Hasta La Gadget!

Following a two-month delay, Valve’s Steam Deck will launch on February 25th. In a blog post the company published on Monday, Valve said it would open orders to the first batch of reservation holders that day. Those customers will have 72 hours to purchase the handheld. If they don’t use the opportunity, Valve will release their spot to the next person in the reservation queue. The first orders will then ship on February 28th. Moving forward, Valve says it plans open orders to more customers on a weekly basis.    

Valve had planned to release the Steam Deck at the end of 2021, but due to parts shortages, the company pushed that date back. “We’re sorry about this — we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues,” Valve said at the time. “Components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates.”

Pricing for the Steam Deck starts at $399. That gets you a device with 64GB of eMMC internal storage and a carrying case. Valve will also offer models with 256GB and 512GB of NVMe storage. Those cost $529 and $649, respectively. The most expensive version also comes with a premium anti-glare screen. The Steam Deck’s custom chipset features a 2.4GHz processor and a GPU with eight RDNA 2 computer units. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. All of that creates a handheld PC Valve claims can run the latest games at a “very efficient” power envelope. Look to Engadget for a review of the Steam Deck come February 25th.  

Spyware developed by Israeli surveillance for hire company NSO Group was reportedly used to spy on yet another member of civil society, this time targeting a senior member at rights group Human Rights Watch. That revelation comes despite NSO’s own rules against spying on activists or journalists and comes less than 24…

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Everyone knows a battle in Mortal Kombat can’t end in round one. There needs to be at least a round two and now, thanks to New Line Cinema and writer Jeremy Slater, there probably will be.

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<img width="1200" height="800" src="https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1launch-1200×800.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image" alt="Rocket launch" loading="lazy" style="margin: auto;margin-bottom: 5px;max-width: 100%" data-attachment-id="709001" data-permalink="https://www.slashgear.com/spacex-vs-blue-origin-who-is-winning-and-why-26709000/1launch/" data-orig-file="https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1launch.jpg" data-orig-size="1440,960" data-comments-opened="0" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="1launch" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="

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” data-medium-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1launch-1080×720.jpg” data-large-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1launch-1200×800.jpg” />Space exploration was once purely the domain of government agencies. First, the United States and the Soviet Union — later Russia — raced to put a human being on the moon (via History). Later, other countries entered the mix. As World Population Review outlines, more than one dozen countries have space programs today, many of which are capable of launch and … Continue reading

It’s been almost 15 years since the original Crysis brought even the most powerful PCs to their knees, and close to a decade since the last brand new installment in the franchise. And while there’s no planned release date just yet, today Crytek confirmed that Crysis 4 is currently in development.

In a new blog post, Crytek CEO Avni Yerli says that while Crysis 4 is still “in the early stages of development,” the studio wanted to alert fans early about the next title in the franchise as the team works to create a “truly next-gen shooter.” Unfortunately, there’s no info yet regarding a development roadmap or even a projected release year, though Yerli says the studio will release more details“when we can.”

Alongside the blog, Crytek also dropped a short teaser trailer featuring some apocalyptic imagery and a tagline that says “Join the journey. Become the hero.” However, as it’s too early for the trailer to show much in the way of gameplay or story, it’s difficult to say if Crysis 4 will pick up after the events of the original Crysis trilogy, or if the new game will go in a different direction.

But perhaps the bigger question about Crysis 4 is if Crytek will put the same focus on delivering super high-quality graphics. Despite a successful trio of previous games, the Crysis series is often best remembered as being more of a torture test for high-end PCs than for any of its gameplay or story beats. For a number of years after its release, the original Crysis was routinely used as a benchmark to test the performance of new CPUs and GPUs, with Crytek even releasing a remastered version of Crysis last year featuring support for ray tracing, HDR, and 8K resolutions.

So while it might tempting to start dreaming up a system that might be able to play Crysis 4 at max settings, with the global chip shortage expected to persist throughout 2022 and no firm release date in sight, it’s probably best to hold off for now.