Gaming May 2026
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Sony Files Trademark for a Mysterious New Game Called Break In
It seems like PlayStation is preparing to announce a game called Break In.
Upgrade your gaming with this $199.99 Samsung Odyssey G5 deal
The Samsung 27-inch Odyssey G5 Gaming Monitor just dropped to its lowest price ever, offering a great gaming setup with QHD resolution.
Viture Beast XR Glasses
XR glasses like the Viture Beast have been around for a few years now, but I always saw them as kind of a gimmick. Back when the original Legion Go handheld came out, I tried Lenovo’s first try at the Legion Glasses, and while they were definitely neat, they were fiddly and just ended up giving me a headache. But a lot has changed in the last few years. The Viture Beast XR glasses deliver the feeling of a gaming headset, but for your eyes. The 1200p combined display looks crisp, and the speakers embedded in the stems, or temples, are good enough that I don’t feel the need to dig out headphones to wear awkwardly on top of them. But more than anything, these glasses are actually comfortable to wear for more than 10 minutes, which is huge in a world where handheld gaming has blown up as much as it has. Because no matter how good the built-in displays on the Legion Go 2 or the Switch 2 are, nothing quite beats laying back and playing your games on a giant TV that your brain’s been tricked into thinking is on your ceiling. Purchasing GuideThe Viture Beast XR glasses are available now on Viture's website for $549. That'll get you the glasses and a carrying case. But if you want the mobile dock that'll let it work with the Nintendo Switch 2, that'll cost you an extra $99.What Even Are XR Glasses?If you’re not already a handheld gaming sicko, it’s very likely that you’ve never even heard of XR glasses before. Basically, these are glasses with little displays embedded behind each lens, which project a display right in front of your eyes. And because there are two displays so close to your eyes, these glasses essentially trick you into thinking you’re looking at a much larger display than you are. To be clear, nothing is actually running on these XR glasses. Instead, think of these as a monitor that you can strap to your face, and connect to whichever device you want to use – as long as it supports USB-C display output. Right off the bat, that means all kinds of devices can use this to expand screen real estate. You can plug it into your phone, a tablet, or even that 14-inch work laptop you’re hunched over all day. All of these devices would benefit from a larger display, and Viture claims the Beast glasses simulate a 174-inch screen on its highest setting. And while I can’t exactly break out a tape measure to check that, it feels accurate. But the biggest benefit I’ve found for the Viture Beast and other XR glasses has been plugging them into a handheld gaming PC like the Xbox Ally X, especially while traveling. Because, for all the progress that handhelds have made in being comfortable to use over long periods of time, they can still really start to weigh you down, especially during a long flight. With these glasses, though, you can lay your head back and play your games on a giant screen, while just holding your device in your lap.Even at home, because I don’t have a lot of space for large TVs, I’ve been using these glasses to watch TV or play games on the Xbox Ally X without having to stare at its small 7-inch screen for hours at a time. So while it does still feel like we’re in the early days of XR glasses being a thing, they are only getting more sophisticated over time, and I can see them becoming ubiquitous, especially as portable gaming gets more and more popular. Design and FeaturesRight out of the box, Viture’s The Beast glasses look like particularly thick sunglasses. Because of the displays behind each lens, they by necessity need to stick out a bit from your face. I’m sure there’s some way to solve this sometime, but for right now, this makes them look quite dorky. Even the temples, or stems, of the glasses are quite thick, due to the speakers and all the little buttons worked into each of them. So, while Viture was clearly going for an unassuming aesthetic, it still looks like you’re wearing a device on your face. But, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re just looking for something to use at home or on the plane. The front of the glasses has Viture’s ‘V’ logo in the top right corner, along with a camera in between the two lenses. Eventually, Viture claims this camera will be used for spatial computing features, but right now it’s mostly used to help track head movement, so that the display follows your gaze. Luckily, there's a little sticker sheet of camera covers, and you don’t really lose much by covering it up if having a face-mounted camera makes you uncomfortable.On the top of each lens is a shroud that partially houses the display behind each lens. This is where each display is actually housed, and it tends to get quite warm while you’re using them. That hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but I expect that using The Beast during a hot summer’s day is going to be miserable. Luckily, airplanes get quite cold, so that should balance out. Below this shroud is the nosepad, and luckily, it’s interchangeable. The Beast comes with three different options, each for a different size of nose. The goal is to get the glasses to sit as close to your eyes as possible, so that the displays are clear. A lot of times, I’ve noticed that if the glasses slide down my nose, the display will get blurry, which can be a bit headache-inducing. A lot of that comes down to how the glasses work. The two humps at the top of the glasses house the actual display, which use mirrors to project the display down to each of your eyes. This has the effect of making it look like you’re looking at one giant monitor, instead of two projections of a display. But, the effect lessens the further you are from the prism display. On the bottom of each of the temples are two buttons, a long button that looks like a volume rocker on any other device, and a short button. By default, the long button on the right controls transparency: turn it all the way down, and you’ll easily be able to make out your environment, making it look like a giant TV is just floating in the room around you. I prefer to keep this setting turned all the way up, which completely blacks out the area around the projected display, especially when I’m playing games. The short button on the right side changes the anchor mode of the glasses. You can toggle between a no-depth-of-field option, an anchored option that’ll make the display look like it’s staying in one spot, and a ‘Smooth Follow’ that’ll have the display sit in the center of your field of view when you move your head. The latter of these anchor modes is why the little camera on the front of the glasses is necessary, as it helps track your head’s movements to keep things stable. Over on the left hand side, the long button adjusts the display brightness. It would have made a lot of sense for Viture to have this rocker adjust volume by default – instead, you have to do a short press on the button in front in order to bring up a volume meter that you can then adjust. Each of the buttons also does something different when you long-press them, which makes for a dizzying amount of button combinations to memorize. Luckily, when you first plug The Beast glasses in, you’ll be walked through a tutorial that’ll tell you how to use each of the buttons – and it’s even repeatable. On the far end of each of the temples are directional speakers that Viture says were co-engineered with Harman Kardon. I’ll admit that I went into this expecting these speakers to be awful considering the amount of space they have to work with, but they sound awesome. Even when I’m grinding away in Diablo 4, I can make out all the little sounds of demons perishing to my 10th Sorcerer in three years. The USB-C cable that connects Viture’s The Beast to whatever device you want to use them with, plugs in on the back of the right temple. Luckily, Viture includes an angled connector, which naturally drapes the cable over your ear, rather than a standard USB-C cable which would jut straight backwards. My only problem with this cable is the length. When I first started using these glasses I had a vision of plugging them into a gaming laptop on my nightstand and then playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows maxed out while lying in bed and looking at the ceiling. But, with this short cable that’s impossible unless I want to smother a rapidly heating gaming laptop in a mass of blankets. However, this is a problem that’s solved simply by grabbing a longer cable off of the shelf, so it’s not that big of a deal. Just something to keep in mind. PerformanceI haven’t used a ton of XR glasses in the past – after all, they’re a pretty new category – but the Viture Beast is probably the best pair I’ve used so far. Text is mostly readable and the display gets bright and colorful enough that I don’t find myself longing for my monitor after a few minutes. They’re not perfect, though. There have been a few times where I’m playing a game, and any text that’s on the edges of the display starts to get blurry. Admittedly, this is only really a problem for me, because I’m a hardware sicko that needs to look at a performance overlay at all times when I’m playing games. But there were times when I was playing Vampire Crawlers where the already pixelated text in the corners of the screen was a bit blurry, and it started to give me a headache. I can’t help but wonder if the blurriness is due to the resolution. A 1200p resolution is fine for a smaller display, but stretched out across a giant TV, text is going to start getting blurry. But, then again the actual display size is quite small, so it could just be down to my narrow IPD (interpupillary distance). Viture also claims that the Beast glasses feature up to 108% of the Adobe RGB color gamut and peak ‘perceived’ brightness of 1,250 nits. This is something I’d typically measure on a standard gaming monitor with a colorimeter, but that’s not really an option here. I will say, though, that the display does seem to get plenty bright and colorful for watching movies or playing games. But I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them for any kind of creative work. However bright the glasses do actually get, they do work hard to get there. After using them for a while the top of the glasses gets shockingly warm to the touch. It’s not enough to burn you, and Viture has found a way to make it so that you don’t feel the heat when you’re actually wearing them, but it definitely surprised me when I first took them off after an extended play session. I said at the top that XR glasses are like ‘gaming headsets but for your eyes.’ For short play sessions, the comparison rings true. But while a good headset can be comfortable for hours on end, XR glasses aren’t quite there yet, but I can see them getting there soon. In the meantime, the Viture Beast XR glasses are a great way to kick back on a flight and play games on a handheld without having to hold up a bulky device the entire way.Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
Stream as Fox McCloud in Star Fox With the Nintendo Switch 2 Camera, Now 45% Off for Memorial Day
Let's rock and roll!
This Iniu 20,000 Power Bank Quadruples Your Nintendo Switch 2 Play Time For $17
You can also play and charge at the same time without ever running out of juice.
Today’s Top Deals: Borderlands 4 for PS5, LOTR Illustrated Box Set, Steelcase Gesture Office Chair
Plus, save on a sneaker-shaped PC case, Pokémon TCG preorders, Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, and more.
The Benefits of NVIDIA GeForce NOW for Budget-Conscious Gamers
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last six months, you know all about the RAM shortage. For consumers, supply has dwindled but demand hasn’t, leading to prices rising significantly and very quickly.Gamers have been hit particularly hard. The RAM shortage is why the price of the PlayStation 5 went up at the end of March, more than five years after its launch. It’s why building a gaming PC has become tougher for people on a budget.And these rising prices are on top of costs that have long been built into gaming. Both console and PC players have to deal with the cost of upgrading their hardware, whether that’s the latest generation for console players or upgraded components and memory for PC players. Then there’s new controllers, peripherals, and monitors.All of this starts to add up for budget-conscious gamers, which is where NVIDIA GeForce NOW steps into the spotlight. It offers gamers a way to experience high-end PC gaming without needing to routinely upgrade their rig.What is GeForce NOW?If you’re not already familiar with it, GeForce NOW is a subscription-based cloud gaming service that lets you stream games you own from popular gaming stores to your PC and other devices. It allows you to play games your PC’s specs wouldn’t normally be able to handle, as well as play on platforms that wouldn’t normally be possible.If you haven’t tried GeForce NOW cloud gaming before, the way it works is that the game isn’t actually run on your computer or whatever device you’re playing on. It’s run on a high-end GeForce RTX-powered gaming rig that streams its performance to your screen. You still control the game as you normally would, but you get the benefits of a more powerful setup without actually having to upgrade your own. And there are AAA games that release day-and-date on GeForce NOW, so you don’t have to sacrifice timeliness in exchange for access.Since the commands you input have to be sent to the server in order to register in-game, input lag depends on the quality of your internet connection. However, those connections have dramatically improved over the last few years, massively reducing latency and making cloud gaming a viable option for most people.Cloud gaming means playing with devices you likely already have at home. Considering current circumstances, that’s potentially thousands of dollars in savings. You also don’t need to worry about regularly upgrading your setup, since the GeForce NOW servers get upgrades without you having to do anything. NVIDIA recently upgraded GeForce NOW to next-gen Blackwell RTX architecture, giving Ultimate members (more on that in a bit) the power of an RTX 5080-class GPU.On to the GamesGeForce NOW also allows you to connect your accounts to digital stores like Steam, Epic, Battle.net, Xbox including Game Pass, and Ubisoft+, giving you access to the games you’ve already bought and own. So you don’t have to double dip and buy games a second time in order to play them as part of the service.There are a total of more than 4,500 games available to play through GeForce NOW, split into two categories: Ready-to-Play and Install-to-Play. Games in the Ready-to-Play category are kept up to date by NVIDIA and are always ready to stream instantly. Games in the Install-to-Play category allow you to download and play games that have opted into Steam’s cloud streaming, which run the gamut from indie titles to AAA hits. You can filter these two categories within GeForce NOW, so there’s no confusion about which games are in which group.And GeForce NOW regularly rolls out member rewards tied to popular games, like in-game items, early access perks, or special events that line up with big releases. It’s an extra layer of value on top of being able to bring the library you already own.In addition to the financial benefits, cloud gaming also offers convenience that can be helpful for people leading hectic lives. Like we mentioned, games in the Ready-to-Play category are kept up to date by NVIDIA at all times. So that means no more finally getting to play a game after life has kept you away for a while, only to discover you have to wait for a big update or patch to download.Game Across DevicesPlus, GeForce NOW allows you to play your games on devices where they’re not natively available. You can get GeForce NOW on Mac, Chromebook, tablets, iOS and Android phones, a number of LG and Samsung smart TVs, the Steam Deck, Xbox ROG Ally, and more. And since your in-game save data is tied to the cloud, you can carry over your current status between all of those devices without losing any progress.The resolution, fps, length of gaming session, and graphics card you have access to depend on which tier of GeForce NOW you sign up for. Since you’re getting access through external servers, there’s also a wait time to get connected that depends on your tier.Membership LevelsThere are three tiers: Free, Performance, and Ultimate. The free tier has up to 1080p resolution, up to 60 fps, and ads while you queue to start a game. You’ll have access to all Ready-to-Play games, but you’re limited to one-hour gaming sessions. For all the tiers, there’s no limit to the number of sessions you can have in a day. You just have to re-enter the queue when your session ends.The Performance tier is $9.99 per month or $99.99 for a full year, there are no ads, and you get up to 1440p resolution, up to 60 fps, six-hour gaming sessions, and priority access in the queue. So getting into a game generally takes less than a minute.The Ultimate tier is $19.99 per month or $199.99 for a year. It has no ads, up to 5K resolution, up to 240 fps, first priority access in the queue, eight-hour gaming sessions, and this is the only tier where games can be played with the power of a GeForce RTX 5080-class GPU. GeForce NOW also recently announced that Ultimate members get priority access to a RTX 5080 gaming rig every gaming session, based on availability, across nearly the entire GeForce NOW library.Performance and Ultimate memberships have access to both the Ready-to-Play and Install-to-Play catalogs, and there are day passes available that give you the features of those tiers for 24 hours. A day pass for the Performance tier is $3.99, while the Ultimate tier is $7.99. They’re a good way for newcomers to test out which tier works best for them without having to commit to a full monthly or yearly subscription. And if you get a day pass and then choose to upgrade to a longer term membership, the value of the day pass is applied to your subscription.From time to time, GeForce NOW also offers limited-time membership offers or bundles with select games, giving players another way to stretch their budget a bit further. If you’re already considering a longer-term plan, it can be worth keeping an eye out for these promotions in the weekly GFN Thursday blogs for the latest rewards, offers, and news.If you want to try GeForce NOW for yourself, you can do so right now on the official website. The process is quick and straightforward. With no end in sight for the RAM shortage and price hikes, now might be the time to see if cloud gaming is the right choice for you.
Viture’s refurb Luma Pro smart glasses are more than half off at eBay
Great for Steam Deck.
Former Splinter Cell Creative Director Says Realistic Graphics Are Causing Problems for Modern Stealth Games
The former creative director of one of gaming's most influential stealth franchises, Splinter Cell, has suggested that advancements in lighting and shadow have made it more difficult than ever for the fans — and creators — of the genre.
Sony Quietly Increased the Price of PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium Subscriptions, Too
Sony has quietly increased the price of the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscription tiers as well as the Essential tier, having suggested only the Essential tier would get more expensive.
SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X Gen 2 review: The Mac gaming headset to beat
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7X Gen 2 is an updated version of a popular headset, adding Mac support for the first time, and it has immediately become the model that all other headsets need to beat.
The Powerful MSI Vector 16" RTX 5070 Ti Gaming Laptop Drops to $1399 for Memorial Day
I haven't seen this kind of pricing since Black Friday.
Save an Extra $400 Off the Compact 18-Liter Cooler Master NR2 RTX 5070 Miniature Gaming PC
Also includes the upcoming 007 First Light game.
More portable gaming goodness? AYANEO confirms new product reveals this week
The event is scheduled for tomorrow.
The Gamesir G7 Pro Is My Favorite Gaming Controller for PC, and It's on Sale for Memorial Day
AliExpress has it for $20 less than everyone else.
The Samsung S90F 4K OLED TV Drops to the Lowest Price of the Year During Samsung's Memorial Day Sale
Our highest rated gaming TV of 2026 (yes, higher than LG)
The Legion RTX 5090 Gaming PC Drops to the Lowest Price of the Year During the Lenovo Memorial Day Sale
The RTX 5090 GPU is paired with a whopping 64GB of RAM.
Xbox hires game industry analyst Matthew Ball to lead strategy
The second major Xbox leadership changes this month.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 – Specialist Class Overview | IGN First
Get a detailed look at the new Specialist class in Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, the upcoming four-player, third-person PvE shooter sequel where you'll be blasting hordes of Xenomorphs. The Specialist class must be unlocked be leveling up the other classes, and once you do you'll be able to build almost any Specialist character you want. Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 will be released this summer for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
New videos show off the oddball Android handheld you should be keeping an eye on
This year's most intriguing gaming handheld could be available soon.
Deals: M3 iPad Air $400 off, 1TB M5 iPad Pro all-time low, 24GB M5 MacBook Pro $1,499, Apple Watch Ultra 3, more
The 2026 Memorial Day sales at Amazon and Best Buy are now live, and today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break deals are ready too....
Sony Confirms State of Play June Date, Teases Fresh Look at Wolverine and More Games for PS5
Sony has confirmed a State of Play showcase for June 2 at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm UK time / 11pm CEST. Here's what to expect.
Discord Voice and Video Calls Now End-to-End Encrypted by Default
Discord says it has switched on end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default for every voice and video call across its platforms, including desktop, mobile, web, and consoles like PlayStation and Xbox. The rollout covers DMs, group DMs, voice channels, and Go Live streams. There's no opt-in required, or any setting to change. Stage channels are the only exception, given that they're built for broadcasting to larger audiences rather than personal chats.