2025 was an eventful year for indie and AAA gaming alike—but what were the actual most-played new releases of 2025? Sales and Steam charts can only tell so much of the story by themselves, but Alinea Analytics have published a report with a strong estimate on the top games by players in 2025 across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms including

Intel has released version 3.0 of its AI Playground tool, which brings new multimodal upgrades to the app's functionality thanks to modern vision models like Qwen3 VL as well as agentic tool calling support, that allows users to orchestrate actions across different tools and features from within a single chat flow. Instead of completely separate

Compromised home networks are an increasing concern. Most recently we've written about the SantaStealer malware, budget Android TV boxes doubling as botnets, and compromised routers. Fully securing your home network requires an assortment of proper cybersecurity practices, but a great place to start is GreyNoise's recently released IP Check

We're in the midst of the season of giving, but that doesn't mean you can't also treat yourself. There are plenty of deals to take advantage of too—be sure to check out our ho-ho-hot tech gift roundup with a curated selection of items from each us here at HotHardware, and if you own a Switch or Switch 2, have a gander at some deeply discounted

The countdown to Christmas is quickly winding down with now just a handful of days to get your holiday shopping finished for the big day. After you've perused our ho-ho-hot tech gifts selections compiled by all of us here at HotHardware, turn your attention to a big sale going on for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 consoles, with some discounts

Game preservation is a tricky thing, especially without resorting to emulation or dubiously-obtained ROM files. System 3 Software, however, put in the effort for fans of ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64-era games by bringing its Last Ninja trilogy and a number of its other games to Steam. The games have full support for modern controllers, and

Players of Riot Games on the PC are familiar with the Vanguard kernel-level anti-cheat software by now. However, even with it installed and updated, gamers may have received a notice that their system is restricted from launching the popular game Valorant. This isn't an accident—per a blog post from Riot Games, a key vulnerability in modern

This past Wednesday, AMD quietly published what appears to be the first official technical documentation for its upcoming Zen 6 CPU architecture, codenamed Morpheus. This document offers early insight into several notable architectural changes. While the company has not formally announced Zen 6 products yet, the document provides strong hints

Earlier this week there was an uproar among LG TV owners over the inclusion of what most thought was a Microsoft Copilot app that couldn’t be removed, which was bundled with the latest WebOS platform update. WebOS is the operating system that runs on LG's current range of televisions. The company has responded to the backlash to clarify the

For the second time this month, Apple's recently launched AirPods Pro 3 are down to an all-time low price with a 20% discount over MSRP on tap. If you're looking for a last-minute holiday gift idea, this is a fantastic option. It also underscores why we often recommend against paying full price for audio products, even ones that just launched,

SpaceX/Starlink has confirmed that one of its satellites suffered a major hardware failure in orbit, resulting in the release of debris and a total loss of communications with the vehicle. The errant craft is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere over the next few weeks. On December 17, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956,

When it comes to technology, there's rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. Some people have a penchant for AMD chips, while others prefer Intel. The wider the net, the more diverse the options become, especially as you venture beyond the realm of core processing hardware and into the enormous field of consumer gadgets. So with that in mind,

French authorities have launched a high-stakes investigation into possible foreign interference following the discovery of sophisticated malware aboard the Italian passenger ferry the Fantastic, which could have allowed remote users to take control of the ship systems and controls. When the ship was docked recently in the port of Sète,

Big workloads that lean on a GPU often require gobs of memory, especially when dealing with large language models (LLMs) and other AI workloads. Hence the reason why NVIDIA in October announced an upgraded version of its RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell with a generous 72GB of GDDR7 memory with ECC. Now two months later, NVIDIA says the beefer variant

Companies are starting to tease what they have in store for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month, and one item that caught our eye is the Displace Hub, a battery-powered wall mounting system that transforms your TV into a "truly wireless, smart display." It's based on the same mechanism as the Display TV introduced

You're a PC gamer. Maybe you're new to the hobby, or maybe you've been blasting away on your old faithful peripherals: an ancient 1080p LCD monitor, the rubber dome keyboard you stole from the office, an Xbox 360 gamepad where one of the bumpers doesn't work right. Look, brother — it's time to upgrade your rig, and I'm not talking about your

A year and a half ago Meta made what felt like a big move at the time; the company made the operating system that powers its VR headsets available to other manufacturers. Horizon OS was supposedly going to open the doors for a more robust VR ecosystem, that included support for mobile apps. However, Road to VR is reporting that these plans

MSECore's latest small form factor system, the MV10 Mini PC, is a compact computing beast. The diminutive machine features four cooling fans to manage the heat from an Intel Core i9-14900F and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, along with up to 64 GB of DDR5-5600 MT/s RAM and a 4TB NVMe Gen 4 SSD. There are also 32GB DDR5 and 8GB GDDR5 GeForce

Have you been naughty this year? Actually, don't answer that, it's none of our business. But if you have. or if you just don't want to leave your holiday wish list to Santa's scrutiny, then we have a bead on a couple of grooving gaming hardware deals that you should check out. Specifically, there are deals to be had on the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally

In a fresh discovery that's leaving astronomers awestruck, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has confirmed the existence of a "runaway" supermassive black hole roughly 20 million times the mass of our sun, which is currently hurtling through space at a mind-boggling 2.2 million miles per hour. That's approximately 3,000 times the speed

Ahead of CES 2026, LG has officially unveiled the LG Sound Suite, an audio system that's the world’s first soundbar setup powered by Dolby Atmos FlexConnect technology that gives owners the ability to add on more components for a full 13.1.7 home theater if they so choose. We bet that it's only a matter of time when other manufacturers follow

Gamers on the PC platform could use a win right about now, and a victory may be coming when AMD gets around to formally launching its Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which is basically a binned and faster version of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The latest leaks involving AMD's next 3D V-Cache CPU suggests that pricing could be more palatable than some thought. Or

Just in case anyone needs to hear it again (as if!), we're in the midst of a memory crisis that has seen the cost of DRAM catapult to unsettling levels. And lest there be any doubt as to what/who the culprit is, G.Skill issued a statement pinning the blame squarely on "unprecedented high demand from the AI industry," which is a sentiment also

The security research team at iVerify Threat Intelligence have discovered a new Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that has been dubbed Cellik, and which is targeting Android users. It includes features typically seen on advanced spyware and delivers functionality that allows threat actors to spread their wares in a more stealthy fashion. Once