PCWorld observes that Xbox appears to be losing ground as gaming shifts toward PC-based living room experiences, with handheld PCs and cloud streaming leading this transformation. Valve's Steam Deck shows 20% of users dock their devices for TV gaming, while rumors suggest Microsoft's next Xbox may actually run Windows rather than proprietary console hardware. This shift matters because it offers superior gaming experiences through services like GeForce Now on smart TVs and versatile handheld PCs that double as home consoles. While wandering the show floor at CES 2026, I was struck by the future of living room gaming. What was once the realm of gaming consoles seems to be turning into PC territory.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Valve has spent the last decade tunneling into Microsoft's vault. Now, the heist is on. Microsoft's big focus for Windows is AI integration . Meanwhile, Valve has been not-so-quietly pilfering the entire PC gaming ecosystem from Microsoft, turning the Linux-based SteamOS into a real competitor to Windows.

This premium gaming handheld loads up with features for power users, but Windows still holds it back from being the easy option. Performance is better than previous-generation handhelds. Detachable controllers are comfortable and improve usability. Windows on a handheld is still frustrating. Many companies have tried and failed to produce gaming handhelds that run Windows, and it's not hard to see the appeal.

These are high-power, high-performance handhelds--but steep pricing and a cluttered UI hold Xbox's first portables back from greatness. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Cloud gaming works better than ever. Terrible AI "assistant" in Gaming Copilot (but can be turned off).

After the smash hit that is the Steam Deck, all eyes are on Valve for its next hardware move. A console to take on Sony and Nintendo? A new trademark filing for the "Steam Frame" has gamers and press alike turning the speculation up to 11. And yeah, I couldn't resist doing some of my own. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a public filing for the Steam Frame name, assigned to Valve Corporation and its corporate office in Bellevue, Washington, and began on September 2nd.

AMD's Radeon 9060 XT is generally a win: The mid-range has needed a graphics card like this, especially in counter to Nvidia's RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti. But not all reviewers are happy with the pricing--the MSRP appears to be another aspirational number for now. Will AM4's stunning run come to an end because of DDR4 RAM prices? Between reduced production, trade war fallout, and economic uncertainties, DDR4 memory prices have shot up as much as 50 percent recently. That could have sad effects on our good ol' reliable pick for budget PC builds, which leaned on AM4 mobos.

The Switch 2 is nearly here, which means the original Switch is entering its twilight years. It's been eight years since Nintendo released its revolutionary hybrid console, and while many fans have spent the last couple of those itching for the device to be replaced, now seems like an opportune time to look back at what its legacy may wind up being (while acknowledging that it still has some life ahead of it). Instead of bleating on myself, though, I turned to the rest of the Engadget staff to see what comes to mind when they think of the Switch, as just about everyone on the team has played with the console. We've collected our reflections below -- some take a bigger-picture view, some are more personal, some contradict others' experiences entirely. There's plenty more that went unsaid. But I think that's part of the Switch's beauty; it's a device that's resonated with so many, in so many different ways, in its near-decade on the market.

Even for me, someone who's an avid graphics card hardware enthusiast, it took some time to warm up to the idea of AI rdesolution upscaling. But this newfangled technology has been embraced over the past few years by virtually every major GPU manufacturer, with Nvidia leading the pack with DLSS and others following in its wake, including AMD with FSR, Intel with XeSS, and even Sony with PSSR on the PlayStation 5 Pro. And I'm now ready to say it: real-time AI upscaling tech has made native resolution graphics obsolete in gaming. Keep reading to learn what AI upscaling is, why it's revolutionary, and what it means for all the new games you'll be playing in the future. AI resolution upscaling (also just called AI upscaling) is when a game renders its frames at a resolution that's lower than your display's native resolution, then uses AI image processing techniques to scale that rendered frame back up to native resolution.

A report from Bloomberg this week suggests that Sony is working on a new portable PlayStation device. As someone who still has a PlayStation Vita languishing in my desk drawer because I can't quite bear to put it in the attic, this is an exciting prospect. It has been almost 13 years since Sony released the Vita, its last portable console, and it's such a wonder of a thing, with its big crisp screen and dinky little sticks. I wish more people had made games for it – paper-craft adventure Tearaway and topsy-turvy platform-puzzler Gravity Rush remain underrated. Actually, apart from the lovely and extremely niche Playdate, nobody has bothered to release a dedicated handheld games console in over a decade.

It was most evident in laptops: Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips kicked off Microsoft's Copilot PC era with long life and surprisingly competitive performance, only to be rivaled by Intel's Macbook-killing Lunar Lake chips months later. AMD, meanwhile, focused on bringing high-octane speed to Copilot PCs, zigging for oomph while the others zagged to endurance. With competition flourishing, PCWorld expects to review over 120 laptops by the end of the year, by far a new high water mark! This year, cutting-edge monitors became the norm, Thunderbolt docks and SSDs embraced newer, faster standards, Intel and AMD launched overhauled desktop CPUs, gaming handhelds got truly competitive, and the software that runs on all that hardware kept getting better and better, too. With such a gluttony of choice, it became harder than ever for PC hardware and software to impress us. Few products earned our rare Editors' Choice award.