Sony may be preparing to abandon the standalone 4K Blu-ray players, and the signs are becoming harder to ignore. According to a report by Forbes, its last remaining model in Japan, the UBP-X700K, was marked as unavailable on October 22, with local retailers reportedly told not to expect another shipment— a development that has raised questions about the future of Sony’s dedicated followers. Sony's U.S. website has also listed the player as ‘out of stock’.

So, is Sony really done making 4K Blu-ray players? That isn't clear. The company is yet to announce a worldwide withdrawal, and its responses to questions about the reports leave that possibility open. When asked by Forbes whether Sony is leaving the market, its UK operation replied: “This information has not been publicly announced by Sony. We are aware of the recent media reports, but prefer to refrain from commenting on speculation.”

There is an important difference between what is happening in Japan and what buyers can still find elsewhere. The UBP-X700K remains listed on Sony’s U.S. website, with Best Buy offering it for $329.99 at press time, which means Sony 4K buyers haven’t missed their chance yet. However, Amazon is no longer selling the player directly as a new product. Finding one could be harder if the company decides not to restock.

This is not the first time Sony has stepped away from physical media. In January 2025, the company stopped producing blank recordable Blu-ray discs, later announcing in February that it would also end its production in Japan. In July 2026, Sony announced it would stop producing physical PlayStation game discs from 2028— although it remains unclear if the next PlayStation console will have a disc drive. Notably, the PS5 Pro launched without a built-in disc drive, but customers who want to play physical games can purchase the optional drive separately.

However, if Sony ultimately leaves the market, buyers will still have alternatives. Panasonic remains the biggest name in dedicated 4K Blu-ray players, although its products are not that cheap. Currently, the Panasonic UB154 lists on Amazon for $289.99, while the UB820 goes for $649.99, a steep climb from its original $499 launch price. The higher-end UN9000 is retailing at $1,299.99 on Walmart. Buyers could also consider gaming consoles such as a disc-equipped PS5, which is listed at $649.99, or the Xbox Series X, priced at $799.99. Both can play 4K Blu-ray movies, but neither supports Dolby Vision when playing discs.

Sony’s move, if true, would add it to a growing list of manufacturers that have dropped the Blu-ray hardware. In 2018, Oppo stopped producing players while Samsung ended plans for new U.S. Blu-ray players a year later. Other companies include LG, which dropped the business in 2024, with French company Reavon halting production in 2025.

But it's important to note that 4K Blu-ray demand has not collapsed in the same way as the wider physical disc market. Figures laid out by the Digital Entertainment Group show that overall U.S. disc sales declined by roughly 9% in 2025. Spending on 4K discs, however, climbed by 12% over the same period, before climbing another 18% in the second quarter of 2026. That said, for existing Sony owners, there is no reason to panic just yet. A player that works today will continue playing the discs already in a collector’s library — and there is no evidence that Sony plans to push an update that would stop existing players from reading movies.

Woot! has a brilliant deal right now on Nintendo's latest handheld gaming console. You can pick up the family-friendly Nintendo Switch 2, along with a free digital game code, for as low as $459 right now if you're a new Woot customer with the SAVETOBER coupon code. If you're not, you can still grab it for $479.

● Check out this deal at Woot

Woot! is Amazon's discount sister site, so you've got the full backing of the huge global retailer behind this deal. $459 is an awesome price for a Switch 2 and a free game, and the good news is, you get to choose the game. Options for you to choose include Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, or Pokémon Pokopia, which you'll need to download straight onto your Switch 2's storage.

This is a limited-time deal, with only four days left to run at the $519 sale price, but the coupon code is expected to run out tomorrow, November 1, at 11:59 pm ET, but don't expect it to be around even that long. This is a popular console, and as we approach the holiday season, this is the time that consoles like these become tricky to buy. With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launching in just a few days, expect to see a huge spike in demand for this console, too.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is Nintendo's second generation of its popular Switch console. It has a 7.9-inch 1080p touchscreen, designed for you to hold in your hands. That said, if you prefer the big-screen treatment, it also has a dock that'll let you play games on a TV for 4K gameplay at up to 120 fps. You're also getting Joy-Con 2 controllers, which you can use attached or detached, depending on if the console is docked or not.

There's 256GB of internal storage included here for games, but the Switch 2 does have support for microSD Express cards to boost this further. If you're planning to install a big game collection, a card upgrade might be a good option. Right now, for instance, you can pick up this 512GB Samsung P9 Express microSD card for $99 at Amazon, another limited-time deal that saves you 34% on its usual price.

As we've mentioned, you also get a free digital game with this Switch 2 deal. Buying Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, or Pokémon Pokopia separately would cost you between $69.99 and $79.99 at their usual prices, so with these discounts, you're getting a great deal.

The $459 sale price for this Woot! Nintendo Switch 2 bundle is a great option ahead of the holiday season. Don't expect to be able to wait for a better discount in a few weeks, as this is a popular console, and with a huge release like Ocarina of Time on the way, demand might outstrip supply. Just remember to use coupon code SAVETOBER before 11.59 am ET on November 1 at checkout to get the full $60 discount if you're a new customer, or $40 if you've used Woot! before.

A hacker used an AI LLM to find a hypervisor bug that allowed security researchers to load Linux on PlayStation 5 consoles, subsequently reported it to Sony, and received a $50,000 bug bounty. IGN reports that the person who discovered the flaw, who goes by Jordy on X, shared the award on the social media platform, drawing significant ire. The biggest driver of the criticism, though, is that Jordy agreed to delay the report until after the launch of GTA VI, but moved forward anyway after someone else discovered the flaw, meaning it would be patched prior to the launch of the game, and possibly denying someone else the payday.

“I can at least buy GTA 6 with this, I think,” Jordy said on their X account. One user called Gille replied to their post, saying, “50k in bank but 0 friends left. Worth it?” Another one named Darth Riker commented, “You did not ‘find this bug yourself’. The flow0 (Andy Nguyen) did that. You, however, didn’t. You’re just a lazy s****** who’s no different to those scammers out there,” while Matthew Cramer added, “The worst thing is not the money grab, it’s the fact that the whole point of exploiting PS5 is freedom, ownership, and control. Sony goes against everything we stand for! If Jordy was in need of money, there are hundreds of bug bounty programs with high paydays… or a better job!”

The ps5-linux-loader GitHub project requires a PS5 Phat, Slim, or Pro running firmware version 3.00 to 13.60 to work as intended. While it’s unclear if Sony had been aware of the flaw that allowed the Linux install on the console before Jordy’s report, it released firmware version 14.20 on Oct. 21, 2026, which patched the flaw. Because the latest games often require the latest firmware on the console before you can install them, the latest update means that users who are experimenting with running Linux on their PlayStation 5 would either have to pick between that and playing GTA VI on launch date.

Another thing that caught the ire of many jailbreaking fans is Jordy’s use of AI. Despite being a useful tool for discovering vulnerabilities when used by professionals, it has also overwhelmed several bug bounty programs with AI submissions. This includes Google, which has frozen its program until 2027, and Linus Torvalds, who switched to a public system as the Linux security mailing list has become “almost entirely unmanageable,” with AI bug hunters finding as many as 2,000 CVEs per release.

“I am stepping away from the PS5 scene and stopping all my work on PS5 Linux. After pouring my heart and months of my life into it, including plans to finish PS5 Pro support and release in 2027, it’s all down the sink,” Nguyen posted on X. He also added, “The scene used to be a group of highly talented researchers, but now it is just a bunch of noobs using LLMs and writing hacks they don’t even understand. Slop kiddies found the only hypervisor bug left, which I had also found a while ago, and decided to report to Sony.”

Jordy told the publication that they agreed with Nguyen to delay the bug report, with the latter asking to only do so after GTA 6 has come out. However, the former admitted to doing it anyway as other researchers using generative AI also found the bug, with Jordy risking losing the $50,000 bounty if somebody else reports the exploit. “I decided I would report it,” Jordy told IGN. “If I and another person can find it with LLM, so can someone else.”

Sony’s PlayStation 5 has been the focus of hacks, emulators, and jailbreaking recently, especially after the company announced that it will end physical game disc production by January 2028. Despite the pushback against this decision, Sony has doubled down on its move and even threatened to cut off customer support and take legal action against harassment from disgruntled customers. This, combined with Jordy’s use of AI and X post sharing the $50,000 award, is what drove the ire of many in the PS5 jailbreaking scene.

For Asus ROG's 20th birthday, the company released a slew of computer parts (enough for a supremely expensive build). But it's not overlooking its more recent entry into gaming handhelds, with the new Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20, a revamped version of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, which is already one of the best handheld gaming PCs.

The $1,299.99 gaming handheld ($2,499.99 if you get it in a bundle with XR glasses, a Pelican case, and a Dbrand Killswitch case) doesn't change performance at all. Instead, it makes some common-sense tweaks to its existing $999.99 handheld, adding TMR joysticks, rubberized grips, a see-through design, a transforming D-pad, and, most importantly, an OLED display.

If you already have an Ally X, this isn't a reason to upgrade. But if you're looking to get into handheld PC gaming and are willing to splurge, the changes here sure are nice.

Design and Display on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20

If you put the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 and the original next to each other, it's impossible not to notice the differences. But still, these are largely the same system, inside and out. They have the same button layout, the same grips, the same screen size, speaker placement, and vents.

The most visible difference is that the X20 has a new, transparent plastic case with a black tint, along with gold menu buttons, a gold stripe across the back (rather than silver), and a large "20th Anniversary" ROG badge on the rear. I prefer the original Xbox Ally X's plainer design; the clear plastic looks more like a toy. I also found that it let the status lights shine through the top of the system, just abover the screen, which is distracting.

There is one minor change in the menu buttons: where the Ally X had a library button, the Ally X20 has a screenshot button. It's more useful in general, but it's also a great way to accidentally take a screenshot.

But once I picked up the Ally X20, the original couldn't compare. The chassis feels more substantial, especially with rubberized grips on the back of the prongs. There's a new directional pad, which feels more substantial; it also twists between a 4-way and 8-way pad, though I found switching between these two modes quite awkward. The 8-way D-pad is better for fighting games, while the 4-way with more distinct cardinal directions will make more sense for action-adventure and platform games.

The new TMR joysticks, which should show less wear with age, feel tighter. All of this adds up, even though there is no performance difference between the two devices. They share the same AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip.

The other big change is the screen. Both use 1920 x 1080 touchscreens, but the Xbox Ally X20 has a 7.4-inch OLED panel, slightly larger than the original's 7-inch IPS display. While the screen size isn't much of a difference, the narrower top bezel is noticeable.

And the OLED screen looks great. It's only slightly more vivid on measured color tests. But it's definitely brighter, and it's absolutely an improvement. The OLED screen doesn't measure as well as the OLED screen on the Steam Deck OLED, but in isolation, I thought Asus's panel looked great, and it has a much more recent chip than the Steam Deck.

Forza Horizon 6 looked beautiful, with lush greenery on the sides of tracks and realistic, colorful paint jobs. In God of War: Ragnarok, dark areas with deep blacks made dim light stand out.

Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 Specifications

Battery Life on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20

The Ally X20 has the same 80 Whr battery as its predecessor. To get an idea how long you can play a demanding game for, I booted up God of War: Ragnarok, set the screen to 50% brightness, and used the 17W performance mode. With the game running on low settings with AMD FSR 3.1.4 at 720p, the machine had 47% charge left after an hour and 15 minutes of gameplay.

That suggests that I could have hit about 2.5 hours had I kept going. That's down from about 3 hours on the original Ally, though it's not apples to apples, as I played different games. It's to be expected that an OLED display would use a bit more power, however.

Software and Warranty on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20

The ROG Xbox Ally X20 uses the same Full Screen Experience that the original Xbox Ally X originated. Portions of Windows don't even load unless you switch to desktop mode, which saves RAM and helps boost performance.

For some features, Asus includes Armoury Crate SE. That's where you can make changes to the lighting around the joysticks, adjust power management (whether in the app or in the Xbox menu), and calibrate your joysticks and triggers.

Asus sells the ROG Xbox Ally X20 with a 1-year warranty.

Bottom Line

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 is the definitive form of Asus' handheld. It feels better in the hands, has joysticks that should last longer, and the OLED display is a noticeable improvement.

All of that being said, games play the same across the two devices. If you already have an original ROG Ally X, this isn't worth the upgrade. You won't get any more performance, and the IPS screen on the original is still plenty bright and colorful, even if the blacks aren't as good as on an OLED screen.

If you're buying a new machine, it's a tougher choice. The X20 is $1,299.99 — a $300 increase over the original, which is staying on the market. If this is your sole gaming machine, that may be worthwhile for the improved screen, TMR joysticks, and a slightly more solid build. But it's a lot of money; the original Xbox Ally X will play games the same way for $300 less. Neither will play games as well as the Intel Arc G3, but the only system with that available right now is $1,799.

The X20 is worth getting if it's going to be your only gaming PC for a few years. The $1,299.99 price is high for a handheld, but given that the $999.99 version is effectively the best deal in handhelds right now, it makes some sense to invest if you want the best experience.

Gamers can now experiment with playing their favorite Steam titles on a jailbroken PlayStation 5. The game launcher is actually based on the Playden launcher designed for macOS and adapted for the PlayStation, allowing you to sign in with your Steam account and install games from your library directly to the console. Playden for PS5 is a GitHub project that lets you run Steam games on the console, notes VideoCardz. When you launch a game on Playden for PS5, it sets a private Windows environment and is run through prospero-win, which is a PS5 port of Wine.

Note that the launcher itself does not run the game — instead it builds a separate PS5 app created for the game that you installed, allowing the Steam title to appear as a separate tile on the console’s home screen. Aside from that, its files, settings, and crashes are isolated from the launcher and other games. There’s also a separate runtime kit that handles Wine for PS5, the required graphics drivers, the Windows environment, and a template app shell for your games.

While Playden for PS5 successfully launches Steam games, it does not necessarily mean a smooth start-to-end experience for every title. The creator notes that it’s still in the Alpha stage of development, with X user v7dt1 saying that even though they were able to launch a game, it eventually crashed. On the other hand, u/Cevap shared on the r/PS5_Jailbreak subreddit that they were able to play Portal through the launcher with no issues, except for the lack of a mouse cursor and the inability to hit ESC to open the options menu. Still, the developer of the launcher lists several compatible games, including American Truck Simulator, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, GTA: Vice City, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, and more.

Of course, users need a jailbroken PlayStation 5 if they want to use this launcher. But aside from that, the creator said that using it poses several risks, including the fact that it’s an unofficial Steam client. While there haven’t been any problems with third-party Steam clients, the app notes that Valve does not officially support it and any risk that comes with the use of the launcher “is yours to accept.”

Sony announced that it will cease physical game disc production by January 2028, which did not sit well among many fans. In fact, a petition against the move has nearly hit 200,000 signatures just a week after the announcement. Alongside that announcement, we started seeing a number of jailbreaks and emulators for the PS5, allowing users to take back control of their hardware, likely to the chagrin of Sony executives.

A rare, prototype copy of Pokémon Red for the Nintendo Game Boy, originally released back in 1998, is on sale at auction, with a single bid of $25,000 currently registered so far. This prototype, spotted by Retro Dodo, is "incredibly rare" and features 32KB of readable data. According to the Goldin auction page, the cartridge has been authenticated by specialists at PSA, who examined the card. According to them, while a "complete data read" wasn't possible, the first 32KB of data was, a "technically unique" result. The PSA notes, however, that the game data is otherwise "completely identical" to the U.S. release version of the game, with PSA "expressing confidence" that the rest of the data, if it were readable, would match.

The PSA report does note two changes to the ROM's header data that don't affect the game data. According to PSA, "the difference is at offset 0x014C, which denotes the Mask ROM version and is incorrectly set to 55 when it should be 00. This has the effect of changing offset 0x014D, which is a calculated header checksum, to CB instead of 20."

This prototype development cartridge has a sticker reading DMB-MBC-16M-FLASH, with a part number DMG-(F)KGDB-01. DMB likely refers to Dot Matrix Game, the original internal codename for the Game Boy, while MBC likely means Memory Bank Controller, a custom chip that allowed games to use more than the Game Boy's 32KB ROM limit. 16M likely refers to a 16 megabit limit of flash-writable memory. Retro Dodo notes that the cartridge is longer than a standard Game Boy cartridge, too.

The auction notes that this uses a "previously undocumented" development board, although the DMG-(F)KGDB-01 part number has been seen before. The Rare Gaming Dump wiki, for instance, lists the same part number for a development cartridge from 2000. It, too, had a 16 megabit Sharp flash chip, with U1 FLASH MEMORY printed on the board. Close-up views from the Goldin auction page show an almost identical design, although the wiki entry shows a slightly different DMG-MBC3-16M-FLASH cartridge sticker.

Pokémon Red is a gaming classic that helped kickstart the global Pokémon franchise in the 1990s, along with Green and Blue. Combined with Blue, Pokémon Red is reported to have sold more than 31 million copies. There are several days left to go on this auction, so while the single bidder may secure this piece of gaming history for $25,000, it may sell for an even higher price before the auction process ends.

The list of things a jailbroken PS5 can do gets longer, as Reddit user u/AdIllustrious7246 posted his fork of PS5LM, a llama.cpp port on the PS5 to run AI LLMs locally, with a massive improvement, allowing PS5LM to run natively on the PS5 and utilize the GPU to run bigger AI models such as Qwen3.8-27B at 20 tokens per second.

GitHub user cobanov posted their unofficial port of llama.cpp on Reddit 14 days ago to enable jailbroken PS5s to run AI chat models locally and offline. cobanov’s version, according to u/AdIllustrious7246, runs as a payload on the CPU, limiting it to 6 GiB of memory. Running it as a payload is basically hijacking the CPU, inserting the LLM into its instructions alongside the home screen and system services; however, RAM access is limited to about 6.25 GiB because holding more would freeze the home screen. cobanov did this just to get the llama.cpp running as soon as possible, but eventually wanted to utilize the GPU so it could run larger models; however, it seems that u/AdIllustrious7246 beat him to it with his fork.

u/AdIllustrious7246 utilized PS5_Vulkan, a port of the RADV graphics driver that allows instructions to be sent to the PS5 GPU. Normally, the PS5 GPU would be locked down and cannot be accessed like a PC GPU, despite being an AMD GPU. PS5_Vulkan is one of the projects that made plenty of homebrew projects possible by opening up what could be done on the GPU, including making it run LLMs.

Now that llama.cpp runs natively on the PS5, fully utilizing the GPU and opening up more RAM to be used, u/AdIllustrious7246 was able to run a 27B parameter model on it at 20 tokens per second, and smaller models like Gemma 4 E4B and Llama 3.2 3B at 61 and 124 tokens per second, respectively. Previously, the large 6.8 GiB LLM would make the system freeze and crash due to the CPU bottleneck, but GPUs are much better at processing LLMs, which is why GPU and RAM prices are insane these days.

Running it on the GPU allowed for much faster token output, and running natively allowed it to use more RAM, up to 11.4 GiB, according to u/AdIllustrious7246. Not only did the developer run the app natively, but they also gave it a dashboard, showing useful data such as live token-per-second generation, GPU and CPU use, power draw, temperatures, and how the memory splits between the model and KV cache. They also made it work with llama.cpp’s web UI, allowing users to chat with the LLM from other local devices using a browser.

While this is an impressive feat, allowing the PS5 to run as an AI assistant when it’s not used for gaming, commenters are getting flashbacks to the crypto mining GPU crisis. This is unlikely, however, as we already have an ongoing GPU and RAM crisis thanks to the demands of large AI data centers, and the PS5 doesn’t exactly have the fastest GPU or the most RAM.

Overdrive, a homebrew games library offering over 1,600 PS4 and PS5 games, went viral after a video of its demonstration on X by Edigax caught online attention. Shortly after the influx of attention the Overdrive project received, it was shut down, reportedly after the developer received a cease-and-desist letter in an X post by Oliver Darko. However, two GitHub repositories have taken its place, reviving the project after one day of downtime.

The storefront for jailbroken PS5 models was released on GitHub on October 9, with reception being relatively tame. It was only after Edigax, a popular jailbreak installation tutorial account, posted their video on X for Overdrive’s installation on October 12 that it went viral, receiving over 7.9 million views with over 600 comments, many commenting on how Sony deserves this over their controversial effort to produce no physical copies of games: “Only digital, as Sony wanted,” one commenter says.

A day after the project went viral, Sony reportedly sent the developer a cease-and-desist letter and had it shut down. There are no concrete sources for this cease-and-desist, but it likely doesn’t matter because just a day later, like a single-headed hydra getting its head cut, two more popped up in its place; one is a fork of the original, while the other is a clone of the original under a different account.

The jailbreak community seems keen to preserve this homebrew because of its incredible library and as a protest against Sony’s business practices, making it unlikely that Sony will ever get rid of this problem for good. If Sony manages to take down another, more will likely pop up in its place.

The PS5 jailbreaking community has been on a roll in the past few weeks since the Relapse jailbreak’s release on September 29. Since then, an influx of homebrew apps has been developed, including a range of emulators, launchers, and streaming apps; even Xbox Cloud Gaming runs natively on the PS5. It seems that this giant library of PS4 and PS5 games, easily accessible and completely free, is the climax of the past month’s notable releases that finally caught Sony's attention.

While Sony remains committed to phasing out physical media, Nintendo is taking the opposite approach. In a recent interview with the Brazilian YouTube channel Coelho no Japão, Bill van Zyll, Nintendo's VP and General Manager for Latin America, confirmed that the company has no plans to abandon cartridges.

"Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right?" stated van Zyll in the interview.

The Nintendo executive firmly continued, "We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily. We also have a platform that was just launched. We're barely just over a year into NS2. It's got both digital and physical – that capability. There's no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic."

In an era where the gaming industry is rapidly shifting toward digital distribution, it is comforting to see at least some companies still supporting physical media. The core issue with digital purchases is that you do not truly own what you buy; instead, you are purchasing a license to access the game, unlike owning a cartridge or game disc. Some storefronts, such as GOG or itch.io, offer DRM-free downloads of the titles you purchase, but only a handful of them exist.

However, even cartridges cannot completely escape the march toward digitalization. With the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo introduced game-key cards, physical cards that contain a license to download the full game data. Modern AAA game releases have exceeded the storage capacity of traditional cartridges or discs. For instance, Black Myth: Wukong and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI use this code-in-a-box model.

On the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, cartridges max out at 32GB and 64GB, respectively. That is not much capacity by modern standards, so publishers turn to game-key cards as a compromise for a physical release. Compared with fully digital releases, game-key cards bind the license to the card, so owners can still trade or sell them like normal cartridges.

Owning physical copies can sometimes cost more than going digital, especially for Nintendo’s first-party titles. Effective as of May 2026, physical versions of first-party Nintendo titles sell for $10 more than their digital counterparts. The price increase was due to manufacturing, packaging, and distribution costs for cartridges. However, Nintendo frames the pricing adjustment differently, claiming it lowered digital game prices by $10 to pass the savings on to consumers.

Nintendo has announced plans for the Switch 2 to mirror its predecessor's lifespan, about six to seven years. No one anticipated Sony's decision to phase out game discs, so Nintendo's future remains uncertain, even though the company pledged to continue physical releases. With the Switch 2 launching just last year, we can at least look forward to another six good years of physical media.

Brazilian developer RafaelNGP has created his own Homebrew called PSBox Cloud Gaming on his jailbroken PS5 and released it for download on GitHub. The mod, created in part using Claude, allows Xbox Cloud Gaming to run natively on a PS5, with up to 4 DualSense controllers mapped to Xbox for compatibility.

The lines between consoles and PC have been blurring lately, and even more so for the PS5, with jailbreak mods allowing for many new capabilities it was never intended for. We recently covered a story about the original Xbox being emulated on a jailbroken PS5, but a more modern and usable mod is this natively running Xbox Cloud Gaming mod. Gone are the days of switching to your Xbox or PC to play xCloud; just run it on your PS5 — that's what RafaelNGP thought to himself before making PSBox Cloud Gaming.

Rafael explains how easy it is to get it running, with just a .zip file download from their GitHub, extraction to a specific folder, waiting for a Homebrew loader to mount the “game,” then launch and sign in as usual. Users are able to sign in using their phone through a code on the TV. It currently supports a 1080p60 stream, but can be upscaled to 4K using the PS5’s GPU with AMD FSR 1 or Anime4K upscalers. The application is still not perfect, with testers reporting video issues such as macroblocking, pink artifacts, and vibration issues on the DualSense controllers, while others are thrilled and having a good experience.

As if emulating the original Xbox and playing xCloud on a PS5 weren’t enough, a comment under the Reddit post asked whether they could use local Xbox Remote Play on it, intending to stream games from an Xbox they already have to the PS5. Rafael said it didn’t work yet, but promptly created an update days later enabling Xbox Remote Play.

The PS5’s library of exclusives may be lackluster, but it seems that the PS5 has more to offer than its own games outside of what Sony intends for it, thanks to the jailbreaking community.

Video game console sales in the U.S. have cratered, with both the PS5 and Xbox seeing a massive drop in YTD sales through the end of August compared with last year. Mat Piscatella, the video game industry advisor at research firm Circana, shared the numbers on his Bluesky account — PlayStation 5 sales have dropped by 25%, putting it at its lowest point since 2013, when gamers held off buying PlayStation consoles in anticipation of the arrival of the PS4, while Xbox’s retail figures have cratered by 33% YTD, putting its sales numbers at an all-time low since its launch almost 25 years ago.

From Circana's US Retail Tracking Service:For 2026 YTD ending August, Xbox hardware unit sales are down 33% versus a year ago in the US, while PlayStation hardware units are 25% lower.Xbox YTD US hardware unit sales are at an all-time low, while PlayStation is at lowest point since 2013.

— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-10-11T15:51:03.015Z

Piscatella said price sensitivity is becoming a real problem among gamers, especially as the chip shortage has pushed console manufacturers to raise prices. Microsoft has raised the price of the Xbox three times in the past two years, with the 512GB versions jumping by $100 and 1TB models becoming $150 more expensive. Worse, the company has killed off the 2TB model. This brought the Xbox Series S to $499.99 (512GB) and $599.99 (1TB), while the Xbox Series X now costs $749.99 for the Digital Edition, and the disc version costs $50 more at $799.99.

PlayStation fans haven’t escaped these price hikes, as Sony raised prices for that console by $100 to $150. The base Digital Edition PS5 now costs $599.99, while the version with an optical drive is priced at $649.99. If you want the PS5 Pro, you’ll have to shell out $899.99, while those who want to stream games from their console via the PlayStation Portal must now pay $249.99 — $50 higher than its $199.99 launch price. Even used consoles didn't escape inflation, with Sony bumping the price of refurbished PS5 Slim consoles by $100, bringing them to $399.

Despite the higher prices, the PS5 Pro remains in short supply, which is why used prices have now reached the stratosphere. Refurbished PS5 Pros now cost $1,399 at GameStop, almost $500 more than the MSRP of a new one (if you can find one in stock at that price). While this price might feel egregious, it’s about $100 less than the prices of new units we found at Best Buy and Walmart, and sealed units on online marketplaces sell for about $100 less than this.

AI chip shortage-driven price hikes, along with rising living costs, have made console purchases less of a priority for many families, driving this massive downturn in retail sales. The arrival of the much-anticipated GTA VI in November, along with the upcoming holiday season, will hopefully help consoles bounce back. Still, Piscatella says the U.S. hardware market has never been more precarious since the early 1980s.

Don’t throw away your PlayStation 2 games just yet. Modder Sword has released PS5SX2 for jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles. This new software brings PlayStation 2 games to Sony’s latest console and supports physical discs, letting you relive your favorite classics in their original form.

For those active in the PlayStation emulation scene, the name PS5SX2 will immediately ring a bell, and for good reason. PS5SX2 is a native port of PCSX2, a very popular PlayStation 2 emulator for PC. Sword has successfully adapted the PCSX2 CPU recompilers to run on the PlayStation 5’s powerful custom Zen 2 chip. Unlike previous hacks that run PCSX2 on a host system and stream to the television, the PlayStation 5 does the recompiling and rendering.

PS5SX2 uses Vulkan as its backend renderer. However, since the PlayStation 5 lacks a standard operating system with official Vulkan driver support, emulation software requires a custom translation layer. Instead of developing a Vulkan driver from scratch, Sword uses a modified version of ps5vk, developed by renowned coder Mihawk-99, who has brought us projects like RetroArch.

PS5SX2 embraces virtually all popular disc image formats used for PlayStation 2 emulation, including ISO, CHD, CSO, and ZSO. More impressively, it fully supports physical PlayStation 2 game discs. It supports built-in optical drives and external USB optical drives. It reportedly works with discs from all regions. The only drawback is that the software can only read PlayStation 2 games released on DVDs, not CDs. It is more of a hardware limitation, though, since the PlayStation 5's optical drive lacks the laser needed to read standard CDs.

Beyond bringing PlayStation 2 fun to the PlayStation 5, PS5SX2 adds an impressive suite of features to enhance your retro gaming experience. One standout feature is high-resolution upscaling, enabling 6X scaling over the PlayStation 2's native resolution for up to 4K on modern displays. The emulator also supports a wide variety of upscaling and post-processing filters, including AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). Patch files (.pnach) are also compatible with PCSX2, so that games can unlock widescreen or 60 FPS support for certain titles.

Beyond graphical enhancements, PS5SX2 packs other cool features. Gamers can fine-tune graphics, audio, and gameplay settings directly from their smartphone or tablet, and changes take effect instantly. PS5SX2 also lets gamers play online by emulating the PlayStation 2's network adapter and routing traffic to community servers. It also supports keyboard and mouse, couch co-op for up to four players, and the ability to create virtual memory cards up to 64MB per game.

PlayStation 2 disc support is only the tip of the iceberg. When asked about the potential inclusion of PlayStation 3 disc support for an RPCS3 port currently under development, the developer, Sword, responded affirmatively: "Yes, it’s coming with it :)." Sony's decision to kill game discs only further spurred the homebrew community to develop methods to preserve disc usage. The irony is that community projects, such as PS5SX2, have contributed to boosting the PlayStation 5's value.

Sony implemented backward compatibility on the PlayStation 5 for both physical and digital PlayStation 4 games. It is evident that the console can play games from older generations of consoles all this time. This raises an interesting question: why has Sony been holding out on its fans?

The open-source AnyPS5 project has reached 100% GPU shader instruction coverage, a significant milestone in its effort to run PlayStation 5 games natively on Windows and Linux PCs. The project's live progress tracker now lists all 1,166 instructions in its tracked AMD RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 instruction set as implemented. There's a fairly important asterisk attached to that number, though: it doesn't mean the PS5's GPU is fully supported, much less that PS5 games are ready to run on your PC.

The distinction is in how AnyPS5 defines "implemented." In this case, it means the project's shader decoder recognizes an instruction. That's an essential first step, but it doesn't necessarily mean every instruction is implemented in translation to SPIR-V, never mind a guarantee that the instruction's behavior is correct in every situation, that every GPU feature is supported, or that a game's shaders will render properly. Consider the network libraries: libSceHttp is reported at 95% implementation, but the technical-debt document explicitly states that no HTTP request reaches the network in the current implementation.

If you're confused about AnyPS5, let me break it down for you. The most accurate starting point is "native porting through binary transformation and API reimplementation," rather than conventional PS5 emulation. AnyPS5 takes an existing PS5 executable (in standard ELF format, like Linux) and relinks it into a native x86-64 Linux ELF or Windows PE executable. It doesn't need the game's original source code, and it doesn't rebuild the game from scratch; instead, it adapts the existing machine code and supplies native replacements for the PS5 system libraries the game expects to find.

The line gets blurrier when we reach the GPU. PS5 games use Sony's proprietary AGC graphics interface and AMD RDNA-specific shader instructions instead of the standard graphics APIs and shader formats familiar to PC developers. AnyPS5 reimplements the necessary graphics behavior and translates RDNA shader programs into SPIR-V for execution through Vulkan. That's translation, reimplementation, and arguably some emulation of hardware behavior at different levels, but it's not a conventional emulator recreating an entire virtual PS5 and running the game inside it. The CPU code can generally execute directly on a compatible x86-64 host, though AnyPS5 also provides a "--to-intel" option to convert supported AMD-only instructions for Intel processors.

There's plenty left to do beyond shader decoding. The project's tracker reports 84.69% implementation across 2,578 of the 3,044 system-library functions currently declared in its codebase. That figure doesn't represent every function in the PS5's firmware, nor does it guarantee that each implemented function behaves exactly as it does on the console. Graphics state, texture formats, synchronization, memory management, audio, and other system services must also work correctly for an entire game to run.

The project's official compatibility list currently identifies Dreaming Sarah, a charming but technically very simple 2D platformer, as its single verified playable title. Developers are making progress with more demanding games (including the recent Ghost of Yotei), but experimental bring-up reports still document substantial rendering, stability, and performance problems. Reaching a game's intro or rendering its first 3D scene is real progress; obviously, it isn't the same thing as playing through the game.

There's also no retail-disc-to-desktop shortcut here. AnyPS5's documented workflow starts with an already-extracted game ELF, its associated modules and resources, and a properly built set of host-side compatibility libraries. It isn't a disc-ripping or decryption tool, so you're going to have to figure out how to extract the game ELF and resources yourself.

Hardware requirements will vary by game, but memory headroom is a big concern: on Windows, the project warns that a title may request up to 13,824 MB (13.5 GB) of direct memory, with the full allocation charged against the system's commit limit immediately. That's not a universal free-RAM requirement, but it does mean that this isn't something to try on any old PC with 16GB of RAM and a small page file.

To be clear, none of this should be taken to mean I'm not gobsmacked by the achievement. Recognizing every instruction in the project's tracked RDNA list is a critical step toward broader compatibility, and the work now being done to translate those instructions and reproduce the surrounding GPU behavior is precisely what makes the project interesting. There's real work by humans going on here, too; the project counts over 100 human contributors besides the expected assistance from Claude (and potentially other assistants not credited directly on GitHub).

The more likely long-term outcome of AnyPS5 isn't a universal PS5 emulator where you insert a disc and press "play," but a powerful framework for unofficial native PC ports of individual games. There's a tricky legal tangle to work out there, though, and there's also still a tremendous amount of work between today's milestone and that future, but progress on the project is rapid. It may well be the case that we end up playing the PS5 version of GTA VI on PC before Rockstar drops an official PC release.

The original MSI Claw (A1M) was forgotten about almost as quickly as it launched, being the first handheld from MSI, and the first one to sport an Intel CPU (in this case, the Core Ultra 7 155H from the Meteor Lake family). Unsurprisingly, Best Buy has the handheld on clearance, and right now it's available for a surprisingly good price of $562.99 considering how expensive newer handhelds are.

• Check out this deal at Best Buy

In this case of handheld gaming PC, this is the cheapest option you can get right now. Even the ROG Xbox Ally with the Ryzen Z2 A and 512GB of storage is $600. Handhelds with 1TB of storage and the Ryzen Z1 Extreme (the chip Intel originally targeted) will run you north of $1,000.

In both build quality and layout, the A1M is nearly a carbon copy of the original Asus ROG Ally. It sports a 7-inch 1080p display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a single USB-C port for charging and peripherals, and a microSD card slot for storage expansion; though, you can replace the SSD inside, as well.

This is a great deal considering the price of handhelds right now, especially those packing 1TB of storage, but the A1M was glossed over quickly for a reason. The Meteor Lake chip inside wasn't built for handheld gaming, so although it offers decent performance, it does so at relatively high power draw.

In a game like Horizon Zero Dawn, it's able to achieve around 30 FPS at native 1080p with the Balanced power plan, which uses a 30W target. Plugged in with a full 40W power budget, the game can crack 30 FPS in titles like Cyberpunk 2077 with the Steam Deck preset.

It falls between 5% and 10% short of the Z1 Extreme, and with worse battery life. With prices equal, we'd normally recommend the ROG Ally. Considering the price gap, the A1M is worth considering. The software isn't as clear as what you get with an Asus handheld, but MSI has made dozens of updates to its firmware and overlay software since the original A1M launched.

Performance is less of a concern than battery life, with the Meteor Lake chip sucking down quite a bit of power relative to modern PC handhelds. That's not a dealbreaker at this price, but make sure to have a quality USB-C charger at the ready.

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Do you or someone you know have a Nintendo Switch 2? What about accessories for your new console? Whether you want to play with others, increase your storage, or add functionality, you may want some extras to deliver the best gameplay experience possible, or even add accessories to make it your own. Now is the best time to score a big deal on them during Amazon's Prime Big Deals Days 2026.

• Check out all the Switch 2 accessories deals in Amazon's Prime Big Deals Days

There are many official, licensed accessories alongside third-party extras available at a wide range of prices. Now is an excellent time to hunt for deals and the best prices on Switch 2 peripherals and accessories.

One of the most important extras you'll most likely want to pick up is a microSD Express memory expansion card. If you know that's what you want, check out our handy list of the best Prime Day microSD Express card deals for the Switch 2.

Other accessories to consider are screen protectors, carrying cases, and peripherals such as controllers, headsets, and cameras, as listed below.

Best gaming laptop deals | Best monitor deals | Best PC and laptop deals | Best SSD deals | Best CPU deals | Gaming Chair | Best hard drive deals | Best PC case deals | Best Dell and Alienware deals | Best 3D printer deals | Best PC peripherals deals | Best motherboard deals | Best CPU cooler deals | Best gaming chair deals

GameStop has increased the price of refurbished PS Pros from $800 to $1399.99, meaning used units cost 55% more than their list price for brand-new consoles, and well over double the PS5 Pro's original MSRP. A Redditor working at the retailer has leaked a memo telling employees that the higher price of used consoles versus new ones is intentional. A r/GameStop subreddit moderator has confirmed the validity of the post, saying that the original poster has been properly vetted. The leaked prices are now showing on the GameStop website.

Brand-new PS5 Pro units have an MSRP of $899.00, which has already increased from $749.99 earlier this year because of chip shortages. It’s unclear whether Sony requires retailers to sell brand-new PS5 units at or close to the MSRP, but they generally have more freedom in setting the prices of pre-owned devices. Unfortunately, it seems that there’s a shortage of new PS5 Pros across several retailers. Sony, GameStop, and Target, which list the consoles at $899.99, are out of stock. While new consoles are available on Best Buy and Walmart, they’re priced at $1,496.01 and $1,554.99, respectively. Gamers who find these prices too rich might want to take their chances on eBay or Facebook Marketplace, but the situation there isn’t any better. New sealed PS5 Pros are going for more around $1,300 or more on these platforms. While they might be cheaper, you’ll miss out on some of the protections and peace of mind that retailers with brick-and-mortar stores provide.

Many people blame the AI-driven memory chip crisis for the PS5 Pro shortage. AI data centers’ appetite for HBM and willingness to pay top dollar for these chips meant that DRAM manufacturers have pivoted most of their capacity towards this more lucrative market, with manufacturers of consumer goods fighting over a smaller pie of DRAM production. The situation has led to a 500% increase in RAM prices in the past 12 months, with the shortage now starting to spill over into other industries like smartphones and automotive manufacturing.

The situation is likely compounded by the anticipated launch of GTA VI this coming November, which started pre-selling in June 2026. While Rockstar isn’t targeting 60 FPS for the game at launch, it seems that gamers are willing to pay top dollar just to ensure that they can get the best possible performance when the game finally arrives after years of waiting.

It seems that buyers who have saved just enough cash to buy a PS5 Pro are out of luck as retailers are taking advantage of the shortage and jacking up prices, even for used models. The basic PS5 Digital (Slim) and Disc (Slim) editions are still priced at or close to the MSRP, though, so those who want to get their hands on a PlayStation right now without overpaying scalpers would have to settle for these instead. Gamers who are specifically buying a console just to play GTA VI at launch could also settle for an Xbox Series X instead, which is a bit cheaper than the PS5 Pro at MSRP while offering more performance than the base PS5, or they could experiment with the open-source AnyPS5, which runs PS5 console games natively on PC.

Rising component costs have forced every major console maker to raise prices. However, Amazon U.K. has stepped up for Nintendo fans by slashing the Switch 2's retail price by 15%, bringing the console to an all-time low of £354.99. Other U.K. retailers, including Argos, John Lewis, and Smyths Toys, have also followed suit.

• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on Amazon
• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on Argos
• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on John Lewis
• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on Smyths Toys

The Nintendo Switch 2, which debuted a little over a year ago, originally entered the U.K. retail market at an MSRP of £395.99. Like its competitors, Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo ultimately raised the Switch 2's MSRP to £419.99 just last month due to the memory and storage shortage. This context makes the current offer of £354.99 exceptionally compelling, since you are essentially saving up to 10% off the launch price and up to 15% off the newly adjusted MSRP.

Not only is the Switch 2 available at a fantastic price, but it also opens the door to an unmatched library of franchises and upcoming blockbuster releases. Major titles, including the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and Metroid Ravenous, are set to launch soon, so you can secure your Switch 2 now at an unbeatable price.

If you are a longtime Nintendo fan, you already know that Nintendo rarely offers direct price cuts or holiday discounts on its highly sought-after consoles. It is uncommon to find a Nintendo console priced below the MSRP. Being able to buy the Switch 2 at a record-low price is already a blessing given how recent the handheld console has been on the market. Having a handful of retailers to choose from, including Amazon, Argos, John Lewis, and Smyths Toys, feels like an early Christmas.

Popular Xbox emulator Xemu has just been ported to jailbroken Sony PlayStation 5 consoles. Reddit user u/Yzenxam posted a video of their PS5 running the emulator with three games installed: Forza Motorsport, Halo 2, and Crash Bandicoot. The port, playfully named XPSemu, is on their GitHub page: ZiZc3.

The modder has stated that XPSemu is Xemu and is nothing different; all they did was allow it to be opened on the PS5 as an application. Xemu uses QEMU’s TCG JIT to translate the Xbox CPU to the PS5 CPU in realtime, allowing for fast performance compared to interpretation-based translation.

Xemu has its own translation for the Xbox’ NV2A GPU and uses a Vulkan renderer to work with modern GPUs; thanks to the modder behind PS5_Vulkan, Xemu can talk to the PS5’s AMD GPU through the open-source RADV Vulkan driver — allowing the porter to run Xemu as a native PS5 application.

ZiZc3 also added their own touches as explained in their GitHub repository:

"On top of the port, XPSemu adds its own controller-friendly dashboard, per-game settings, cover art, play time, game patches, a performance overlay, a per-game log and a set of CPU optimizations made for the PS5's Zen 2 processor."

While QEMU's TCG JIT is relatively fast, it still leaves plenty to be desired. ZiZc3 explains that the emulated Xbox CPU is the bottleneck, loaded at 85-97% while the PS5 GPU remains mostly idle. As a consequence, the resolution multiplier up to 3-4x barely affects performance, and upscaling with FSR does not add performance.

The developer further explains that the PS5's Zen 2 cores are slower per core than a fast PC, and CPU-heavy games suffer from this. In terms of performance, ZiZc3 has provided a table of their experience and performance of the games on XPSemu:

As of writing, there are fewer than 15 fully PS5-exclusive games, while the number of emulators the PS5 can run is increasing by the week. On X, users BrinoTk and Mihawk9_9 (the same person behind PS5_Vulkan) announced their Xbox 360 and PS5 Proton projects on the same day, with the Xbox 360 emulator already available for testing.

The PS5 already has emulators for PS1-3, with PS4 emulation technically built in. Non-PlayStation emulators besides the XPSemu include the Nintendo Switch, Wii U, 3DS, and of course the myriad of emulators available on RetroArch as well. On the other side of the coin, the PS5 itself has also been emulated on PC and the Xbox Series X — at this point, the lines are blurring faster than owners know what to do with their jailbroken PS5.

The PlayStation 5 is getting AI-driven upscaling, giving base console owners access to the technology that was previously available on the more powerful PlayStation 5 Pro. In a blog post, Sony introduced Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), a new version of its AI upscaling technology for the PS5, with Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei being the first games to support it.

Sony originally introduced PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) as a highlight feature when it launched the PS5 Pro. The technology uses AI to analyze frames on a pixel-by-pixel basis and reconstruct them at a higher resolution. This helps improve image detail and temporal stability while allowing games to render internally at a lower resolution. However, the computational requirements of PSSR meant that the feature was not available on the standard PS5.

According to Sony, QSSR uses a streamlined neural-network architecture and a hand-tuned implementation intended to maximize performance on the PS5. The company describes it as a new performance tier of AI upscaling rather than a direct replacement for PSSR, which remains the “gold standard” solution on the PS5 Pro.

Sony does not intend to limit the new upscaling tech to its own studios, as the QSSR library will be offered to all PlayStation developers. This will allow more PS5 games to adopt the technology in the future and give developers an option for balancing rendering resolution, performance, and image quality on the aging console hardware.

Jasmin Patry, Lead Rendering Engineer at Sucker Punch Productions, said, “QSSR excels at resolving the fine details in our characters and environments and does so with a level of temporal stability that hasn’t been possible on the PS5 console until now. We’ve long wished that all PS5 players could experience the incredible image quality that PSSR brings to PS5 Pro, and QSSR is a positive step towards that goal!”

With Sony continuing to improve its upscaling technology in collaboration with AMD under Project Amethyst, PS5 owners can expect sharper and more stable visuals in supported games without having to upgrade their hardware. That said, QSSR won't turn the standard PS5 into a PS5 Pro; rather, it can be best described as an important software-level upgrade for the console.

Insomniac Games' Marvel's Wolverine is the hot new PS5 game right now, but that's all it is — there's no PC version in the works, and given Sony's reported decision not to bring single-player games to PC, that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. However, that doesn't mean PC gamers are out in the cold after it was confirmed that an experimental PS5 emulator has been shown to be able to run the early portions Marvel's Wolverine, though only at single-digit frame rates.

While the KytyPS5 emulator was already able to start the game up, that was all it was able to do. That was great if you just wanted to be able to move around the game's menus, but it wasn't much use beyond a proof of concept. Now, things have progressed considerably, with VideoCardz pointing to an X social media post showing the emulator rendering the game's cinematics and gameplay.

The latest build of KytyPS5 can indeed play the game, but it does so at a single-digit frame rate. That's a long way short of making the action-packed title playable on anything other than a PS5 or PS5 Pro. But it's a start, and a much more promising one than was the case previously.

The frame rate situation probably says more about the emulator than the game itself. KytyPS5 is still very much in the early stages of its development, which means that issues are to be expected — especially for a title that has only been available for a few weeks. The emulator's developers are also focused on making it boot more games rather than making a handful work flawlessly, so it's unlikely it will be ready for prime time for a little while yet.

None of this is to detract from the work that has been done to get this point, though. The rapid progress that Marvel's Wolverine has seen is promising for the future of PS5 emulation on PC. KytyPS5 uses Vulkan 1.3 for its graphics output and uses an in-house system to decode the PS5's RDNA 2 GPU instructions. It's also available for both Windows and Linux right now, with an even more experimental version in the works for macOS.

This news also comes as another PS5 emulator has reached something of a milestone of its own. The developers behind SharpEmu, another experimental PS5 emulator, have been able to run a number of PS5 games at a playable 60 FPS. But even then, the success is modest —the developers only got six of 55 games to that point. A further six reached the point of gameplay, albeit at lower frame rates.