Is Microsoft's first ever handheld Xbox console worth the wait? For almost two decades, rumours have swirled about a handheld Xbox console to rival Nintendo and PlayStation. The ROG Xbox Ally has been released worldwide, putting an end to the speculation. It works natively with Xbox's Game Pass subscription service out of the box, meaning members will start off with hundreds of games in their library. But its big trick is that it's really a portable computer running Windows, meaning most digital PC games people already own will work too - so long as they don't need a keyboard and mouse to play.

Fans have reacted angrily after Microsoft announced price increases to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. The company announced that the most popular tier of its Netflix-style video games system - available to PC and Xbox players - would rise by more than 50% from £14.99 to £22.99 per month. Reacting on social media, loads of fans said they had cancelled their Game Pass subscriptions, with some reporting the service's cancellation page had crashed due to demand. BBC Newsbeat has asked Microsoft if the outage was linked to a surge in visits. In a blog post detailing the changes to Game Pass, Microsoft said it would offer three tiers - Essential (£10 per month), Premium (£14.99) and Ultimate (£22.99).

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Say goodbye to Nest Aware, and hello to Google Home Premium. Lots of change is coming to Google Home in the coming weeks, from the replacement of Google Assistant with Gemini for Home to an overhaul of its smart home subscription service, complete with a new name. Google is rebranding its Nest Aware plans as Google Home Premium, adding a bevy of Gemini-powered features to the service's two tiers (Standard and Advanced), but it's not chaning the prices for those tiers. So yes, the Google Home Premium reboot doesn't include any price hikes, but that shouldn't come as a surprise, given that Google just boosted the price of its former Nest Aware tiers back in July--perhaps in anticipation of the coming changes.

Last week Ring announced a feature that will you to capture video 24/7 so you don't miss anything if a motion alert wasn't triggered. The challenge is that if you'll then need to wade through hours of footage to find an event. Now, the Amazon-owned company has introduced Smart Video Search, an AI feature for subscribers of the upcoming 20 Ring Home serivce that makes it faster and easier to find specific moments in your video history. The system is powered by Ring IQ, a combination of Ring AI technology and in-house expertise. It uses Visual Language Modeling (VLM) to match text to images and show results.

Like everyone, I have come to massively resent the insidious creep of subscription services. I started off with an affordable, shareable Netflix subscription, many years ago. Then came Spotify, then Disney when I had children, then Prime Video, all of which I could just about justify. Then my Fitbit started wanting to charge me to unlock features in a device I'd already bought. Google now charges me monthly to store in the cloud the photos I take on my Google phone.

If you tilted your ears in a certain direction on Monday, you could make out a resounding cheer from the creative class across social media platforms and various Discord servers. That's because the Federal Trade Commission sued software company Adobe and two of its executives for "deceiving consumers" by all but forcing them "into year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles." "Adobe has had it coming for years," New York journalist Nolan Hicks stated. "I don't know of a single person who is rooting for Adobe on this," tweeted video essayist Scott Niswander. One viral meme urged the agency to "tear the bitch apart."

The Xbox Series S is our recommendation for the best cheap game console for several reasons, not least because it's an excellent entry point into modern gaming. Even better, the most budget-friendly Xbox is on sale at Target. The price of a starter bundle has dropped from 300 to 220, making the Series S an even sweeter deal. A bundle of an Xbox Series S and three months of Game Pass Ultimate has dropped to 220, making it a relatively inexpensive entry point into modern gaming. The Xbox Series S Starter Bundle comes with three months of Game Pass Ultimate access (a value of 51).

Google Nest device owners will have to pay at least $20 more if they want access to their security cameras' and doorbells' more sophisticated features and lengthier footage history. As reported by 9to5Google, the tech giant has sent out notices to subscribers in the US, telling them that the standard Nest Aware subscription now costs $8 per month or $80 a year, up from $6 a month or $60 when paid in an annual basis. The company started offering whole-home Nest Aware subscription plans that cover all a user's devices back in 2019. Before that, they've had to add a subscription for each of their cameras. The plan gives users access to intelligent motion detection, which can differentiate between several types of activities, dog barking alerts and person speaking alerts.

The Nintendo eShop for the Wii U and 3DS game consoles officially closed for business on March 27th, 2023, permanently disabling all new purchases on the platforms. We knew this was coming. Nintendo quietly announced the eShop's closure over a year ago, asserting that it was the "natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." That doesn't make it any less of a loss for Nintendo fans, because legally playing some of these console's best games is now not only harder, but in some cases, nearly impossible. The time to argue that Nintendo should keep this aging digital storefront open has long since passed (though yes, they should have).

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems became famous at the turn of the millennium, mostly due to their support for direct file sharing among users. By the 1980s, the music industry had evolved from selling analogue vinyl records to digital compact disks, but with the introduction of lossy data-compression techniques such as the MP3 coding format, it became feasible to upload/download music files among users' personal computers. Still, content had to be catalogued and found, and P2P systems emerged to provide that functionality. Some early systems, such as Napster and SETI@Home, exhibited a mix of P2P and classic client-server architecture. Gnutella and Freenet, the second generation of systems, provided a larger degree of decentralization.