Well, they finally did it. Gaming chairs have been more or less the same idea for years: make them comfortable, make them adjustable, slap some suitably aggressive styling on them, and call it a day. Razer has been teasing something considerably more ambitious for years, culminating in Project Madison at CES 2026 in January. The concept was basically a chair that became part of the game itself, combining haptics, surround sound, and RGB lighting into one ridiculous-looking package.

Now that concept is something you can actually buy. The $999 Razer Soma Pro takes everything I liked about the recent Soma Chroma and crams six Sensa HD haptic motors, integrated THX Spatial Audio, Chroma RGB, and some genuinely useful hardware upgrades into it.

After using it for games, movies, music, and even my daily Google Meet calls, I'm kind of amazed Razer actually pulled this thing off. Even more surprising? I thought it would cost a lot more.

Razer had no input, nor did it see the contents of this review, prior to publication.

Razer Soma Pro: Pricing and setup

Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way: Yes, the Razer Soma Pro costs $999.

That is a lot of money for a gaming chair. But before my briefing, we were guessing internally that this thing would land somewhere around $1,400. When Razer revealed that it was squeezing under $1,000, my reaction was basically, “Oh, that’s actually not bad.”

Hear me out.

Razer’s Freyja haptic cushion (see our review) costs $299 by itself. The Soma Chroma is $499. Now add integrated THX Spatial Audio speakers, Chroma RGB, six haptic motors, 4D armrests, a powder-coated aluminum alloy wheelbase, and a few other upgrades. Understanding that, $999 starts to make a lot more sense.

Assembly was also shockingly painless. It took me about 25 minutes, with screws conveniently pre-installed halfway and everything packaged and presented extremely well. Razer even includes its little cloth installation gloves, which are unnecessary but always a nice touch.

You can watch the video above, which I didn't have access to during my review, so you're lucky you.

My sole complaint was connecting the haptics in the seat to the upper chair. The instructions basically show two wires connecting (drawing). Unfortunately, one cable is hidden inside the rear pouch, and the tiny four-pin connector needs to line up just right. That part took far more swearing than building the rest of the chair.

Still, a chair this complex and it's easy to set up? A win for Razer's engineers.

Razer Soma Pro: This is what Soma was building toward

Physically, the Soma Pro should look familiar if you read my Soma Chroma review. And that’s a good thing.

The fabric-covered chair uses the same dual-density, cold-cured foam concept it is extremely comfortable for long gaming and working sessions.

I still prefer the Razer Iskur V2’s excellent adjustable lumbar system, though. The Soma Pro uses a fixed built-in lumbar arch, likely because stuffing haptic hardware throughout the backrest complicates matters. It works, but I miss the Iskur’s flexibility.

Everything else feels like Soma turned up another level. You get 4D armrests instead of 2D, a nicer aluminum alloy base (vs. steel), a frog tilt mechanism (vs. butterfly), and my favorite small improvement: a magnetic head cushion.

It’s genius. There’s no ugly strap. You just stick it to the chair and slide it up or down. Done. Why has no one done this before?

The Soma Pro is hefty at 63.3 pounds, although I managed to take mine from the garage up the stairs in my split-level house without destroying a wall or pulling my back, so make what you will of that.

Razer Soma Pro: The haptics are the star

The easiest way to describe the Soma Pro is that Razer basically built Freyja into Soma.

Six Sensa HD haptic motors are spread across four zones, with four actuators behind your back and another two underneath your thighs. You can adjust each zone independently in Synapse or change everything together.

I mostly ignored the fine-tuning and set the overall intensity to five out of six.

Let me tell you: this thing is a real butt rumbler.

The difference with native Sensa HD games is that effects can be deliberately mapped to what's happening. During my testing, Marvel Rivals demonstrated how these directional effects can move around the chair rather than feeling like somebody simply bolted a giant rumble motor underneath you.

But Audio-to-Haptics might be my favorite feature because it dramatically expands what you can use the hardware with. The system analyzes regular audio and translates appropriate moments into physical feedback. Movies, trailers, music, and games without native Sensa support can all make the chair react.

I spent time playing Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, which certainly wasn't the carefully prepared demo environment Razer used to sell me on the technology. It didn't matter. Between the audio, haptics, and the rest of my Chroma gear flashing along around me, I was just sitting there thinking: This freaking rules.

Razer Soma Pro: Wait, the speakers are actually great

The biggest surprise might be the speakers.

The RGB “wings” from Soma Chroma make considerably more sense on the Pro because they now house the THX Spatial Audio system. Used by themselves, the speakers are almost like wearing really good open-ear headphones. Audio sits around you without isolating you from the room.

They’re good enough that I’ve even been using them for my daily Google Meet calls, which is a bit hilarious.

Things get seriously interesting when you already have desktop speakers. Synapse lets the Soma Pro work as the rear portion of a larger surround setup, with your existing speakers handling the front channels.

You can independently adjust front and rear volume, EQ, balance, and delay to synchronize everything. Pair the chair with something like Razer’s Nommo V2 Pro or Leviathan V2 Pro, and the combination of front sound, rear THX audio, and physical haptic feedback creates an absolutely fantastic gaming environment.

Synapse deserves a shoutout here, too. Considering how many things this chair does, the software is remarkably easy to understand. The controls are logically broken out across sound, surround, haptics, lighting, and power, and I rarely felt like I needed instructions to figure something out.

Razer Soma Pro: Power, RGB, and everything else

Like the Soma Chroma, the Pro can run from any generic external USB-C power bank (not included) or remain plugged in using its included braided extension cable. You'll need at least a 45W PD 2.0-capable power source.

For Soma Chroma, wireless power makes the chair feel magically cordless. With the Soma Pro, I'm more inclined to leave it plugged in. Speakers plus six haptic motors and RGB make uninterrupted power considerably more useful.

The Chroma side remains exactly as gloriously excessive as you'd expect. My Reclusa Mini 65%, Basilisk V4 Pro, Firefly V2 Pro, and Soma Pro can all react together, turning my desk into a magnificent symphony of light.

None of this is necessary in life, but damn if it ain't awesome.

Should you buy the Razer Soma Pro?

You should buy this if...

✅You want one of the most immersive PC gaming setups currently possible

✅You already own Razer Chroma or Razer audio hardware

✅You want haptics without adding a separate Freyja cushion

✅You want a genuinely comfortable premium gaming chair

You should not buy this if...

❌$999 for a gaming chair is beyond your budget

❌Adjustable lumbar support matters more to you than haptics

❌You have no interest in RGB, spatial audio, or tactile gaming

I wasn't expecting the Soma Pro to win me over this completely.

This is an incredible gaming chair in every sense. The haptics aren’t just a novelty you forget about after a few uses. The speakers deliver real, immersive sound. And beneath all the tech, it remains a genuinely comfortable chair.

Razer also deserves credit for making the Soma lineup modular around different budgets. If you only want RGB, there's the $499 Soma Chroma. The $569 Soma Sensa HD Haptics focuses on tactile feedback. The $999 Soma Pro throws basically everything Razer knows about gaming immersion into one chair.

After living with it, I wouldn't take any of the electronics out.

The Soma Pro is one of the coolest gaming gadgets I've tested in a long time. It's fun, extraordinarily well thought-out, comfortable, and unlike anything else sitting in my gaming setup.

And yes, apparently I now have very strong opinions about whether my gaming chair should shake my butt.

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Microsoft has publicly apologized for its major outage that has taken out a number of core online services, including Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, and more. In a post on X, the company has now explained what caused the outage, and says service is now being restored.

"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services."

Microsoft insists that the issue was not caused by AI, but rather a network upgrade that went wrong. "This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions."

The company has also explained why restoration of the service has taken so long. It has been almost 24 hours since the network first went down, and Microsoft says it was because the company has "restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration."

With the network down for almost a day, many businesses across the globe have been without critical infrastructure needed to conduct their business. Establishments like the National Health Service in the United Kingdom have been unable to access email and Teams all day, delaying health services for some.

Microsoft says it will conduct a review of the incident and publish a report in the coming days and weeks. "We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete."

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There was a time when we'd recommend the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x any day of the week for its snappy performance with Qualcomm's efficient Snapdragon X processor, 16+ hour battery life, and an impressive build quality that helped it punch well above its original $759.99 retail price.

Lately, however, the Slim 3x has been tough to find in stock in first-party retailer listings, and ongoing component shortages have pushed prices anywhere from at least $849.99 to $1,249.99.

Thankfully, Lenovo has brought this Copilot+ PC back down to earth with an early Black Friday deal. Using the eCoupon code FLASHSALE7 at checkout drops the IdeaPad Slim 3x price to $664.99 at Lenovo when paired with 'cart threshold savings'. That's a massive 45% ($535) off!

Why buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x?

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x pairs a Snapdragon X processor with 16GB of RAM and Qualcomm's capable integrated Adreno graphics, delivering plenty of performance for everyday multitasking, productivity work in office apps, and heavy browser tab sessions.

For its display, you get a 15.3-inch WUXGA (1920 x 1200) IPS touchscreen with a 16:10 aspect ratio that gives you some extra vertical space for reading and editing than a traditional 16:9 desktop monitor would, while an anti-glare coating cuts down on reflections in brighter rooms.

Otherwise, a 512GB SSD offers enough space for typical use, with ports for expandable storage if you need it. Plus, it offers roughly 16.5 hours of battery life on a single charge and an NPU rated for 45 TOPS to handle local AI tasks, qualifying it as a Copilot+ PC. It's a respectable spec sheet for the price, and definitely worth considering.

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On November 12, 2026, Microsoft was hit with a severe worldwide outage preventing people from accessing all its services, including Outlook, Teams, Copilot, OneDrive, and Azure.

This morning, Xbox has become the latest victim of this outage. Despite Xbox's status reading green across the board on Microsoft's website, people on social media and Downdetector are reporting issues with the console's services, including being unable to sign in, digital games not launching, cloud saves not working, and, in general, not being able to access Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Now, granted, my colleagues and I at Windows Central have been able to connect to Xbox services just fine. So, at the moment, this outage isn't as severe as the rest of the issues going on at Microsoft, nor is it as dire as the September 2026 outage and the July 2026 outage.

Microsoft is currently working to get all of its services back up and running, so stay tuned for more information regarding Xbox's latest major outage.

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XBOX has been on an update roll, at least since Asha Sharma took over as CEO and decided to deliver long-awaited features. And, looking at XBOX Wire, it isn’t stopping. Rolling out to XBOX Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring, fans can expect a nice and welcome update from today.

First up, fans who are big into game ownership are getting more control over how disc-to-digital licensed games appear in their library. Perhaps more exciting, however, is the ability to now switch which side of the screen the XBOX guide appears on. Yes, it’s a small but welcome change, and I’m sure many will appreciate it.

Last but not least, fans who make use of dynamic backgrounds can now dynamically rotate between them. We don't yet know how many dynamic backgrounds you can rotate between (or if there is any limit at all), but this is probably what I’m most excited to try as someone who likes to change things up from time to time.

These Insider changes are expected to roll out gradually, but they’re all welcome, and I’m surprised they weren’t already available. Still, it's great to see them added here nonetheless. Honestly, the pace and speed at which these changes are happening for XBOX is great to see. We are on the cusp of XBOX’s 25th anniversary on November 15, 2026, for those who didn't know, and fans have been eagerly waiting for what XBOX will reveal ahead of that date.

With all that said, I’m impressed. I know it’s going to take a while for XBOX to get back on its feet and appeal again to the masses, but over the past few months, steady progress has been made; not long ago, it was even reported that the online perception of XBOX had improved. Most of us are stuck looking at our gaming history via the new XBOX Playback feature.. that's a lot of hours.

Let me know your thoughts on this latest update to XBOX in the comments, and do be sure to take part in our poll!

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We don't normally cover mobile games over here, but when Master Chief and Cacodemon are showing up in Candy Crush Saga, I guess I'm willing to make an exception. Yep, as Xbox goes all out with the announcements for its 25th Anniversary, this latest crossover is bringing eight of our favourite console and PC franchises to the hands of millions of mobile players for a festive "Game On Season."

Starting today and running through to till December 6, Candy Crush Saga is getting totally hijacked by Xbox. The four-week event weaves in characters and worlds from Halo, Fallout, Sea of Thieves, Forza, DOOM, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro in the game.

Unlock cool virtual pins and experience a new soundtrack

Central to the event is a massive in-game pin collection. As you crush (get it) your way through the arcade-themed Leagues event, you can unlock virtual pins of Master Chief's helmet and Dr Neo Cortex, to name a few.

If you're really lucky, you can get your hands on physical versions, as King has turned some of the digital pins into real-life limited-edition collectables. You do need to be a resident of the US to enter, but the sweepstake over at CandyCrush.com is giving out a 1000 physical sets of these pins.

Something else really neat about this crossover is the music designed to "candify" six classic Xbox themes, enlisting the German Film Orchestra Babelsburg, a Bulgarian Choir, and, I kid you not, an accordion player.

To celebrate the announcement, King has released a behind-the-scenes video of the recording process. The music of Halo, Fallout, Sea of Thieves, Forza, DOOM and Banjo-Kazooie has been integrated into Candy Crush Saga in such an unusual way that it's worth a listen alone, even if you don't pick up the game. Luckily, you can check out the tracks in full over on Spotify. The DOOM track in particular, as expected, absolutely slaps.

For Halo, they kept the instantly recognizable choir but wove it into the Candy Crush universe as a "polar rhythmic element." Paula Ingvar, General Manager of Candy Crush, summed it up perfectly: “Hearing the Halo theme played by an orchestra, a choir and an accordion in Candy Crush still makes our team smile."

More announcements from the Xbox 25th Anniversary

It's been a steady stream of announcements all day as Xbox celebrate turning 25. We've had Xbox Playback to check out your own journey with Xbox over the years, a new Firefight mode update coming to Halo: Campaign Evolved, and a bunch more OG console games added to PC. And I'm sure there's more to come from Xbox!

The Game On Season crossover is live right now across iOS, Android, Amazon, and the Windows App store, and runs until December 6.

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People were hoping for a new batch of Xbox backward-compatible games after months of teasing.. and here's what Microsoft has to offer.

Xbox's backward compatibility program is one of the top innovations Microsoft has put out for its ecosystem. Hundreds of OG and Xbox 360 games were brought forward natively to modern consoles, helping game preservation and making Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S the only place you can play many classics. Microsoft has been expanding that program even further.

Last summer, Microsoft unveiled a handful of OG Xbox games ported and emulated to Windows 11 via the Xbox PC app, leading to hopes Microsoft was about to reinvigorate the program in general. Today, we're getting a few more, as well as full Xbox achievement support for select classic titles.

"XBOX is expanding its backward compatibility offering on PC with 21 additional original XBOX games, bringing the total to 25," Microsoft wrote on Xbox Wire. "The expanded lineup includes classics such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. XBOX is also adding achievements to more original XBOX titles, including Knights of the Old Republic, giving players new ways to revisit and celebrate classic games."

Xbox makes the exact game listing crystal clear, saying, "The 21 additional games available to players in supported countries starting today are:"

• Armed and Dangerous
• Disney's Chicken Little
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (also available with XBOX Game Pass)
• Grabbed by the Ghoulies (also available with XBOX Game Pass)
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb
• Red Faction II
• Secret Weapons Over Normandy
• Star Wars Battlefront
• Star Wars Battlefront II
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Star Wars Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast
• Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords
• Star Wars: Republic Commando
• Star Wars: Starfighter – Special Edition
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• Thrillville
• TimeSplitters 2
• TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

It continues, "These join the four games already available on PC: "

• BLiNX: The Time Sweeper (also available with XBOX Game Pass)
• Conker: Live and Reloaded (also available with XBOX Game Pass)
• Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge (also available with XBOX Game Pass)
• Fuzion Frenzy (also available with XBOX Game Pass)

Many have been hoping games like Singularity and Skylanders would hit full back-compat, given that Microsoft now owns these properties via Activision. The Xbox Game Preservation website has tens of thousands of votes for games; alas, that's sadly not what we're getting this week. Still, being able to access some OG games and land their Xbox Mythic achievements is something I personally never saw happening, given that these games are no longer anywhere near in active development.

It's a little bittersweet given that EA just killed BioWare. Knights of the Old Republic is one of the best RPGs ever made, with twists that few games have managed to top to this day. I'm hopeful that Microsoft will address some outstanding Xbox 360 games for backward compatibility too, particularly Skylanders, which, given the Spyro remake, has an opportunity to find a new audience in 2026, in my view.

Xbox's 25th anniversary will continue through the week, with a variety of small announcements, including the nostalgia-driven Playback feature. I'm not expecting anything huge like an Xbox Helix reveal, but could we finally see the Xbox Elite Controller Series 3? Time will tell.

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Microsoft's biggest services are all facing major outages right now. Outlook, Teams, Copilot, OneDrive, and Azure all appear to be affected. The issues have lasted at least 18 hours, though there are now some signs of improvement.

According to DownDetector, tens of thousands of users are affected by the outage for each Microsoft service. Around 1:15 PM ET, there were nearly 130,000 reports. There are now fewer than 10,000 reports of issues with Microsoft services.

The full impact is likely much broader than indicated by DownDetector. The outages became front-page news and affected productivity across a broad range of industries.

Initially, services from Google, Steam, Cloudflare, and AWS appeared to have outages coinciding with Microsoft's issues. Spokespersons from AWS and Cloudflare reached out to me to clarify that their respective services were not down.

When this many services experience outages simultaneously, there is likely a common underlying cause, but we're still awaiting confirmation of what's behind the issues.

Chatter on social media suggests that the cause of the outages is complex and resistant to repair, though it will likely be weeks before we get a detailed report of what happened.

The Microsoft 365 Status account on X is providing updated information on the outages.

This is already one of the worst outages in recent memory. One of my colleagues received an email this morning calling the Microsoft outages "the biggest IT event in history." That's a bold claim, but the issues rank among the worst I've ever seen.

Charles Lamanna, EVP of Copilot, Agents, and Platform at Microsoft, confirmed that there is "no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity."

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Halo: Campaign Evolved came and went, didn’t it? It’s a fairly solid remake, but plenty of fans, myself included, felt it was missing that special something. And that special something was multiplayer.

I was okay with the decision to skip a full multiplayer component, given that I wanted the campaign to be the absolute best it could be. However, adding a mode like Firefight would have definitely gone a long way toward boosting replayability.

In fact, I covered news recently suggesting that Halo: Campaign Evolved might get one final update, despite the franchise being handed off to Activision. In that piece, I detailed reports that the game would receive both Firefight and Theater mode. While I can’t speak to the status of Theater mode, Xbox announced that Firefight is definitely heading to Halo: Campaign Evolved.

When can we play Firefight?

Fans attending Xbox FanFest in Seattle today (November 12, 2026) will be the first to play, with additional details set to be revealed next month at Halo Fest, taking place between December 12 and December 13, 2026. It's all part of an ongoing celebration of Xbox's 25th anniversary, which includes Halo as its launch title.

Not much is known yet, but we have been told that Firefight will arrive as a free update this winter. It will feature new maps, new weapons, and four-player co-op. For those unfamiliar, Firefight is a wave-based PvE mode that pits you against escalating waves of enemies, usually with modifiers coming into play.

I think this is pretty great. I was absolutely gutted that we didn’t get any real form of replayability for Campaign Evolved at launch, so it’s nice to see what remains of Halo Studios pull together and get something for fans to enjoy out the door.

I will definitely be jumping in to try Firefight when it releases. Part of me is hoping we’ll see a new batch of achievements, too, but I think that’s just wishful thinking on my part since I’ve already 100%’d the game. Until then, we can look back on our gaming history with Microsoft's Spotify Wrapped-style nostalgia feature: Xbox Playback.

Let me know your thoughts on this winter update for Halo: Campaign Evolved in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll below:

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The engine that powers Copilot Chat in Visual Studio just got an upgrade. Microsoft says the new experience can complete more coding tasks despite using the same AI models as before. The updated Copilot experience now uses the same technology that powers GitHub Copilot CLI, the GitHub Copilot app, and VS Code.

Microsoft tested the new and old Copilot experiences by having each perform 157 coding tasks. The new engine resolved up to 21 more tasks, completing 124 tasks compared to 103 for the older experience.

Tests were performed on C# projects across .NET Framework and .NET Core, Azure and Aspire, and WinForms and desktop apps. Microsoft also tested the new engine on C++, Python, and other languages.

Generally, developers don't judge AI by whether it can answer a question. They judge it by whether it actually saves time. If Copilot can fix a bug, review code, find an issue, or complete a task in fewer attempts, it provides real value to developers. Microsoft says that's exactly what's happening.

Developers often spend as much time verifying AI-generated code as they do writing it. If Copilot can complete more tasks correctly on the first attempt, it can save quite a bit of time.

If you've ever used ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or another AI tool, you've likely run into the same problem. AI tools have a habit of sending users down the wrong path. The difference between a useful AI response and an almost useful AI response is often several minutes spent rewriting prompts, correcting mistakes, or double-checking information.

The new Copilot Chat has several new capabilities, such as allowing you to type a new instruction while it is in the middle of a task. Copilot will also show the results of actions it takes rather than simply listing attempted steps.

If a task is handled by a subagent, Copilot will show a dedicated card that lists every step taken as it occurs.

Microsoft argues the updated Copilot experience makes developers more productive by providing shorter, more focused responses and completing more tasks successfully. The company also says the new experience handles larger and more complex jobs more effectively, which could mean less time spent cleaning up AI output before a project is ready.

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It's Xbox's 25th anniversary this month, and Microsoft is announcing a variety of new "stuff" over the course of the week.

First up, we have a shiny new feature I know some of you have been passionate about, dubbed Xbox Playback.

Last year, it felt like almost every brand on Earth did some form of "Spotify Wrapped," which showcased what music and podcasting habits you had throughout the year. Even my banking app had a "Wrapped" last year, but Xbox was conspicuously absent from the festivities. I wrote back then that it was because they were working on something bigger, something that would be future-proofed, and it seems we now know what it is.

Announced today on Xbox Wire, Xbox Playback is a "personalized experience" that mimics previous anniversary data collections Xbox has done, although, from what I've heard, it will be available annually too moving forward.

To see your Xbox Playback, head over here and sign in with your account, or head to your Playback Archive to explore more of your history.

"XBOX is introducing XBOX Playback, a new personalized experience that lets players revisit their gaming history across 25 years of XBOX," Microsoft said. "Players can discover their first XBOX game, most-played titles, total playtime, achievements, longest gaming streaks and other milestones. Playback will be accessible on console and the web, with personalized videos and shareable cards, rolling out gradually throughout the day in 15 countries." (..)

"Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Spain, UK and US. Requires at least 1 XBOX Gamerscore, 1 achievement, and 1 minute of qualifying gameplay linked to your Xbox profile; access on console requires at least 1 minute of qualifying gameplay on console. Based on available data; some data may be incomplete or delayed."

It's a bit of a shame it's only available in 15 countries and not the total scope of Xbox's user base.. I'm pretty sure things like Spotify Wrapped are available to all customers. To speculate, Microsoft is pretty meticulous when it comes to regional data laws owing to its enterprise cloud division, and national rules it has to observe therein. I'll try and find out exactly why it's so limited in scope.

In any case, you can expect more Xbox 25th anniversary celebratory announcements throughout the day. I'm not expecting anything on the scale of an Xbox Helix reveal or Elder Scrolls 6 gameplay trailer, but could we finally see the Xbox Elite Controller Series 3? Here's hoping.

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The Xbox Series S has found itself in the crosshairs once again this week after former Tekken director told a panel at the Console Game Developers Conference in South Korea, that he wished hardware like the Series S had never been released. Going as far as to call it "extra work for a slightly weaker child."

Reported and translated by Inven Global, apparently Katsuhiro Harada complained about the console's lower memory, and joked that he hoped Microsoft isn't planning a "Helix S" for next gen. The comments have now fired up the Xbox Series S's most passionate detractors, who are using these quotes as definitive proof that the Series S is holding the entire industry back and, frankly, I'm tired, boss.

The argument is inherently anti-consumer, elitist and completely ignores the benefits of game optimization for everyone and every console, not just Xbox Series S. More importantly, it ignores the current state of the market and what consumers can actually afford right now and for the foreseeable future.

Optimization is a feature, not a bug

On the same panel, CD Projekt Red associate game director Paweł Sasko had a counterpoint to Harada's comments. Laughing them off and said that the Series S is valuable precisely because developing within its constraints makes studios optimise their code more cleanly, work that ends up making the game significantly better on all platforms.

It's not the first time we've heard this sentiment. Of course, Larian wrestled with the Xbox Series S over Baldur's Gate 3 so much it ultimately delayed the launch of the game on the Xbox ecosystem, but the memory optimizations they engineered to make split-screen work on the S directly resulted in massive RAM and VRAM improvements across the PS5 and PC versions of the game.

Meanwhile, I can't help but notice the glaring double standard again here when lower-spec hardware comes up in industry discourse. Hardware like the Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch 2 don't receive the same vitriol. Nobody claims Valve's hardware is "ruining PC gaming" when developers have to tweak settings to get a Verified badge. As Harada himself admitted on the panel, developers gladly shift their mindset for the Nintendo Switch 2 because it's viewed as its own distinct platform. Yet Xbox offering an entry-level piece of hardware for current gen, using similar architecture is treated as some kind of unforgivable burden on the industry.

It's important to note though that Harada has since clarified that his comments were simply made to "liven up the room." That hasn't stopped the onslaught of told-you-so-themed posts around the Series S, however.

Consumers are going to be priced out of the next-gen arms race

The loudest critics of the Xbox Series S, demanding developers should abandon lower-spec hardware, are frankly out of touch with the economic reality facing the gaming industry right now and the near future.

We are right now witnessing a brutal hardware price crisis, driven by bloated compontent and RAM costs. God only knows what eye watering prices we can expect for early adopters of the Xbox Helix and PlayStation 6, but all signs right now point to price tags that will keep early adoption out of reach for the average consumer, normal families. Us peasants aren't going to be in a position to drop $1000 on brand new hardware. I want what I already have to work for me for as long as possible before I have to choose financial ruin or giving up gaming all together.

A dramatic and hyperbolic statement perhaps, but this is close to the reality for many gamers my age with a family, the days of me buying a new console day one are long gone. My Xbox Series S is going to be a family heirloom.

In this environment, we should be pushing studios and developers harder than ever to optimize games for the systems we actually own right now. Even Harada had to acknowledge this on stage. There are more Series S users than Series X in the United States currently, developers can't simply ignore this player base because optimizing memory budgets is an inconvenience.

FSR 4.1 is also changing the narrative

Thankfully, newer industry advancements are making the whole "Xbox Series S is holding gaming back" argument feel more lame as the years go by.

Earlier this month, Microsoft and AMD officially rolled out FSR 4.1 to Xbox Series X|S developers. I won't pretend to understand the intricacies, so if you want the full breakdown of how it works, our team has covered the technical side in detail, but the short version is that it uses clever AI upscaling to make games look sharper and run smoother without needing beefier hardware. We've already seen it work wonders on handhelds like the Xbox Ally X, effectively acting like a free mid-gen upgrade.

For something lower powered like the trusty Series S this is a lifeline. Instead of expecting normal people to shell out hundreds of pounds or dollars for a brand-new box every few years, tools like FSR 4.1 let developers get far better results out of the hardware sitting under our TVs right now.

Xbox Series S is our cheapest ticket to Grand Theft Auto 6

While I've touched on the current economic mess of modern-day hardware, the Xbox Series S isn't immune to this. It originally launched at an incredibly accessible price of $299, but Microsoft's 'budget" console has been hit with it's own steep price hikes, placing a 512GB model at $499 nowadays.

It's no longer as accessible, but the reality is that even at $499 the Xbox Series S is the cheapest possible way to play GTA 6 at launch. GTA 6 is the biggest entertainment release of the decade, hands down, and having a lower barrier to entry for such a release isn't a flaw in Xbox's strategy. Though I will say, I am praying for some kind of discounts on the console heading in to Black Friday to bring it back down closer to those golden day prices.

Even better, dataminers snooping through the Xbox GTA 6 preload files have spotted libraries matching Microsoft's FSR 4.1 GDK sample. While Rockstar hasn't confirmed whether FSR 4.1 will be active at launch or patched in post-release, the groundwork is clearly there, and any rendering boost will go an especially long way on the Series S.

Hardware prices continue to spiral and move next-gen upgrades further from reach for the average consumer, and as this continues, the narrative around the Series S is going to age terribly (and in my opinion, it already has.)

Sooner or later, the industry will give this consumer-friendly little white box its flowers for forcing developers to optimize better, and I will be first in line.

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It's official: NVIDIA's co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned as CEO this morning in the wake of personal scandals involving adultery and alleged espionage. Huang was NVIDIA's only CEO in the company's history, which began in 1993.

NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress is taking over the company as interim CEO while the board searches for a full-time replacement.

Yes, it's an interim position, but seeing a finance executive come in at a time when NVIDIA is already edging out its GeForce consumers is a tad worrisome.

The gaming share of NVIDIA's revenue has been on the decline for years, and data centers now make up the bulk. For example, NVIDIA's latest Q2 results showed $89 billion from data centers and just $7.2 billion from edge computing. That's not even close.

Will an interim CEO change anything? Probably not. Kress, after all, has been with NVIDIA since 2013, before any of the major AI rush came about. But what comes next after Huang and his interim replacement? Someone else who cares less about GeForce and more about AI?

It's hard to say. Plenty of people are already wondering the same thing: "Jensen was one of three of Nvidia's founders. Him leaving is kind of catastrophic for the leadership structure, since he never had an heir apparent for the position (allegedly intentional on his part)."

While we're all waiting to see what NVIDIA does next — New CEO? Canceled CES 2027 keynote? — I want to know how my Windows Central readers are feeling about the situation.

Do you think NVIDIA's consumer focus will narrow even more without Huang at the helm? What about the opposite? Do you think there's a lot more to this story that we're not yet hearing?

Let me know in the comments section below!

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If you have an Outlook, Hotmail, Live, or MSN email address, don't assume every missing email ended up in your spam folder. A recent issue caused some messages sent to those types of email addresses to be rejected and bounced back to senders instead of reaching recipients.

It might seem like a nice break to not get emails for a few days, missing important messages can cause issues. The underlying cause was a mistake related to spam enforcement rules. Microsoft has rolled back the update that included the problem, so normal functionality should be restored.

"Some users may intermittently be unable to send email messages to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, or Live.com email addresses," explained Microsoft in an incident report highlighted by the website lazyadmin.

While the issue was related to spam enforcement rules, affected messages did not simply end up in recipients' spam folders. Microsoft's mail servers rejected the emails and bounced them back to senders instead.

That's an important distinction because recipients have no way to find emails that were never delivered. If you were expecting an important message over the last few days and it never arrived, it may be worth following up with the sender rather than digging through your spam folder.

The issue may also have gone unnoticed in some cases. If someone claims they emailed you recently but nothing ever arrived in your inbox, there's a chance the message was affected by the bug and returned to the sender before reaching your account.

Senders may be able to determine if they were affected by checking for non-delivery reports, sometimes called bounce messages. Errors mentioning Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, MSN.com, or codes such as "550 5.7.1" and "AS9031519" could indicate that a message was rejected during the incident.

A successful resend also does not necessarily mean there was never a problem. Reports from affected users suggested the issue was intermittent, with some messages bouncing initially before being delivered successfully when sent again later.

I occasionally need to check my spam filter to find messages that were mistakenly flagged as spam. This happens more when work emails are involved, but Outlook can be overly aggressive with personal emails as well.

But this bug was different. Instead of being delivered to a spam folder, some messages never reached recipients at all.

The issue was primarily related to mail destined for consumer Microsoft email accounts, including Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, and MSN addresses. Microsoft 365 business mailboxes were not the focus of the reported delivery failures.

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If one thing has become clear to me over the years, it's that most PC gamers are not using the latest hardware. Steam's most recent monthly hardware survey, for example, has NVIDIA's RTX 3060 as the most popular option, with the RTX 3050 only four places behind.

Heck, even 2019's GTX 1650 is still holding strong in the top ten most used cards, despite it not supporting the industry-leading DLSS upscaling. For those who (understandably) haven't upgraded to the latest hardware, there's a new hope on the horizon.

Apex Compute recently took to X to show off its Apex Neural Rendering (ANR) tech, which the company promises can deliver "up to 2.4x faster performance and higher quality rendering than NVIDIA DLSS."

That's a massive claim, and I'll get to it in a moment.

What's most exciting is that Apex has designed ANR to be practically GPU-agnostic. Apex says ANR runs on the NVIDIA RTX 20, 30, 40, and 50 series, with the added bonus of GTX 16-series cards.

Support for AMD Radeon cards includes RX 5000, 6000, 7000, and 9000, plus it works on the Steam Deck's custom AMD chip. And even Intel hasn't been left behind, with support for Arc A- and B-series cards.

Digging into Apex Compute's Apex Neural Rendering tech

ANR is being billed as a three-pronged approach to upscaling, including frame generation, super resolution, and ray reconstruction. It's a project that's still in progress, and only frame generation is currently available. The other two features are "coming soon."

What we have so far from Apex indeed looks very promising. It claims that, when tested on an RTX 5090 at a 4K resolution, ANR can deliver frames faster and use less memory than DLSS.

According to Apex's testing, at 2X frame gen, ANR can pump out extra frames at 1.01ms, while DLSS takes 1.26ms. At 4X frame gen, ANR takes 0.61ms while DLSS takes 0.82ms. Overall memory usage falls from 562MB in DLSS to 214MB in ANR.

Why I'm a bit skeptical about ANR's abilities

I'm not entirely sure if Apex's claims of 2.4x faster performance compared to DLSS actually line up.

I haven't tested it yet on my own gaming PC, and Apex Compute's own data on its site doesn't quite line up. Perhaps the 2.4x claim is for one of the features arriving later.

There's also the matter of the NVIDIA tests being performed on an RTX 5090, a GPU that you can't buy anymore and that is reserved for a small group of enthusiasts and specialists. It would be a lot more impressive to see how ANR runs on, say, an RTX 3060.

What I can say is that the comparison samples for ANR vs. DLSS available on Apex Compute's site are impressive.

Sure, there might be some cherry-picking going on to create the sliding comparisons, but what's shown certainly suggests that ANR is delivering higher-quality results than DLSS. I see less ghosting, added sharpness, and overall more clarity.

Competition from Apex Compute's ANR is only a good thing

Apex Compute's ANR is available to download for free from GitHub. That means we'll probably soon see a lot of third-party tests of its actual abilities.

I'll be keeping an eye on how ANR performs on older hardware, how well it works with a wider range of games, and whether the upcoming ray reconstruction and super resolution features actually work as intended.

In any case, competition for the industry-leading DLSS is always nice to have, especially considering how NVIDIA likes to keep it walled off for its own hardware. The fact that it's coming to old GPUs at a time when no one wants to buy new hardware is also huge.

ANR looks very promising. Is it a DLSS killer? Maybe not, especially with how quickly NVIDIA is evolving the tech. But if you're still using an older GPU that doesn't natively get these features, ANR is definitely worth a look.

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Xbox's 25th anniversary is nearly here, and the famed gaming peripheral manufacturer Hyperkin is celebrating the occasion by revealing a new "Blue Rock" variant of its Xbox DuchesS Controller.

It's currently available for pre-order at Hyperkinstore.com and Amazon for $49.99 and is expected to release on December 2, 2026.

What's different about this variant of the Xbox DuchesS controller?

This "Blue Rock" variant, spec-wise, is the same as the regular Xbox DuchesS controller. It modernizes the original Xbox Controller S design for current consoles, with Hall Effect sticks and triggers for improved control responsiveness and Dynamic Impulse Triggers for enhanced tactile feedback while shooting in FPS games.

The only difference it has over its traditional Black shell or translucent green shell counterparts is its deep blue translucent design, and I personally adore it as someone whose favorite color happens to be blue (which I know is heretical to say as an Xbox player since blue is more associated with PlayStation).

So I can't wait to buy this bad boy for Christmas when the "Blue Rock" variant of the Xbox DuchesS Controller launches on December 2, 2026.

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