have the order messed up) – so the goal posts were moved a few times – so the foundations of this big tower were made for a little bungalow on the beach.”

As far as I know, this is the first time it’s been officially confirmed by anyone at Arrowhead publicly that Helldivers 2 was at one point planned to be free-to-play. It’s interesting to think about now, and according to Jorjani, that version of the game would have had a “completely different content pipeline” and would have likely been a very different game compared to what we actually got.

“I wasn’t with Arrowhead back then so I don’t know – but the model was always to give away as much nice stuff for free and monetize other things,” said Jorjani. “It would have been a completely different angle. It [would have] required a completely different content pipeline.”

Making all of these changes and pivots during development led to a lot of tech debt, which the CEO says is a big reason the game’s performance is “so-so.” But they are planning to improve things in the future, with the CEO telling fans in the Discord that improving the game is like cleaning out a garage.

“Tech debt is like a garage filled with stuff you just chucked in,” said the CEO. “We really need to put up shelves in the back to get organized.” This isn’t the first time he’s talked about the game’s tech debt causing issues. Earlier this month, he reiterated that Helldivers 2 wasn’t in a great place and that the team needed to get their “shit in order” and fix it.



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What we've been playing - potential games of the year, and good, and only good, games
Game Reviews

What we’ve been playing – potential games of the year, and good, and only good, games

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27th September

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, Tom reminds everyone that three stars is a good review score; Jim thinks he’s found the next Balatro; Connor returns to work and to Hades 2; Bertie struggles to climb a train; and Marie outs herself as a Lego Jurassic World lover.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, PS5 Pro

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My review of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is live, but I thought I’d sneak in a little inside baseball knowledge about reviews here, just for those of you who are keen enough to actually read this and not head straight to the comments to paste-in what you wrote on Friday morning while you were meant to be working.

We’ve seen you ask for more reviews on Eurogamer and this week we delivered a lot. But this won’t happen every week. Reviews take a lot of time and resources. Even if I decided every member of Eurogamer staff should dedicate their time to reviews and only reviews, we still wouldn’t be able to publish all the reviews we’d like to and that you want to see on the site. We’d also then have a site that was only reviews, which might be nice for a week, until we go out of business.

Finally, a note on review scores. I’ve written this before I’ve seen the aftermath of my three-star score for CrossWorlds, but I expect it was a mixture of “I knew it was going to be rubbish” and “why does Eurogamer hate games?” The reality is I very much enjoyed Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds. It’s a good game. But four stars on Eurogamer is a strong statement that means something is better than “good”. I don’t hate video games. I’ve made my love of video games into a career. Sometimes things are just good, and that’s OK.

-Tom O

Kill the Brickman, Steam Deck

Watch on YouTube

Kill the Brickman is an eccentric cross between Balatro and Arkanoid, which, like all the best video games, is about shooting bullets into dudes. Some of these bullets explode, or clone themselves, or inflict poison damage, and the dudes in question, all of whom deserve to die for reasons, are bricks. It is my most gripping obsession of the year.

It runs beautifully on portables and it’s a solid bedtime or bus game, with big, chunky 16-bit graphics that read easily on small screens. You aim and shoot rather like you would in the old Amiga classic Arcade Pool, with a little line tracing your bullet’s trajectory. This looks and feels so much like an old Amiga game you could probably get it running on one and convince people it came out in 1994. And that’s not a diss.

It’s one of those simple ideas that’s breathtakingly executed and gorgeously presented, like the aforementioned Balatro, or like Vampire Survivors – games that genuinely cause flipped tables during a Game of the Year discussions at popular websites near Christmas time. That studios can spend 500 times this game’s budget and produce something which doesn’t feel half as good to play is frankly unconscionable.

-Jim

Hades 2, PC

I am back from a two-week stint off work due to my ear falling off like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and having only recently been able to put headphones on, without my jaw also falling off, the 1.0 release of Hades 2 has been a sweet succor to both my physical and mental woes.

There are like a thousand opinionated paragraphs on why a game everyone played months ago is great, and most of them are likely correct so I won’t bore you with how widely getting a Zeus lightning attack-build to work makes me smile. But I will write with great adoration about how much I loved deleting an early access save file with over 40 hours on it.

It’s shedding you’ve got to do, really. I don’t remember half of what happened in Hades 2, and plenty has surely changed in the time since I first hit its farthest reaches. The result is a weird, but not unpleasant, experience, where you’re possessed with the spirit of yourself from weekends past. It’s nice to feel lurch in surprise at how you’re able to get so far so quick; it’s nice to feel talented at something.

-Connor

Baby Steps, PC

Watch on YouTube

That fucking train, man. Can I swear here? I’ll probably get told off. But this little outburst is so indicative of how Baby Steps makes me feel that I want to keep it in. I’m not the most cool-headed person. I get agitated. I literally twist myself around my chair and grip it like a constrictor snake when agitation flares inside me – it’s a wonder it’s still in one piece. And agitation flares a lot playing Baby Steps.

Case in point: a train moment, which I don’t want to detail too greatly for fear of spoiling it, but you’ll know it when you get there. (It has to be a nod to another video game, surely.) I fell so much during it. I spent hours there. Falling, climbing back up, falling again. And as much as I want to tell you that I coolly and methodically worked through it, I absolutely didn’t. I expleted. I bitterly persevered. It’s a great game.

-Bertie

Lego Jurassic World, Switch 2

Strange fact: I can’t play Lego games on TV because they make me motion sick, but if they’re on the Switch screen I’m fine. I’m not sure why. But that’s my not-so-smooth transition into talking about Lego Jurassic World!

As a long-time lover of the movies, or at least some of them, and the books, and Lego itself, this was always going to be a no-brainer for me. As such, I’ve completed the entire game twice, though never reached 100 percent completion. But it doesn’t bother me. Just racing through the familiar stories with familiar characters, all told with trademark Lego humour, is more than enough to make a cold night warm.

-Marie



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Saudi Arabia & Other Investors Nearing $50 Billion Deal To Buy EA
Game Reviews

Saudi Arabia & Other Investors Nearing $50 Billion Deal To Buy EA

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A new report claims that Electronic Arts is close to finalizing a deal to go completely private via a $50 billion buyout being put together by a group of investors that includes multiple private-equity companies as well as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). The deal could be unveiled as soon as next week.

On September 26, The Wall Street Journal reported that massive video game publisher EA, the company behind popular and lucrative annual sports games like Madden, was currently negotiating a deal with various private equity companies, including Silver Lake, that could be worth nearly $50 billion, according to sources that spoke with the outlet.  The groups involved in the deal include the controversial Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, which has invested a lot of money in the video game industry over the last few years.

Kotaku has contacted EA about the reported deal.

Update: 9/26/2025: 5:30 p.m. EST: CNBC reports that among the investors is Affinity Partners. Notably, this is an investment company founded in 2021 by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner’s firm relies heavily on money from Saudi Arabia. Original story continues below.

The Wall Street Journal’s report claims that the deal is still being negotiated and discussions over price are still ongoing, but sources say EA could be valued at $50 billion. The outlet claims this would likely be the largest leveraged buyout of a company in history. Previously, the largest similar deal occurred in 2007 when a group of private-equity firms spent $32 billion on buying up Texas utility company TXU. This new reported deal, which has not yet been officially announced by EA or any parties involved, would be nearly twice as big, if you don’t factor in inflation.

If this all goes through, it’s just one more (very) big video game deal that the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund has made in recent years as part of the country’s government, trying to “sportswash” or, in this case, “gamewash” its abysmal human rights reputation and the fact that the nation is still ruled by a literal monarch. In recent years, the PIF has invested billions across multiple gaming companies, including Activision, Blizzard,  Nintendo, Capcom, and Nexon. It also completely owns King of Fighters and Metal Slug publisher SNK Corp, which reportedly led to the devs being forced to add famous soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo to the fighting game Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves earlier this year.

The PIF is run by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and these investments are part of the Saudi Vision 2030 strategy established during Salman’s mid-decade rise to power. While the plan is presented as a way for the country to diversify its oil-centric economy, the reality is much different. Here’s what former Kotaku writer Ian Walker wrote about Salman, the PIF, and Saudi Arabia’s plan in 2022:

In reality, however, Saudi Vision 2030 is largely a propaganda campaign focused on whitewashing Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record. The regressive monarchy seemingly hopes that aligning itself with entertainment industries around the world might loosen the purse strings of businesses wary of investing in the oil-rich country’s economy, especially with the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the ongoing, U.S.-backed Yemeni genocide still looming overhead.

So yeah, while it might sound nice that EA reportedly won’t answer to stockholders in the near future, the publisher’s potential new owners and investors are much, much worse than some annoying dudes in suits yelling about the number not going up fast enough.



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ROG Xbox Ally vs. Steam Deck
Game Reviews

ROG Xbox Ally vs. Steam Deck

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The ROG Xbox Ally finally has a price tag, which is $600 for the base, and $999 for the “X” variant, giving us the chance to properly pit it against competitors and determine which one is worth your hard-earned, inflated bucks.

The Steam Deck is the leading PC handheld at the moment, being Valve’s massively successful hardware product after a series of trials and errors, though its cheap price comes at the cost of performance.

So, being the hottest two PC handheld consoles at the moment, we’ve decided to compare them directly, both on hardware, software, potential, and, naturally, their price-to-performance ratios.

Should you buy the Steam Deck or the ROG Xbox Ally?

Firstly, we will have to take a good, hard look at each of the handhelds’ components and see how well games run on them. We will use PC equivalents to gauge the performance, as well as dedicated Steam Deck and ROG Ally benchmarks for this segment. Secondly, we’ll analyze their operating systems, game libraries, and what you could get running on them, even if not by default.

Lastly, we’ll compare prices, how they reflect the above, and whether or not you should dish out the dosh for any of these handheld systems.

The components and performance

The following table contains each of the devices’ components, which are the most important bits of any given machine.

ROG Xbox Ally ($599)ROG Xbox Ally X ($999)Steam Deck OLED 512GB ($549)GPU: Integrated “Van Gogh” RDNA 2 GPUGPU: Integrated “Strix Point” RDNA 3.5 GPUGPU: Integrated RDNA 2 GPUAPU: AMD Ryzen Z2 A – 4 cores, 8 threads, up to 3.8GHzAPU: AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme – 8 cores, 16 threads, up to 5GHzAPU: 6nm AMD ZEN 2 APURAM: 16GB LPDDR5X-6400RAM: 24GB LPDDR5X-8000RAM: 16GB LPDDR5-6400Storage: 512GB SSD with micro-SD card slotStorage: 1TB SSD with micro-SD card slotStorage: 512GB NVMe SSD with high-speed micro-SD card slotOS: Windows 11 Home (exclusive “Xbox” variant)OS: Windows 11 Home (exclusive “Xbox” variant)OS: SteamOS (Linux-based)Screen: 1080p 7″ IPS 120HzScreen: 1080p 7″ IPS 120HzScreen: 1280×800 7.4″ HDR OLED 90Hz

The base ROG Xbox Ally is strikingly similar to the Steam Deck OLED 512GB. I chose this one in particular since it fit the price range well and is internally the most competitive for the sake of this comparison, which doesn’t remove the fact that a $320 Steam Deck LCD exists, but it’s generally weaker with a worse screen, APU, GPU, and other internals.

Both the base ROG Xbox Ally and the Steam Deck OLED carry 16GB of specialized DDR5 RAM, the former having the somewhat more performant LPDDR5X variant. Both carry an AMD APU with RDNA 2-based graphics, though Valve does not go into the specifics of its CPU and GPU models. The ROG Xbox Ally features the Zen 4-based Ryzen Z2, whereas the Steam DECK is stuck with an older architecture, carrying a Zen 2-based APU instead.

This makes the ROG Xbox Ally fresher, newer, and likely more performant in modern titles, given that support for this architecture is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

When it comes to the screen, the ROG has a standard 1080p resolution and a 7-inch screen size, with a 120Hz refresh rate that should make any gaming experience very smooth and HD due to the high pixel density on such a small screen.

Steam Deck, on the other hand, has a low 1280×800 resolution, which does help with performance but looks nowhere near as good. It does have an HDR-capable OLED screen, which is as good as it gets, but the 90Hz refresh rate also won’t feel as smooth as what the ROG offers.

But the one handheld that stands out the most here is the ROG Xbox Ally X, the thousand-dollar option that has all the bells and whistles of a modern PC machine. With a great APU, a newer RDNA 3.5-based GPU, and 24 gigs of RAM, the Ally X edges out both of the other consoles by a wide margin.

These high-powered internals will reflect on battery life, which is bound to drain much quicker on both the ROG Xbox handhelds, while the Steam Deck should cruise smoothly at low temperatures and a lower power draw.

In most games, both the ROG Xbox Ally variants will probably win over the Steam Deck OLED, but I wouldn’t bet on the first one doing so all the time. It’s 50 bucks more expensive and has much newer components, but shouldn’t have a dramatically bigger performance, given both it and the Steam Deck have an RDNA 2 GPU integrated.

We’ll have to wait for a full release to see benchmark numbers, but I feel like it’s safe to say that the ROG Xbox Ally is the clear winner in the performance category, since it’s literally years ahead in its APU architecture and other internals.

Operating systems, game libraries, and potential

The Ally is big, bulky, and beautiful. Image via Asus

Both ROG Xbox Ally variants run a homebrew Xbox OS based on the Windows 11 Home edition. This OS eliminates many features of the desktop Windows experience to improve battery life, reduce background processes, and overall help the handheld achieve better performance. This OS fork is currently exclusive to the ROG Xbox Ally but is going to be released to the wider public at some point in the future.

Steam Deck OLED runs Valve’s Arch Linux fork, SteamOS, which is a custom-built operating system tailor-made for gaming, especially on Steam itself. Valve develops and maintains the OS and manually certifies games for the Steam Deck, which now largely feature a “Steam Deck” graphics setting within their options menu. Based on Arch Linux, it draws next to no power, has minimal background processes, and is almost the perfect way to game without being bogged down by your OS.

However, there are pros and cons to the SteamOS, precisely because it is based on Linux. Windows 11 is the default OS for most home computing devices nowadays, and installing any app, Steam included, onto it is pretty straightforward. To expand your domain beyond Linux, you’d have to install Windows on the Steam Deck on your own, which isn’t guaranteed to work well out of the box, requiring further tinkering to be done correctly.

Meanwhile, the ROG Xbox Ally can and will run any Windows app, and you can do with the system whatever you please, with a dedicated button taking you to the regular Windows desktop in an instant.

The Steam Deck is also pretty much bound to Steam, with Game Pass only available via streaming, which drains battery life and has tremendous input lag and quality issues. The ROG Xbox Ally has the Xbox app, so natively running Game Pass is no biggie, and likely even intended.

What’s more, the ROG Xbox Ally can run Steam and Steam games, though without Steam Deck verification, which shouldn’t be an issue, especially for Xbox Ally X users who will be able to run most games at satisfying performance with upscaling.

Thus, the Xbox Ally gives you the best of both worlds, trading in custom-made stuff for extra freedom and power.

Price, worth, and conclusion

Steam Deck remains competitive at this price range, especially with its $320 cheapest option, which, though weaker, is the deal of the century. Image by Destructoid

The ROG Xbox Ally is a $599 machine, its big brother a $999 option, while the Steam Deck OLED sits at $549. All three are capable machines that’d offer you a tremendous amount of customization, freedom, and on-the-go gaming, no matter the genre. However, being so close in price, and with similar if not better internals, the base ROG Xbox Ally is an enticing offer over the Steam Deck OLED, while the Ally X remains out of reach as way too expensive.

Though it will offer a lot more than the base version in terms of raw performance, the screen remains the same, and so do many other things, which are not worth the extra $400 in my opinion.

If you are a fan of Valve and how they’ve been handling (pun intended) the Steam Deck, its SteamOS (which can also be installed on the Ally), and the store all of this is named after, then sticking to your guns won’t hurt you all too much.

After all, the Steam Deck is a capable machine, has Valve itself verifying games’ performance on it, and an OS that’s as fast as they come.

Is it worth $549? Probably, but compared to the ROG Xbox Ally, it should reduce its price to $499 due to its more aged components. That should put it ahead of the Xbox Ally as the better option, but right now, with these prices, I would choose the base ROG Xbox Ally personally, since you can do whatever you want with the thing, including installing SteamOS and doing as Valve does.

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After Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, gacha master HoYoverse set its sights on the Animal Crossing-like cosy sim genre
Game Reviews

After Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, gacha master HoYoverse set its sights on the Animal Crossing-like cosy sim genre

by admin


Petit Planet – a new cosy life sim from the creators of Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail – has been announced.

The game currently has PC and mobile versions confirmed, with “additional platforms” in development according to the official press release alongside the reveal. Petit Planet has you build up and develop your own tiny planet, eventually venturing out into a galaxy filled with other planets owned by cutesy NPCs.

A reveal trailer (which you can watch below) showcases what the game will look like, with a character building up a nice little home, meeting various animal friends, before hopping in a car and taking to the stars to meet a cast of other furry fellows on their own home planets.

Here’s the Petit Planet reveal trailer!Watch on YouTube

Those interested can pre-register for the game right now on the official website, as well as sign up for upcoming beta tests. There’s no word as to when these beta tests will occur or when the sign ups will close as of writing.

Rumours around a HoYoverse life sim have been circulating for a while, with the internal name Astaweave Haven known thanks to early leaks. However, this recent reveal marks the first official word on the game as well as the first peak we’ve been able to get of polished gameplay.

There is no information on how monetisation will work for Petit Planet, though given this is a HoYoverse game the expectation is that the game will feature gacha mechanics as found in Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero.

This isn’t the only game HoYoverse has in the works. The developer revealed Honkai: Nexus Anima earlier this year, a Pokemon-style creature collector and auto-battler. Petit Planet has entered a somewhat contested genre, interestingly enough. Both Pocket Pair and Nintendo have announced their own cosy farm sims in Palfarm and Pokémon Pokopia.



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A composite image shows the protagonist of Baby Steps, Silent Hill f, and Sonic arranged in a line.
Game Reviews

5 Games To Play This Weekend

by admin


It’s officially autumn this week! Though, at least on the east coast, the weather hasn’t gotten the memo and is still hanging out at around ‘80 degrees. So now I’m stuck inside freezing air-conditioned interiors. Yes, I can tweak the temperature, but then the AC still messes with my breathing. Ugh.  I can’t win.

What I can win at, though, is a video game. And if you’re in search of one, I and my comrades here at Kotaku have some solid recommendations for you to check out. Let’s get into it.

Silent Hill f

© Screenshot:: NeoBards Entertainment / Claire Jackson / Kotaku

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Unknown”)
Current goal: Unlock a new ending.

Few genres in gaming excite me more than horror. Yes, I’m a masochist and the struggle of a solid survival horror game is wonderfully cathartic. The frights, the opportunities for rich thematic exploration, the evocative sound design and haunting soundtracks, I’m here for all of it. And thankfully, Silent Hill f delivered everything I love about this genre and then some. It’s arguably my favorite game of the year thus far (watch out Avowed, MGS Delta, and Clair Obscur) and, this weekend, I’ll be returning to Hinako’s Japanese mountainside village to unravel more of her dark, potentially cautionary, tale.

Silent Hill f has multiple endings, so I’ve got a pretty clear goal this weekend: I want to unlock at least one more. The first ending, which seems to be universally the same for any first playthrough, introduced so many new questions, along with a stunning revelation of what might be really going on with all these damn monsters and lengthy hallucinatory episodes. An unfortunate bout of the flu (or whatever it was) has kept me out of reach of exploring more of these dark depths this week, but I’m finally well enough to suffer once more. – Claire Jackson

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Switch 2, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Roll around at the speed of sound

Finally, I can tell y’all you should play Sonic Racing: Crossworlds this weekend. The blue blur’s latest kart racer is full of depth, style, and some of the best interactions ever between its huge cast of characters. It’s so good I can almost forgive it for falling into the annoying crossover slop trend that simply will not die because people love to see things they like in other things they like. I’ll race around as Shadow the Hedgehog on my sick hoverboard, even if it means I have to look at that damn talking sponge in the other lane. I love that guy, but there was a reason he never got his license. We should not be allowing him to drive around just because he’s in a different universe. It’s not safe. — Kenneth Shepard

Hades 2

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Make it to Chronos

It’s nice to have Hades back again, but more and different. Would it have been cool to see Supergiant Games make something else instead over the last five years? Maybe. Will they make so much money from both Hades 1 and Hades 2 that they can make something even more wild next time? Probably. But in some ways they’ve been making the same game since 2011’s Bastion. Some are more linear than others. Some lean more into story and characters while others lean more into mechanics and systems. But there is always some form of isometric action, beautiful art direction, and moody narrative.

The roguelike loop isn’t for everyone. I get that. It’s not always for me either. But as life gets busy and more of my gaming gets confined to little screens held in my hands in-between everything else demanding my time and attention, I appreciate the little 15-minute bullet hell snacks awaiting me in Hades 2. It’s like having a portable arcade cabinet oozing with in-game designs that somehow look just as good as the panel art and cool nuggets of Greek mythology littered about for me to digest on my own time. All of the cozy-sim additions weaving their way into my hack-and-slash rage-out sessions? TBD on how I feel about them. But it’s nice to be home again. – Ethan Gach

Baby Steps

Play it on: PS5, Windows PCs (Steam Deck: “Verified”)
Current goal: Stay chill

The latest existential puzzle game from the maker of hit frustration-sim Getting Over It is called Baby Steps and it’s as clever, gallling, and bizarre as you’d expect. Developed by Bennett Foddy, Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and others, it puts you in the role of a man transported into a AAA open-world video game where even the simplest navigational tasks feel unwieldy and insurmountably tedious. I’ve only had a couple of hours with it but the awkward bipedal movement mechanics, free-form exploration, and comedic beats have all worked together to keep tugging me along. Is it a pointless game for smart people? Quite possibly, which is why I’m intent on not giving up, even when it wants me to. Just beware the dong. – Ethan Gach

Town to City

Play it on: Windows PCs (Early Access)
Current goal: Finish all my houses

Town to City is a cozy builder that revels in the details but doesn’t overwhelm you with them. You design houses that attract people who make stuff which lets you build more stuff and attract more people and so on and so forth. In keeping with similar building sims, the objective is to have fun making stuff rather than stress out over managing a spreadsheet of tradeoffs until you’ve “solved” the game’s underlying resource problem. The voxel art style looks lovely and streamlines building, plus the tools strike a nice balance, offering plenty of options without shoving too much in your face too early. The music is nice and the vibes are chill. It’s by Galaxy Grove which also made Station to Station, a superbly relaxing train sim from a few years back. Town to City is that but for people who spend too much time marveling at the inviting walkability of old Mediterranean town squares. – Ethan Gach

And that wraps our picks for the weekend! What are you playing?



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