One of Sony’s best-ever PlayStation ads is a 21-second video titled, “Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video.” It’s a “step-by-step” guide about how to lend your PS4 games to your friends. It has one step: one person hands another person a game box.The ad succinctly clowns on Microsoft’s original and convoluted game sharing policy for the Xbox One, which let users ditch discs in exchange for daily DRM checks. The idea was so hated that Microsoft walked it back just over a week after the release of Sony’s ad and months before the console came out. The lesson was simple — don’t mess with people’s discs.But more than a decade later, it’s not hard to imagine a future where Sony’s own ad doesn’t apply anymore. Physical game sales in 2024 were less than half what they were as recently as 2021, and the market has been in decline since 2008, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella tells The Verge. “There has been a long trend of declining sales in physical games,” Piscatella says. “And now there’s declining distribution with retailers pulling back space, with companies making fewer physical games overall, and with the entire shift towards digit …Read the full story at The Verge.

Buying a motherboard in 2025 might not be as simple as you think. The number of unnecessary features and "AI-powered" enhancements combined with new definitions of "budget" motherboards are enough to confuse anyone. Fortunately, you don't need to worry about most of what manufacturers are peddling these days.

Growing up, I played through the second half of the sixth generation, the entirety of the seventh, and the early years of the eighth — arguably gaming’s golden age. But for all the incredible memories I made, there were a few games that sent my teenage self packing. Some were too scary, others had moments that outright terrified me, and more often than not, I would either hand the controller to my older brother or simply stop playing, conveniently "forgetting" that I had a game to finish.

The existing Blue Screen of Death error. | Image: Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesMicrosoft has announced that it’s overhauling its Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error message in Windows 11. The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified screen that looks a lot more like the black screen you see when Windows is performing an update. It’s not immediately clear if this new BSOD will remain as a black screen once Microsoft ships the final version of this update.“We’re previewing a new, more streamlined UI for unexpected restarts which better aligns with Windows 11 design principles and supports our goal of getting users back into productivity as fast as possible,” explains Microsoft in a blog post about the change. “We’ve simplified your experience while preserving the technical information on the screen.”Windows Insiders can try out the new BSOD in test versions of the Beta, Dev, and Canary Channels, but it will appear as a green screen in these test builds before it’s eventually shipped as a black or blue screen. It’s the first major change to the BSOD since Microsoft added a sad face to the screen in Windows 8. This new design includes the BSOD error or faulty driver, and simply states “your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.”Microsoft did briefly turn the BSOD to a black screen in test builds of Windows 11 in 2021, but the company then reverted back to the blue screen it had been using since Windows 8. It looks like this new BSOD will be rolled out to the existing Windows 11 version 24H2 soon, and we’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information on whether it’s switching to a black screen instead of a blue one.

Some Hollywood studios are reportedly earning money from fake AI-generated movie trailers on YouTube, against the wishes of the union representing actors. According to a report from Deadline, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Sony Pictures redirected ad revenue to themselves instead of enforcing copyright protections and shutting down the popular Screen Culture and KH Studio trailer accounts. In response, the SAG-AFTRA union has criticized the studios for profiting off videos that use AI to exploit their members’ likenesses without permission.Fanmade trailers are nothing new, but AI video generators like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo have made it easier than ever for anyone to make artificially generated content. YouTube is becoming saturated with AI-generated slop that studios could tackle by issuing copyright strikes against offending accounts, but that would prevent them from monetizing the views on this new influx of content. Screen Culture has 1.4 million subscribers and almost 1.4 billion channel views, a larger audience than KH Studio’s 683,000 subscribers and 560 million views. The fake movie trailers created by both accounts follow a similar pattern: fusing together short clips from real movies or TV shows with AI-generated content. Many are based on real, unreleased movies that already have official trailers, such as Superman and Jurassic World: Rebirth, while others masquerade as fictitious TV seasons, movie sequels, or big-screen adaptations of other popular franchises.Two days after Deadline published its investigation, YouTube stopped Screen Culture and KH Studio from being able to monetize their clickbait content.According to Deadline, the accounts were suspended from YouTube’s partner program for violating its video monetization policies. Creators are not permitted to make videos that are “duplicative or repetitive” or made “for the sole purpose of getting views,” and have to make significant alterations to any material taken from other sources. YouTube’s misinformation policies also bar creators from manipulating content in a way that misleads viewers, which would include creating fake trailers that can intentionally be mistaken for officially produced videos.Screen Culture and KH Studio can appeal the decision to pause their ad revenue. A notable change has already occurred on KH Studio’s channel — while older videos were described as being a “first trailer,” the three most recent uploads are instead titled “concept trailer.” Learning that studios are profiting from AI slop rather than protecting actors’ likenesses is likely a gut punch for union members who have worked hard to negotiate AI consent into their contracts.“Just as SAG-AFTRA is aggressively bargaining contract terms and creating laws to protect and enforce our members’ voice and likeness rights, we expect our bargaining partners to aggressively enforce their IP from any, and all AI misappropriation,” SAG-AFTRA said in a statement to Deadline. “Monetizing unauthorized, unwanted, and subpar uses of human-centered IP is a race to the bottom. It incentivizes technology companies and short-term gains at the expense of lasting human creative endeavor.”

The journey towards a home office that helps you stay productive and comfortable is a long one. You'll likely go through several upgrade periods, and even then, you might still not be completely happy with the results. And you know what, that's perfectly fine because it's a process, and juggling needs and budgets is tricky. So, while you're on the hunt for the perfect home office accessories, keep a few pointers in mind so you don't end up regretting your choices.

Valve has finally taken a big step toward making SteamOS available on more handheld gaming PCs, with Lenovo’s upcoming Legion Go 2 set to support the OS. This is a huge deal, considering how poorly Windows 11 handles the handheld form factor. However, Bazzite will still be the better option for most handhelds.

Rumors have been floating around about an Xbox handheld for years, but the claim started gaining traction just this month when reports said an Xbox handheld would launch this year. We just got the first taste of what that handheld might be from none other than ROG Ally X maker (and long-time Microsoft partner), Asus. Although nothing is set in stone yet, it looks like Asus will make the first Xbox-branded handheld, and given that we're seeing teasers now, it could arrive very soon.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has created a system for private aircraft owners to request that their registration information — including their name and address — be kept private. That may impact celebrity private jet trackers, which have used FAA registration information to identify jets belonging to the likes of Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.The new FAA system was mandated by the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which gave the organization two years to establish a procedure for aircraft owners and operators to request that any “personally identifiable information” be made private. The FAA says it’s also “evaluating” whether to go one step further and default to keeping such information private. The act became law in May 2024 under the Biden administration.The change will likely make it more difficult to operate celebrity jet trackers, which use FAA registration information to identify private jets owned by celebrities so that their flightpaths can be tracked. Accounts monitoring jet use by Musk, Swift, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, and more have gone viral in the past, though have seen bans on platforms owned by Musk and Zuck. In 2023 Taylor Swift sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jack Sweeney, who operates a number of popular jet trackers.

Our modern, digital lives churn out terabytes and terabytes of data per day, and most of it is pretty important to us. Those photo rolls of memories with friends and family, important documents, and other files are all kept on storage drives, but what happens if a drive dies? With data recovery being time-consuming, expensive, and not always reliable, it's already too late to worry about keeping a backup copy on another device.

The official unveiling of the Switch 2 was an incredibly confident moment for Nintendo. It was brief and lacking almost entirely in details. There was no price, no release date, and no confirmed games outside of a Mario Kart tease. The 2 in the name implied a bigger and better Switch, but when it came to the how — the chips that will power the device, the screen that will make Zelda and Mario look great — Nintendo deemed it wasn’t important enough to share right away.And it’s right: unlike the rest of the industry, Nintendo has carved out a path where specs no longer matter.It wasn’t always this way. Previous Nintendo consoles were sold, as their contemporaries were, on horsepower. The Super Nintendo was a more-powerful NES, while the N64’s processor was deemed so important that the system was named after it. But things started to change around the time of the GameCube. Nintendo had experienced a steady decline in console sales over subsequent generations; while the NES and Famicom sold more than 60 million units, that was down to just over 20 million for the GameCube. At the same time, Nintendo’s direct competition had changed significantly. After getting a tast …Read the full story at The Verge.

When a game launches, its reception can be wildly different from how it's perceived just a few weeks — or even years — later. When games are received poorly — either by critics or players — they either go down in history with their mediocre reviews, or actually strap in and improve upon every part.