The Steam Machine is the most principled console you probably shouldn't buy
Valve's six-inch cube costs $1,049 because Valve refuses to sell hardware below cost. Here is whether that principle, and the engineering behind it, justifies the money.
Tag
pc gaming
7 articles
Unreal Engine 5 Stutter Isn't One Problem, It's At Least Three
Shader compilation, traversal streaming and expensive rendering features all cause stutter in Unreal Engine 5 games, but they have different causes, fixes and levels of developer blame.
Average FPS Is the Least Useful Number in Any Benchmark Chart
A practical guide to reading frame-time graphs, percentiles and latency so a benchmark chart tells you something true instead of something flattering.
The case against preordering, from someone who used to do it constantly
Paid early access moved buyers ahead of reviews and publishers noticed. Here is how the modern release cycle got built, and why waiting two weeks costs you nothing.
What Indie Breakouts Actually Cost, and Why the Numbers Don't Add Up
PEAK broke even in hours on a budget under $200,000. But indie sales numbers are a mess of copies, players and estimates dressed up as fact, and that's the story.
The bugs don't sink a broken launch. The apology does.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 shipped broken and became Game of the Year. Borderlands 4 shipped broken and lost its opening week. The difference was never the bug list.
The Steam User Review Replaced the Professional Review, and It's a Mess
Paid early access, launch-day embargoes, and missing review code have pushed professional criticism out of the purchase decision, leaving Steam's flawed user review system to do the job instead.