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Coinbase CEO: ‘Good Chance’ Bitcoin Price Hits $1 Million

by admin September 21, 2025

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has reiterated his prediction that Bitcoin could potentially surge to as high as $1 million during his recent interview with Fox Business.

In fact, Armstrong believes there is a “good chance” that the flagship token reaches seven digits before 2030.

As reported by U.Today, Armstrong initially predicted that BTC could reach $1 million in August, arguing that regulatory clarity in the US would be the main catalyst for its bull run.

Once again, he has mentioned the Genius Act as well as the market structure legislation.

Moreover, the U.S. holding Bitcoin would be a massive potential driver of demand, and it could potentially encourage other G20 countries to follow suit.

Lastly, Armstrong claims that plenty of institutional money is now flowing into Bitcoin.

“So, there are a lot of positive tailwinds for Bitcoin,” he said, adding that lots of pools of capital still haven’t gotten access to the flagship cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin’s ambidextrous nature

Armstrong has compared Bitcoin to gold, noting that it is something that people might actually flee to in times of uncertainty.

That said, he tends to view BTC as a “hybrid” of risk-on and risk-off assets.

As reported by U.Today, gold bug Peter Schiff recently opined that Bitcoin investors bet on the wrong horse after both U.S. equities and precious metals rallied to record highs while Bitcoin remained basically flat.

However, Armstrong claims that he does not want to be caught up in short-term trends.

“What I try to do is to look at the long-term trends,” he told Fox Business.

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September 21, 2025 0 comments

A skeletal warrior stands holding a two-handed sword, wearing bulky black plate armour.

Gaming Gear

No MMO will ever have graphics as good as the text MUDs I played for years

by admin September 20, 2025

My friends, you’ve been had. You’ve been suckered. A cabal of sirens has made you stupefied and susceptible, bearing impressive names like Unreal Engine 5, Unity, Anvil, Snowdrop. These are distractions: dark paths to divert you from the true way. You don’t need nanite-rendered leaves or dappled evening sunlight rendered with lumen. Look away. Look away!

Terminally Online

This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMORPG column, and I am not Harvey Randall, your usual author. I’m Joshua Wolens, filling in for Harvey this week with a lot of wistful, misty-eyed old-man musings about the glory of the MUDs of yore.

Look away and look back to the last time anything was good: the ’90s, when the internet moved too slow to cook your brain and the absolute peak of graphical fidelity was translucent water and the PlayStation 1, whose vertices swam and staggered beneath their own raw aesthetic power. Back then, if you wanted a world—a real world—there was only one place to go: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs).

And frankly, my contention is that for all our modern graphical horsepower, that’s still the case.

Sacred texts

MUDs, if you’re not familiar, are large, shared, entirely text-based worlds where everything is conducted by the input and output of text. Massively multiplayer command lines, of a sort. Want to go somewhere? Prepare to type GO NORTH, GO NORTHWEST, GO NORTH, GO NORTHEAST ad nauseum until you reach your destination.

PvE might, in a generous game, consist of you typing KILL until the deed is done, pausing intermittently to input whatever the appropriate verb is for healing. A less generous game will have you type out the correct verb for every specific type of attack you want to do. As for PvP? Likely a terrifying arms race of custom-made combat scripts based on an ever-shifting sea of variables.

(Image credit: Mudlet Makers / Iron Realms Entertainment)

They’re complex, in other words. But despite that, it was a MUD—Achaea—that got its hooks into me at the tender age of 13. Not WoW, not EverQuest, not anything else. Achaea was my main game for years, but I moved on to others: Lusternia (no, it’s not a XXX game), Aardwolf, a brief flirtation with Discworld, and so on.

The ‘why’ of it is easy: more than any graphical MMO, these games captured the spirit of tabletop roleplaying—where the gaps in presentation left by dry stat sheets and dice rolls have to be filled by your imagination. MUDs were (and are) nothing but imagination, and their rudimentary presentation left enormous room for players to fill the gaps themselves.

In my heyday, the meat of what I got up to in the MUDs I played didn’t consist of relentlessly grinding dev-authored quests (though there was plenty of that), it took place in all the interstices the designers had left and that players had moved to fill. The beauty of text is that there’s very little you can’t do with it and doing it takes very little time.

Being able to describe yourself any way you liked, to perform any action you could fit into a sentence meant that players I knew made their living as travelling performers, as essayists on in-game lore (this was often tedious), as politicians and diplomats. Also they would quite regularly retreat to somewhere secluded with one another and—sweaty fingers trembling—co-author the most specific smut you can imagine. The internet!

(Image credit: Iron Realms)

It is, in these circumstances, relatively easy to catch a dev’s attention and have them help you roleplay out some kind of in-game event. Perhaps you want to be an archaeologist making a momentous discovery: all you need is someone to type you up a new item, and maybe briefly inhabit a nearby NPC to act out the scene.

And it really did look great, too. Not to turn into a kindergarten teacher, but your imagination is quite powerful, and good writing is timeless in a way no texture or lighting model ever will be.

Left on read

Alas, MUDs are on the downswing. In fairness, they’ve been that way since at least the late ’90s. They were dying even when I was first getting into them, slowly supplanted by MMOs which more closely resembled videogames and less resembled emacs. Where my favourites of yore once had playercounts in the hundreds, now they number in the tens. Some in the single-digits. Though some are doing quite well, I understand.

(Image credit: Iron Realms / Mudlet)

We’ll miss them if they ever go entirely, I think. As tech advances to fill more and more of those gaps which we used to have to fill ourselves, our scope for participation and mental investment in the worlds we spend thousands of hours in diminishes. Or mine does, anyway.

I’ve tried to get into the WoWs and SWTORs of the world (not FF14, which I believe I need some kind of catboy licence to enter legally), but none of the many characters I’ve made linger in my mind like the cadaverous freak I used to play in Achaea, and it’s Lusternia—not any MMO normal human beings play—that I habitually return to every holiday period. If I’m going to take part in a massive online world, I want to feel like I have the capacity to shape it, if nowhere else than in my own mind.

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September 20, 2025 0 comments

Shadow standing on top of a hovering boat

Game Updates

Crossworlds’ Rival Interactions Are So Good

by admin September 19, 2025

There’s a lot to love about Sonic Racing: Crossworlds. The kart racer is just under a week away from launch, and I’ve been playing it and really enjoying Sonic and friends’ latest run around the racetrack. It’s got a surprising amount of depth with its customizable builds, a wide spread of tracks referencing Sonic history, and its races are chaotic, fast-paced fun. But one of the best things the game does happens just before the races. In single-player modes, you’re pitted against a specific Rival racer, and before the first race, they’ll exchange some words with whoever you’re playing as. These brief back-and-forths are absolutely delightful, and show that everyone in the Sonic cast is a professional trash talker.

pic.twitter.com/CNSbEod2FF

— Mlick (@Mlickles) September 18, 2025

When I play Crossworlds, I play almost exclusively as Shadow the Hedgehog, so I’ve seen just how vicious Sonic Team has made my boy when talking to pretty much everyone on the roster. Now that reviews are out and more coverage is circulating, I’m seeing a lot more of this banter and realizing that there’s some grade-A smack talk happening in this game. Crossworlds doesn’t really have a story like previous Sonic racing games, so most of the character interactions come from these pre-race rap battles. Everyone in the roster has a little bit of attitude, and it means that if you put them in a competitive situation, they’re gonna try to rustle their opponents’ feathers.

Not all of these interactions are hostile, though. These races are all in good fun, so if characters who vibe get paired up as rivals, they’re usually pretty chill, and it’s sometimes illuminating to hear them talk, especially if they haven’t really had much screentime together over the years. So sit back and enjoy some of the best exchanges I’ve seen online thus far.

OMEGA REALLY SAID YOU HAVE NO MONEY, NO LEADS NO BITCHES

OH MY GOD😭😭😭😭😭😭 https://t.co/n97aAGjRxF

— Chonzo (COMMS OPEN) (@chonzodraws) September 18, 2025

I get the feeling Shadow might not like Charmy.

Though to be fair he doesn’t seem to like a lot of people. #SonicRacingCrossWorlds pic.twitter.com/ZhyKA60fqu

— The Sonic Stadium ✪ 25 YEARS OF SONIC NEWS (@sonicstadium) September 18, 2025

I don’t think you can blame Shadow for this TBH they’ve barely even interacted beyond that one recent #IDWSonic issue. #SonicRacingCrossWorlds pic.twitter.com/C1ubko6qvn

— The Sonic Stadium ✪ 25 YEARS OF SONIC NEWS (@sonicstadium) September 18, 2025

Damn, Jet is really mad at Big pic.twitter.com/8u3lIcKwzz

— Funkin 🦉🐓 (@funkin03) September 18, 2025

This is why Shadow is the best Sonic character. Zavok slander is very welcome! pic.twitter.com/qW9gszebR7

— Shamaboy (@Shamaboy11) September 18, 2025

Knuckles….is calling the Chaotix…the boys. 😭

He’s acting like they go way back. Knuckles and the Chaotix are old friends again? In *my* modern Sonic game? #SonicRacingCrossWorlds pic.twitter.com/yNPPsyNTjO

— The Sonic Stadium ✪ 25 YEARS OF SONIC NEWS (@sonicstadium) September 18, 2025

Looks like they fixed Jet’s animation, he doesn’t disappear anymore!! And holy shit Silvers animation is so tuff they cooked 😭😭

Silver’s aura is back pic.twitter.com/6ozzj4q4vr

— NERO / ネロ (@roxochixo) September 18, 2025

YEAH CHARMY JUST ENDED JET LMAOOOO pic.twitter.com/t1qs0sJpsn

— Funkin 🦉🐓 (@funkin03) September 18, 2025

TELL HIM CHARMY 🗣️🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/03haWU869v

— Funkin 🦉🐓 (@funkin03) September 18, 2025

The fact Espio’s actually thinking about leaving the Chaotix to work for Blaze if the job pays more! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 #SonicRacingCrossWorlds pic.twitter.com/U6XbAhnJn7

— EdwardSabaVO (@EdwardSabaVO) September 18, 2025

OMG ESPIO CALM DOWN, IT’S NOT THAT SERIOUS 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/w6ZKP07y0M

— Funkin 🦉🐓 (@funkin03) September 19, 2025

Alright, Cream definitely knows what she’s doing here. #SonicRacingCrossWorlds pic.twitter.com/yrjDlideIl

— The Sonic Stadium ✪ 25 YEARS OF SONIC NEWS (@sonicstadium) September 18, 2025

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is coming to PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on September 25, with a Switch 2 version planned for later this year.

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September 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

The New Mars Attacks Game On Steam Is Very Good

by admin September 17, 2025

Well, I didn’t have this on my 2025 bingo card, which is a thing I assume we all have. There’s a Mars Attacks! video game out this week on PC, and more surprisingly, it’s a really fun, if somewhat rough around the edges, theme park management game that plays a lot like a sci-fi spin on Zoo Tycoon and Two Point Hospital.

Cleverly titled Mars Attracts, this newly released theme park management sim lets you abduct humans from throughout history and build a theme park around displaying them like animals while also experimenting on them in horrible ways for science. And also to provide entertainment to your depraved Martian guests. And after spending a few hours with Mars Attracts, I’m both excited to play more and also disturbed by how quickly I turned on humanity in the pursuit of building the coolest theme park on Mars.

Mars Attracts isn’t based on the ’90s Mars Attacks movie directly, but instead is based on the original trading cards that inspired Tim Burton’s cult classic film, so don’t expect Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker to pop up at any point. Instead, Mars Attracts uses the OG card art and lore as its foundation to build out a wild theme park management simulator. And all of the new in-game art created for Mars Attracts is fantastic, perfectly emulating the old look of the cards. I really want some of these loading screen and pause menu images printed out as big posters.

So what do you do in Mars Attracts? Well, you build theme parks. But it’s not as simple as plopping down some paths, food stalls, trash cans, and rides, and calling it a day. The Martians in Mars Attracts are coming to your park to see different human beings from various points in history, like the Wild West and Ancient Rome. Through the use of time travel and UFOs, you send off aliens to go collect humans and items from a given time period, which you then place in exhibits. And while you have some humans collected, you might as well run experiments on them. Not only does this please many of your guests, but it also helps you earn the various research currencies needed to unlock upgrades and new things to build. It’s a lot more fun than researching new tech in other park builders. In those games, I don’t even get to torture and kill one single human, let alone dozens.

Of course, the humans you collect aren’t going to be happy about this situation, so you’ll need to make sure you keep their enclosure clean and filled with food troughs and water dispensers, and not poke and prod them too much. If a human gets too angry and wants to break out, they just might, and you’ll need to call in security to stop them.

And if you have an excess of human beings, you can also just dissect them and use their parts to build new kiosks and entertainment options for your guests. Want to provide your Martians with balloons made out of human lungs? You can do just that, once you’ve killed enough humans. If this all sounds morbid and disgusting, don’t worry. Mars Attracts features a cartoonish and silly aesthetic that makes it easy to have a good time while torturing your human captives.

Mars Attracts is currently in early access on Steam, and while I didn’t experience any annoying bugs or crashes while building out my incredible parks across the game’s first few starting zones, I did notice some missing text and a lack of sound effects. There’s just a general sense that the game isn’t finished yet, which is exactly what I would expect from an early access indie game. I also felt like some parts of the in-game economy felt grindy, and it can be annoying managing supplies when it feels like your workers aren’t doing what you expect. So if you prefer your games to be more feature-complete, perfectly balanced, and…well…finished, then you might want to wait.

For everyone else, if you love building out wacky hospitals in Two Point or building elaborate parks in RollerCoaster Tycoon, I’d definitely recommend Mars Attracts. It’s the weirdest theme park builder I’ve played in a long time, but also a fantastic spin on the genre that sci-fi fans and Mars Attacks lovers will enjoy for hours and hours.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

For Good’ Wants to Crash That ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Soundtrack Oscar Push

by admin September 17, 2025

KPop Demon Hunters is a huge hit—both the record-breaking movie itself and its record-breaking soundtrack album. No doubt Netflix has already started having Oscar dreams, with nominations all but guaranteed in the Best Animated Feature as well as Best Original Song categories. The biggest hit is even titled “Golden,” just like the statuette! But another musical on the horizon would like you to remember the votes aren’t tallied yet.

That would be Wicked: For Good, the follow-up to last year’s very successful Wicked—which notched 10 Oscar nominations and picked up a pair for its lavish costumes and production design. (It also answered fan demand by holding “singalong” screenings, as KPop Demon Hunters also did recently.)

But one category it didn’t enter into was Best Original Song, since Wicked‘s numbers all came from the long-running Broadway musical. That didn’t stop the Academy Awards from bringing stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo out to sing onstage, and now it seems Wicked: For Good is hoping for a return visit.

As Variety reports, confirming remarks Jon M. Chu made to Entertainment Weekly last week, Wicked: For Good‘s soundtrack will feature two new songs, one for each of its witchy leads. Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the original Wicked songs for the 2003 musical, penned both; today their titles were confirmed as “No Place Like Home,” for Erivo’s Elphaba, and “The Girl in the Bubble,” for Grande’s Glinda.

As Variety notes, both songs “are expected to be Oscar-eligible, unlike any of the songs from the first movie, which had added verses but did not feature any completely new songs.”

In a statement to the trade, Schwartz said, “In addition to two brand new songs, there is a lot that’s new in several other existing songs. So not only listeners coming to the score for the first time, but long-time fans of the original Broadway cast album, will have a great deal to discover.”

Don’t expect to get more than teases of the new material before the movie, though: Wicked: For Good and its soundtrack both release November 21. Do you predict either of the new songs will be a threat to KPop Demon Hunters when awards season rolls around?

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Hands-on with an ROG Xbox Ally handheld gaming PC

Product Reviews

Good news for Windows handhelds: Microsoft is now letting you launch installed Steam, Battle.net, and other storefront games from the Xbox app

by admin September 17, 2025

Xbox on PC is now officially rolling out a feature that might have it become a single stop for all your games. As Xbox’s VP of Experiences Jason Beaumont explains, in addition to “updated app functionality”, one new feature currently rolling out on Windows is an “aggregated gaming library”. Beaumont has also announced that “cross-device play history” will be coming, but that will be later this month.

The main library aggregation update rolled out to Insiders a few months ago, but it looks like it’s now being released to non-Insiders in regular updates.

Those considering using aggregator apps like Playnite, in other words, might not need to do so anymore because they’ll be able to use the Xbox app to view their entire game library, not just games bought on the Xbox app itself. This will “show your installed games from multiple PC storefronts, including your Xbox library, Xbox Game Pass, Battle.net and other leading PC storefronts.”

Getting to those storefronts should be easier, too, as you can use the new ‘My Apps’ tab in your library to house Battle.net and so on.

It’s worth noting, though, that third-party apps like Playnite and other aggregators might not be rendered completely redundant by this new Xbox feature. That’s because the new feature is only for installed games, whereas Playnite (for example) also acts as a home for owned but uninstalled games.

This also seems like more of a move for Windows handhelds—especially the Asus ROG Xbox Ally—than PCs, which explains why all the promo pics are all of the Xbox Ally. Although it’s nice to have all games from different platforms in one place on a desktop or laptop, it makes most sense for a handheld device where you’re expected to stay within the confines of the Xbox app, in the ‘full screen experience’.

(Image credit: Microsoft Xbox @ Xbox Wire)

It also fits in with Microsoft’s seeming push towards an all-encompassing platform.

I’ve come up with a new term for the Microsoft Xbox platform: ‘Gloop’. The Gloop is a globby mass of various features and services all schlopped together into an increasingly large ball of putty. At least, that’s how my peculiarly abstract brain likes to think about it.

Microsoft is even claiming that game streaming inside a car ‘is an Xbox’. With it seeming like the ROG Xbox Ally handheld ‘console’ is, well, just a Windows handheld with some optimisations, and with Xbox expanding and pushing its cloud gaming services across various devices, Xbox is starting to become synonymous as just ‘whatever runs on the Xbox app.’

Thus: Gloop. I’m not complaining, it’s just a metaphor. You’re welcome. It only makes sense to throw our mutli-platform game libraries into that mix, I suppose.

Best handheld PC 2025

All our current recommendations

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September 17, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Good for a fun time, not a long time

by admin September 16, 2025

It wasn’t until your average electric car started managing 200 miles on a charge that the buying populace started getting over their range anxiety. That means electric motorcycles, with ranges often measured in double digits, remain a bit of a tough sell for mass-market buyers.

The focus, then, seems to be “for a good time, not a long time,” and that’s very much the case of the Can-Am Origin. This $14,499 battery-powered dual-sport is a fun, flickable, go-anywhere two-wheeled smile factory that I sadly managed to run dry of electrons in under 45 miles.

Thankfully, there’s a lot more to the story than just that.

Forward-looking

Can-Am has been around since the early ’70s, offering a series of two-, three-, and four-wheeled vehicles, most focusing on extreme performance over extreme terrain. Since the very beginning, Can-Am has worked with Austrian engine gurus Rotax, and that trans-Atlantic partnership enters the EV age with the Origin, a dual-sport motorcycle from Can-Am built around a powertrain developed by Rotax.

The result is an 8.9-kWh battery (about 10 percent the size of the one in a Tesla Model 3) serving as the core of a motorcycle built to be just as capable off-road as on. The Origin sits squarely in the dual-sport category of motorcycles, and its skinny, nobbily tires and wire wheels definitely fit that template, even if the single-sided swingarm with its integrated chain is a novelty in this segment.All of that is wrapped in just enough bodywork to give this thing a decidedly futuristic vibe, especially that upright fairing with the blunt, stacked headlight that makes this thing look like an escaped drone from Valve’s Portal series.

My test bike had just a bit of color, the battery pack itself providing a splash of yellow to stand out from the otherwise dark frame and fairing, but the brightest part is actually the 10.25-inch LCD that serves as the cockpit. It even supports Apple CarPlay, in case you’re into that sort of thing.

Brightness needed

The LCD display is bright and easy to use.

(Tim Stevens for Engadget)

I’ve ridden a fair few electric motorcycles over the years, and many of them are cursed with dim LCDs that make it a struggle to see how fast I’m going on a sunny day. That’s not what you’d call safe.

Thankfully, the Origin does not have that issue. The LCD here is not only massive but bright and crisp, and serves up a software interface that’s mostly intuitive and easy to use at a glance. My only complaint here is the giant warning disclaimer that pops up every single time you fire up the motorcycle. I suppose such a thing was inevitable, but it does take away some of the purity of the ride experience.

But then the Origin isn’t afraid to throw out convention. The throttle is the best example of that. It actually twists both ways. Twist it in the traditional direction, pulling your hand towards yourself, and it, of course, applies throttle to the bike and accelerates you forward.

But you can also twist the throttle away from you, which boosts the regenerative braking to the rear wheel. You can also toggle the bike into reverse mode, where that backwards throttle enables you to creep the bike backwards. That’s useful because at 412 pounds, the Origin is about 50 pounds heavier than a comparable dual-sport bike with an engine.

The controls on the left grip.

(Tim Stevens for Engadget)

The motorcycle also features a bevy of controls on the left grip, starting with standard fare like headlight flasher, horn and turn signals. But there’s also a rocker switch for changing drive modes and navigating through menus, a button that cycles through various views on the display, and a back button in case you dig a little deeper in a menu than you meant.

There’s even a full series of media controls. There’s a button to toggle the voice assistant on your phone, buttons for adjusting the volume of media playback and even buttons to skip forward and backward in your current playlist.

Personally, I’m the kind of rider who likes to listen to the wind, my thoughts and the ominous sounds approaching SUVs driven by morons browsing TikTok. But if you have a riding playlist that you like to spin, you’ll have full control here.

Ride time

The saddle strikes a good balance between comfort and sport.

(Tim Stevens for Engadget)

I don’t often fit well on dual-sport machines. I stand six feet tall, but do it on disproportionately short legs. That usually leaves me tottering on tiptoes whenever riding an off-road-minded motorcycle. I cringed when the Origin rolled off a truck and into my life for the evaluation period, but I was pleasantly surprised to find I could straddle it with no problem.

A 34-inch seat height enables me to stand flat-footed without having to break out platform boots, and on the go, I found the Origin’s ergonomics to fit me just about perfectly. The pegs are wide and grippy, so standing up on them is no problem, and while I’d probably prefer it if the bar stood a fraction of an inch taller, it was close to perfect whether sitting on or standing over the saddle.That saddle is a little on the narrow side compared to your average street motorcycle, but wider than those found on many dual-sport machines, striking a good balance between narrowness for standing and comfort for sitting.

About the only complaint I had was wind buffeting. I generally prefer riding bikes without fairings, but somehow the wind coming off that big, wide display caused some awful turbulence on my helmet when seated in my usual riding position. The $175 optional windshield would be, for me, well worth it.

And what’s it like to ride? This thing is a blast. At 47 horsepower and 53 pound-feet of torque, it’s far from the quickest electric motorcycle on the market, but it has plenty enough twist to beat everything on four wheels at any light, or scrabble up a steep incline.

Can-Am’s Origin is ready for asphalt or dirt.

(Tim Stevens for Engadget)

Even more impressive is the traction control system of the Origin. It’s easy to be a little over-eager when accelerating on an EV, thanks to their instant torque, but the Origin always ensured I neither did an unintentional burnout nor tipped over backwards. It simply managed grip and power to ensure that I accelerated smoothly away, whether I was on asphalt or gravel.The bike has adjustable levels for ABS and traction control, and yes, you can turn them off if you want.

Overall, the Origin was also easy to ride. Those knobby tires do make for a loose feeling on asphalt, the bike moving around a bit thanks to the extra tread, but it’s a worthy tradeoff if you’ll find yourself hitting the dirt on a semi-regular basis.

What you probably won’t find yourself doing is going on long rides in the Origin, sadly. Though Can-Am says you can do up to 90 miles on a charge in the city, even when riding gently on rural roads using the most economical mode, I struggled to get 60 miles. Ridden more aggressively (which is to say, normally), I burned through a charge in less than 45 miles.

That’s the bad news. The good news? There’s an onboard level two charger on the Origin. L2 charging on a car usually means overnight, but since the Origin’s pack is so small, it’ll go from empty to full in under 90 minutes, and you’ll be stopped for less than an hour if you only need a partial charge.

Wrap-up

The relatively quick onboard charging of the Origin does open the door to some longer rides if you can time your meals and charging stops appropriately. And, if you’re doing lower-speed off-road riding, you could realistically go for hours and hours on a charge. Still, this sadly isn’t a long-distance high-speed cruiser.

But it’s rare for a dual-sport machine that’s comfortable enough for you to want to be in the saddle on the highway for that long anyway. For short blasts up the trail or high-speed sprints home after a long day in the office, the Origin is a real treat, and a stylish one at that

1 / 11

Can-Am Origin review

If you don’t have far to go, Can-Am’s Origin is a blast.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

The PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller on a bright blue mouse mat.

Product Reviews

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller review: just good enough

by admin September 16, 2025

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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller: One-minute review

If you’re after a wired Nintendo Switch 2 pad that comes in at a relatively low price and offers a decent range of features, then the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller is a solid choice, though far from any of the best Nintendo Switch 2 controllers.

It features all the required Nintendo Switch 2 buttons, including the new C button for GameChat, plus two extra rear inputs that you can quickly remap without any software. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, compatible with many of the best gaming headsets or gaming earbuds, and offers three equalizer modes. They’re nothing groundbreaking, but a good inclusion at this price point.

I tested the ‘with Lumectra’ variant, which also boasts some pretty incredible RGB lighting that beautifully illuminates its entire faceplate. That’s aside from the giant red Nintendo Switch 2 logo that’s positioned right in the middle of the gamepad, which spoils the clean look. The lighting can be customized with a few pre-sets, or entirely personalized using four distinct lighting zones if you’re happy to spend time fiddling with the cumbersome button shortcuts.

The PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller also boasts Hall effect thumbsticks, which is great on paper and should mean this controller lasts quite some time. Sadly, the thumbsticks themselves aren’t the best and feel very loose in comparison to alternatives. Fine control is difficult, which isn’t a huge issue when you’re playing a casual game such as Mario Kart World, but it is extremely annoying in a title like Splatoon 3, where accuracy really matters.

The top of the thumbsticks features a knobbly texture that’s rather harsh on the fingers too, leading to some soreness over prolonged periods of use. This won’t be a dealbreaker if you’re after something for player two, but for your main gamepad, consider more expensive alternatives like the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller or 8BitDo Ultimate 2.

You get what you pay for with this one.

(Image credit: Future)

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller: Price and availability

Starts at $39.99 / £29.99
Lumectra variant is $49.99 / £34.99
It’s frequently on sale for much less

Buyers in the UK are getting a better deal on the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller, which starts at $39.99 / £29.99. That’s for the plain version. The Lumectra variant I tested goes for slightly more at $49.99 / £34.99.

This makes it a little cheaper than previous wireless options from the brand, such as the PowerA Enhanced Wireless Controller with Lumectra for the original Nintendo Switch.

These prices are frequently subject to discounts, though, especially if you’re not after a particular pattern. At the time of writing, the ‘Mario Time’ edition costs just $28.68 at Amazon in the US, while the black version is down to £24.99 at Smyths Toys in the UK.

Its wide availability means that it’s one of the cheapest Nintendo Switch 2 controllers that you can get at most retail stores, putting it firmly into impulse buy territory. If you’re shopping for a spare gamepad ahead of a multiplayer session, it’s going to be a really tempting option.

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller: Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Price

Starts at $39.99 / £29.99

Weight

10.88oz / 300g

Dimensions

5.9 x 4.1 x 2.4in / 149 x 104 x 62mm

Compatibility

Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch

Connection type

Wired

Battery life

N/A

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller: Design and features

Lightweight
Lengthy 10ft USB cable
Doesn’t feel premium

The PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller is extremely lightweight and doesn’t feel the most premium. It’s constructed from a basic, almost brittle plastic and seems hollow in the hands.

It doesn’t help that there are a few spots where you can actually peer at the circuitry inside the controller, around the thumbsticks and triggers, for example, which is a little strange and will surely lead to dirt and dust accumulating inside in the long run.

That lightweight feel does at least mean that it’s comfortable in the hands, though, and even young children shouldn’t struggle to hold it for extended gaming sessions.

On the front of the controller, you’ll find the two thumbsticks and all the expected inputs. This includes the face buttons, d-pad, plus and minus (which are located towards the bottom), a home button, C button, and capture button. The thumbsticks use Hall effect components, which is a good sign, though unfortunately don’t feel very high quality. They offer practically no resistance, gliding around quickly and making them difficult to control precisely.

They’re also made from a hard, plastic-like material with little abrasive bumps that left my fingers feeling sore after a few hours of play.

(Image credit: Future)

I tested the ‘With Lumectra’ version of the pad, which comes in a clean white. When plugged in, the face plate illuminates brightly thanks to loads of hidden LEDs in an impressive rainbow effect.

PowerA really knows how to make good RGB lighting without breaking the bank, and it leads to a very attractive-looking controller. Unfortunately, it’s somewhat spoiled by the giant Nintendo Switch 2 logo that’s been awkwardly slapped in a giant red square in the middle of the pad.

It clashes with the lighting effects and looks incredibly weird and out of place. Luckily, if you’re buying the cheaper regular version of the controller, you won’t need to worry about this, as the logo comes in more reasonable colors, like a dark grey on the black colorway.

On the back of the controller are the two remappable buttons, customized by holding a small program button next to them. There’s also a button to control the LED lighting, plus a dedicated audio button that cycles through EQ presets when you have headphones plugged in via the 3.5mm jack. There’s a standard preset, plus a bass boost and an ‘immersive’ option.

The only other thing of note is a small LED bar towards the bottom of the controller. It can be easy to miss with all the lighting turned on, but it’s a clean white when the controller is on and blinks blue when you’re remapping buttons.

As a wired gamepad, the controller is only usable when connected to the Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 via a USB Type-C cable. A 10-foot-long PowerA-branded cable is included in the box, which should be long enough for most setups.

(Image credit: Future)

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller: Performance

Gets the job done
Ideal as a spare gamepad
Thumbsticks could be better

At the end of the day, the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller gets the job done. If you’re after a cheap controller to use when you’re playing with a friend or to give to a child, then it performs as you would expect for the price. The buttons aren’t the most tactile, but they are perfectly responsive to press, and the d-pad is a decent size and easy to use.

The plug-and-play compatibility makes the controller incredibly easy to set up, and the ability to tweak the rear button mapping or lighting effects without the need for any software is handy – though the process of doing this is cumbersome even with the instruction manual on hand.

(Image credit: Future)

The biggest area for improvement is easily the thumbsticks. As I already mentioned, they’re harsh on the finger and could really do with being made from a much softer material. They’re also quite loose, which makes them a poor fit for games that require precision.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re perfectly usable still, but they hardly compare to those offered by more expensive controllers such as the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller It’s the one thing that really stops the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller from netting a more enthusiastic recommendation, given its modest price tag.

The addition of a 3.5mm jack is useful for voice chat, as it allows you to connect a pair of earbuds or headphones with a microphone. The three EQ settings are also nifty.

The standard and bass boost options are self-explanatory, while the ‘Immersive’ preset subtly increases both low and high-end sounds. Is it particularly immersive? Not really, but it’s still fun to play around with and might even help a cheap headset sound a little bit better.

(Image credit: Future)

Should I buy the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider…

Swipe to scroll horizontallyRow 0 – Cell 0

PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller

Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller

8BitDo Ultimate 2

Price

Starts at $39.99 / £29.99

$84.99 / £74.99 / AU$119.95

$69.99 / £59.99 / AU$90 (or $59.99 / £49.99 for PC-only model)

Weight

10.88oz / 200g

8.3oz / 235g

8.7oz / 246g

Dimensions

5.9 x 4.1 x 2.4in / 149 x 104 x 62mm

5.8 x 4.1 x 2.4in / 148 x 105 x 60mm

5.7 x 4.1 x 2.4in / 147 x 103 x 61mm

Compatibility

Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Switch 2

PC, Android (Switch/Switch 2 version sold separately)

Connection type

Wired

Bluetooth, USB Type-C

2.4GHz, Bluetooth, USB Type-C

Battery life

N/A

Around 40 hours

10-15 hours

(Image credit: Future)

How I tested the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller

Tested for over two weeks
Tried with a wide range of games
Compared to other Switch and Switch 2 controllers

I tested the PowerA Advantage Switch 2 Wired Controller for over two weeks, trying it with a range of Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 games, including the likes of Mario Kart World, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, Hitman World of Assassination – Signature Edition, and more.

Throughout my time with the controller, I compared it to my hands-on testing of other Nintendo gamepads, including the official Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller and Joy-Con 2.

Writing a Good AI Image Prompt Isn’t Hard, but You Need These Essential Elements

by admin September 16, 2025

One of the first things I learned while testing AI image generators is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong when you’re trying to get the image you see in your head to appear on your screen. If you’ve ever used an AI image or video generator, you know what I mean.

I’ve spent the past year testing and reviewing different AI image generators, and I’ve generated hundreds of images across services like Google’s nano bananas model, Midjourney and Dall-E. But the images I created haven’t all been winners. A bunch of them have been downright horrifying. But all my testing forced me to learn that the best way to avoid creating a wonky AI image is using a good prompt.

Prompt engineering, as experts call it, is knowing what words to use to get AI products to do what you want. For AI images, that means creating a holistic description of what you want, beyond just the characters and setting. No matter what service you use, there are essential elements you need in every prompt for the best results. This is especially important if the generator you’re using doesn’t have a lot of editing tools, like the ability to upload reference images or fix weird hallucinations.

10 Photos That Show What AI Image Generators Struggle With Most

See all photos

Writing a good AI image prompt isn’t hard, but it may take a little more work than you expect. These are my best expert tips for crafting the right prompt, including some helpful phrases to use and common mistakes to avoid.

Start with these three elements

When you first write your prompt, you might feel overwhelmed or like you’re not sure where to start. I’ve been there, and the best place to begin is with the essentials. These are the three necessary elements every prompt needs. Once you have something for each of these, you can build it out from there.

Characters and elements in the scene
Setting or where it takes place
Dimensions, like portrait, landscape or a specific ratio (3:2, 16:9, etc)

You might be tempted to add some exclusionary characteristics in your prompt, or things that you do not want in your image. I would caution against it. Even the most prompt-adherent generator is likely to ignore these, or worse, misread the prompt and include something you specifically asked it not to. If you want to eliminate an element from one image, it’s usually easier to do that in the editing stage rather than in the original prompt.

Specify the style and color palette you want

Beyond the “who, what and where” in your basic prompt, you’ll want to guide the generator toward a specific style. Here are some of the most popular styles of AI images.

Photorealistic: As close to real life as possible. AI image generators aren’t great at this, but it’s worth trying.
Stock photography: Like real photos, but shinier and brighter.
Product features: Emphasizes individual elements over the background or scene.
Cartoon: Fun, bright and usually less detailed.
Illustration: Similar to paintings, pencil sketches.
Gaming/Game UI: More advanced than cartoon, sometimes anime-like.

Include specific colors you want, too. If you’re not picky about the exact shades you want, you can still lead the generator down the right road by specifying if you want warm or cool tones.

This Canva image keeps the magic alive with a cartoonish warm-toned image.

Katelyn Chedraoui/Canva Magic Media AI

You’ll want different styles for different projects. Photorealistic AI images are likely to be better suited for professional environments than cartoon-style images, but they might not be right for a creative mock-up. Illustrations might be best for more detail-oriented, creative projects, like building out brainstorming ideas, and gaming is good for first iterations of new characters and worlds.

Describe the aesthetic, vibe and emotion

Take your prompt a step further and include a description of the overall aesthetic or vibe. This can help elevate your images and reach that extra layer of detail. These details are a jumping-off point to get you in the ballpark of what you want without overwhelming the generator with a novel-length prompt. Here are some common options to include in your prompt.

Abstract
Anime
Medieval
Retro
Psychedelic
Glow, neon
Geometric
Painting, brushstroke, oil painting
Comic
Noir
Vintage
Impressionist
Simple, minimalistic
Fantasy, sci-fi
High tech
Surrealist

If none of these aesthetics feel right, try picking the closest one and building from there. Include textures, the time period and landmarks. If you care less about the specific style but want to ensure a specific emotional response, try describing that. Often describing the emotional temperature of a scene can jump-start the generator toward a specific kind of visual look. For example, happy scenes tend to have bright colors and a warm feel, no matter if they’re photorealistic or illustrations. Stressful scenes might have more detail, cool tones and a foreboding feeling that the generator might show you fits better with a fantasy or nonrealistic aesthetic.

Leonardo might not understand “cottage core coastal grandma,” but it does understand the rustic feel with blues and warm light.

Katelyn Chedraoui/Leonardo AI

You can try using more specific or pop culture aesthetics, but there’s no guarantee the generator will understand and adhere to them. For example, you might want to consider translating “cottage core coastal grandmother” to “vintage style with a light, breezy, feel using pastel blues and neutral tones.” It gets at the same idea with more specific instructions.

My AI images still aren’t right. What now?

Even with a well-written prompt, AI image generators aren’t perfect and you’ll get some duds. The tech behind the text-to-image generators is advancing, but it’s still very much in progress.

Tweaking your prompt is the fastest way to troubleshoot big problems. But if issues persist, try narrowing down what exactly is wrong with the images and tracing the problem back to where it may be coming from. For example, if your images aren’t professional-looking enough to present, it could be because the style or aesthetic included in your prompt isn’t right. Even making smaller changes to your presets, like the image dimensions, can make a big difference in the end results.

Midjourney took the “stressful” emotion too far in this image and lost the photorealistic style I wanted.

Katelyn Chedraoui/Midjourney AI

Many AI image services offer post-generation editing tools that can help you fix smaller errors. Services more geared toward professional creators like Adobe Firefly have extensive tools. More beginner-friendly programs run the gambit, with Leonardo having the most, then Midjourney with an average amount, with Canva having barely any.

Still, it can be frustrating not to get what you want after lots of work. Even more frustrating is that sometimes the best thing to do is start over. Resetting your settings to default, rethinking your prompts and beginning anew can feel like going backward. But when nothing else works, it can be a good last resort.

At the end of the day, AI image generators are not replacements for creators. They’re like other image editing software: You need to spend time getting to know your program, understanding how it works and its editing capabilities. Once you have a handle on your program, you’ll have a good understanding of what kind of prompts deliver the best results. These tips will help get you close to what you want in the meantime.

For more, check out the best AI chatbots and what to know about AI video generators.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

The Paper, The New Office Spin-Off, Is Good, Actually

by admin September 16, 2025

The Paper, the new spin-off of The Office that’s streaming now on Peacock, will probably be pretty funny to the average viewer. To a journalist who has lived through everything the profession has suffered over the past 20 years or so, the workplace mockumentary is a cathartic encapsulation of so much of the nonsense I’ve never been able to explain to my friends and family who don’t work in the field. The Paper’s 10-episode season portrays the trials and tribulations that come with working in journalism in 2025, whether that be on a local level like the volunteer reporters of the fictional Toledo Truth Teller or on a larger scale, and the show does it with a surprising level of care, sympathy, and advocacy for the important work people are trying to do in impossible circumstances that threaten to undermine them at every turn.

Admittedly, I was pretty skeptical coming into The Paper, not because I didn’t love The Office or because I had my doubts about how it would handle its too-close-to-home subject matter, but because all the early promo trailers did nothing for me. They didn’t really have jokes and seemed to be largely banking on nostalgia for the original series to draw people in. If nothing else, that’s made the fact that The Paper is pretty great a pleasant surprise.

The Paper picks up a few years after The Office. Dunder Mifflin, the paper supply company that the original series documented, has shut down, and the documentary filmmakers who followed its workplace antics are looking for a new subject. They end up in the office of the Toledo Truth Teller, a local newspaper that has been so underfunded that its output is primarily news pulled from AP, mind-numbing listicles, and clickbait non-stories. New editor-in-chief Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson) has left his cozy life in sales behind to try to revive the legacy paper, only to find that he’s dealing with every roadblock the modern journalist faces when trying to do the work.

The Truth Teller has lost almost all of its institutional knowledge, has no real funding to build itself back up, and is under the ownership of a larger corporation that has nothing to do with journalism. In fact, its owners only stand to see their position jeopardized if the publication digs a little deeper into the company’s own business practices. Nevertheless, Sampson is determined to make it work and relies on a small team of incredibly green, volunteer reporters to get things moving. Gee, that sure sounds like every media company, big and small, right now, huh?

I have worked in journalism both on a local level at my small-town Georgia newspaper and at sites read by millions like Kotaku, and watching The Paper was like reliving 10 lives over the course of 10 episodes. The show succinctly sums up all the hurdles getting in the way of good journalism in 2025 in a way that would be kind of horrifying if it weren’t delivered in the hilarious deadpan so synonymous with The Office. Ned and his team face underfunding, corporate sabotage, and a need to also grind out stomach-turning churnalism to help keep the lights on. Trying to do reporting that is both helpful to the public and clears a baseline ethical threshold is a never-ending struggle when the odds are stacked against you. Nearly every episode of The Paper touches on some very real challenges journalists are dealing with as they just try to do their jobs in the modern media landscape, and I was truly pleased with how true-to-life it felt, even when taking things to their most absurdist extreme.

The Office was always at its best when it exaggerated mundane office drama into its most comical, awkward, and uncomfortable end stages, but focusing on a sales team, especially one selling something as unremarkable as paper, gave it a universal appeal. The show is less about the specifics of the work than it is the ubiquitous experience of clocking in and trying to make the most of something dreadfully boring with a group of people you probably otherwise wouldn’t hang out with. The Paper, meanwhile, is so specific and real, I feel like it might double as a surprisingly educational tool for a general audience about the state of journalism right now, who come in with preconceived notions of how it all works.

For example, there’s an episode in which Esmeralda, the previous interim EIC of the paper, tries to get the team to go down the road of doing advertorials to cover some lifestyle products she wants, and Ned intervenes and says the team will review these items instead of uncritically promoting them for the paper. Eventually, it becomes clear that these products all have some serious adverse effects, leading to the staff getting sick or injured, and Ned, in a head-on collision of journalistic principles and the fear of incoming deadlines, tries to test all of them himself at once, and that goes about as well as you’d expect. Rather than trying to completely recapture The Office’s magic by making Ned a carbon copy of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott, The Paper finds its own way to the same hysterical conclusions, all in a way that feels very specific to the workplace it follows. The Paper is actually pretty restrained in its ties to its predecessor when it could have cynically leaned into that connection in order to bait the college kids who marathon the older series between classes into watching it.

The strongest tie The Paper has to The Office is in Oscar (Oscar Nunez), the sole returning character in the main cast, who certainly has his own stuff going on, but also sometimes just feels like he’s there to bring attention to the fact that this show is a spin-off of something else. Nunez has several scenes that feel tailor-made to remind people that Michael Scott is somewhere out there off-screen. Some of the callbacks are good, like the metanarrative of him not wanting to be filmed by the documentary crew following him around again, but then he directly quotes bits from Office episodes, and it loses me. We are all the products of the jobs and coworkers we once had, but I had multiple instances of being like, “Oh, right, this show might one day be some kind of bid for a shared universe of mockumentaries for Peacock to churn out, not unlike the gross churnalism Ned and his team try to avoid.” Perhaps I’m being cynical, but The Paper stands so well on its own that I don’t feel like it needed the Office tie-in to prop it up.

All that being said, I get why Peacock would want to go back to The Office. Its workplace documentary format is still really clever, and when I watched the original show back in the day, I was always fascinated by how it would present scenes that, as far as the characters involved were concerned, were clearly not supposed to be on camera. Some of the most iconic scenes from the original series were shot at a distance, with un-mic’d actors pantomiming a scene the viewer ostensibly wasn’t supposed to see, or they’re shot through the crack of a barely opened door like the crew is being nosey as shit for the plot. When The Office blew the lid off this and had a member of the documentary crew interfere with the action onscreen nine seasons in, it was met with a lot of blowback from longtime fans. The Paper is already more overtly playing with the fourth wall, so maybe that will set viewer expectations appropriately, but even after 12 years, the format still works, and The Paper is using it well without resorting to the same playbook.

I’m glad I gave The Paper a chance after my first impression of it left me cold. A workplace comedy about a fumbling newspaper could have made a lot of uninformed or irresponsible jokes about a profession that is historically misunderstood, both willfully and because misinformation spreads on the internet like wildfire. Instead, it has a surprising level of empathy for the plight of the modern reporter. You have corporate owners who know nothing about the job meddling in your affairs, commenters nipping at your heels, and you’re more often than not barely compensated or rewarded for your efforts. I haven’t set foot in a local paper’s newsroom in six years, but I still marveled at how clearly The Paper sees that a lot of corporate media’s biggest obstacles are the same ones small-town reporters are fighting against in towns you’ve never heard of but that are full of people who still read the print version of their local news. All of its raunchy humor, clever cinematography, and painstakingly awkward comedic set pieces of the kind you know and love from its predecessor funnel into a mockumentary that, at the end of the day, humanizes the people behind the bylines, and knows they’re at their best when they’re free to do the work they came here to do, without constant interference from the powers that be.

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September 16, 2025 0 comments