At CES 2026, AMD gave us a hands-on look at its new mini PC, the Ryzen AI Halo. As its name implies, the AMD Ryzen AI Halo is built around AMD's current top-of-the-line APU, the Strix Halo-based Ryzen AI Max+ 395. The Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which we've previously reviewed in the ASUS ROG Flow z13 and the HP Z2 Mini G1a, features 16 AMD Zen 5 CPU
Recently on X/Twitter, user @Clawsomegamer spotted a preliminary listing for the Steam Machine on a Czech retailer's website. On the surface, no pricing information is displayed, but the web page's code does reveal pricing of 19,826 CZK ($950 USD) for the 512GB Steam Machine and 23,305 CZK ($1070 USD) for the 1TB version. Mind you, this priceA new era appears to be kicking off in immersive hardware as long-time VR developers reel from a Christmas season without new consumer hardware drawing in audiences.
UploadVR spoke with a number of developers finding themselves in varying degrees of distress over the overall direction of investment in VR and the overwhelming cost of reaching people in headsets about their wares.
Several spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of their business relationships with platform companies being affected by their comments. If you have comments you'd like to share with UploadVR, you can email ian@uploadvr.com or message 1-949-610-3857. I will assume comments are fine to associate with your name unless you include the words "on background" in your message to request I take steps to anonymize your statements.
“We are definitely seeing a shift in the market and a need to diversify in terms of platforms,” wrote Tommy Palm, the head of Resolution Games. “We’ve been preparing for this for some time as we’ve aimed to make our games available to players across as many platforms as possible for the last few years. While it’s no easy task to launch a game like Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked across Quest, PlayStation and Steam - with the goal of more platforms to come - the game did exceed our sales goals over the holidays, and being cross platform helped with that.”
Creature led by Doug North-Cook released several projects in 2025 with partners of the label launching new games and downloadable content at a regular pace. Maestro continues dropping hugely appealing DLC content and our reviewer found Deadly Delivery from Creature-associated Flat Head Studio to be "hilarious horror best played with friends".
"The state of the industry leaves no room for error," North-Cook wrote. "With no new headset this holiday sales were up over the holidays but not where they would be in a new device era. I fully expect most studios will have a difficult time finding a positive path forward this year as industry trends, lack of investment, and declining per-developer revenue hit everyone hard."
"Creature isn’t slowing down at all though. We have several large titles in development across multiple partner studios - some of our most ambitious yet. We also had a positive holiday with our catalog overall doing pretty well and Deadly Delivery ranking as one of the top selling titles leading into the holidays."
Cloudhead Games laid off 40 people after teasing for years work on a major title following their standout release Pistol Whip. The studio confirmed in the comments on our initial article about the layoffs that both versions of the game – one for Intel machines and one for ARM systems – will be packaged for sale on the forthcoming Steam Frame. At 16 people now, founder Denny Unger's first week of 2026 involved resetting Cloudhead's strategy and "reverse recruiting" for dozens of now-former colleagues looking for new remote positions.
Some VR game developers have been buoyed by revenue from the subscription programs offered by Sony and Meta that their games are downloadable through. Some developers, however, see these subscriptions becoming a larger percentage of a smaller income pie overall. With no new VR hardware from Meta in 2025 and confirmation that their third-party Horizon OS headset program has been shelved, developers growing overly dependent on subscription revenue likely face difficult decisions about how to maintain independence or continue VR development.
Do VR developers build games for controller-free hand tracking or for a new set of controllers from Valve that differ from Meta Quest in the number of buttons they have?
Do they build volumes that float in space alongside other volumes and windows, or do they construct fully immersive virtual worlds?
Can VR developers expect the targeting of eye tracking in all future headsets to help them build more responsive software?
In early 2025, we met virtually with Ryan Payton of Meta-owned studio Camouflaj to cover their work on the Batman: Arkham Shadow Game of the Year edition.
"We're as hungry as ever," Payton told us during the broadcast. "I think a Wolverine VR game would be incredible. I want that."
A Meta Neural Band worn on each wrist could conceivably make that dream come true. When combined with the idea that computer vision could help more accurately detect precision microgestures, we're glimpsing an era with Meta's Display glasses that could see users do much more than just navigating menus in headsets or glasses privately with simple thumb swipes.
In the dreams we seem to share with the director of one of the best VR games produced by Meta, we want something wholly more robust from our experience in headset. Wolverine's adamantium claws can seem to slide out from underneath the skin of our wrists and then we can use our new tools to climb up brick walls in wide field of view virtual reality. This can be done without controllers in hand as wristbands vibrate haptic effects for us instead. If this is the way, it would require Meta figuring out how to transition its ecosystem from selling two inexpensive controllers in the box with each headset to bundling up a pair of Neural Bands instead.
Without third-party Horizon OS headsets to differentiate the experience inside Meta's ecosystem near term, and as executives court partners like UFC and James Cameron long term, VR game developers are left wondering what space Meta is making for them in their future endeavors.
50-degree field of view AR glasses with a wristband on your dominant hand to interact with menus or handwrite will certainly be interesting to some people for tasks out in the physical world. However, that's so very far from the presence-inducing VR of the sort we would want in a Wolverine game. We can only have dual-wielding indestructible claws via a pair of bands on both wrists with wide field of view virtual reality doing the work of transporting us into a world of superheroes.
Consider the next two years facing two of the best games made for VR – Batman: Arkham Shadow and Half-Life: Alyx. Near term, pirates are likely to try to run Batman: Arkham Shadow on the Frame headset before Meta chooses to put it for sale on the Steam store.
Meanwhile, Valve is working to get Half-Life: Alyx running performant in the standalone Steam Frame. If that should happen, will there be the same demand to get that experience running directly on a Meta standalone?
I'm illustrating that some of the biggest-budget exclusive software products made for VR headsets – games owned 100% by the platform – find their virtual worlds diametrically opposed in the pressure ahead for their distribution.
Alyx faces developer-led optimization to bring an experience that sings with a high-powered PC down to run performant on a low-powered standalone headset. Batman faces the demand of PC buyers hungry for more high-quality content than the market can produce, and a publisher with some motivations against selling software via a competitor's storefront.
Nintendo releases the revamped Virtual Boy next month and we'll be curious if Sony can pull together a coherent strategy after the PlayStation VR2. Meanwhile, Apple chips away at major software updates for visionOS and we'll have a review of Steam Frame once we receive the completed headset from Valve.
For now, multiple long-time VR development studios still find themselves committed to the medium and working on new software, but they are also recalibrating their expectations for a smaller market near-term and difficult decisions ahead about focus and differentiation.
At CES 2026 in Las Vegas this past week, I finally had the opportunity to go hands on with the Galaxy Z TriFold, Samsung’s first phone that folds twice and transforms from a regular 6.5-inch Android handset into a 10-inch Android tablet. On the surface, the Z TriFold is essentially a thicker Galaxy Z Fold7 with an extra, third panel, but thatBiwin used CES 2026 to showcase a broad refresh of its consumer storage and memory portfolio, spanning CFexpress cards, portable SSDs, DDR5 modules, microSD cards, and next‑generation PCIe Gen5 NVMe drives.
First up we have the CB500 CFexpress Type B card, designed for high‑end cameras and 8K capture. It delivers up to 3750MB/s read performance, enabling rapid offloading and sustained high‑bitrate recording. Biwin also highlighted its compact CL100 and RD510 Mini SSDs, aimed at embedded systems, handhelds, and ultra‑portable devices. The Mini SSD platform uses a 15×17×1.4mm LGA package yet still reaches up to 3700MB/s read and 3400MB/s write, with capacities from 512GB to 2TB. The accompanying RD510 card reader supports USB 3.2 Gen1 for fast external transfers.
On the memory side, the DW100 DDR5 memory, which was the recipient of a CES Innovation Award, was on display. These modules reach up to 8400MT/s, with RGB variants rated up to 9200MT/s and CL42 latency for high‑end gaming and enthusiast builds.
For portable storage, Biwin showed multiple PSSD options. The OC PR2000 is a rugged USB‑C portable SSD with silicone protection, offering capacities up to 4TB and USB 3.2 Gen2x2 throughput. The PX4000 PSSD targets mainstream users needing compact, high‑speed external storage. The ME300 microSD series expands Biwin’s flash card lineup, rated for 210MB/s read and 170MB/s write, with capacities up to 512GB for drones, handheld consoles, and action cameras.
Biwin also brought its latest PCIe Gen5 NVMe drives to the show, including the X570 PRO and X570H PRO. Both support NVMe 2.0 and reach up to 14000MB/s read and 14000MB/s write, with the X570 PRO additionally rated for 2000K/1600K IOPS thanks to its DRAM‑equipped controller.
KitGuru Says: What did you make of Biwin's CES line-up this year?
The post CES 2026: Biwin’s 9200MT/s DDR5 RAM, Mini SSDs and more first appeared on KitGuru.
Remember back in September when NVIDIA announced the existence of the Rubin CPX processor at the AI Technology Conference? We theorized at that time that Rubin CPX could be the chip destined to eventually appear in next-generation GeForce cards. The theory made sense, but apparently it's incorrect, at least according to long-time NVIDIA leaker
ASRock is entering bold new territory at CES 2026, expanding its portfolio of products to include six previously-teased AIO liquid coolers. At first glance, these AIOs look similar, due to the common 360mm radiators between them, but there are distinct features for each that set them apart.
One of the most interesting is the ASRock WS Series
Google's drive to infuse AI across its portfolio of existing products has seen steady Gemini integration in many areas, and now Gmail is getting the biggest Gemini overhaul yet. Gmail will now include a dedicated AI Inbox, which is meant to isolate the most important emails from across your various categories to rise to the top. Another new
We saw some exciting tech at CES this week, including new monitors leveraging NVIDIA's G-SYNC Pulsar technology. Now it's a waiting game to see when they'll actually be available to purchase. In the meantime, there are great deals to be had on the current crop of OLED panels, including a fantastic discount on an curvy Alienware mode.
AlienwareADATA is marking its upcoming 25th anniversary at CES 2026 with a showcase spanning AI‑centric storage, industrial solutions and new XPG gaming hardware. The company’s booth is divided into three zones – AI Innovation, Smart Living and Gaming Lifestyle. We cover it all in our latest CES video.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:25 PSU’s
00:46 XPG Dock / XPG Pro Cog Studio Headset
01:50 Levante View 360
02:37 XPG Nimbus Chair
02:48 XPG Memory
04:06 Trusta SSD and Memory range
04:37 Modded Chassis and XPG Cooling
In the AI Innovation Zone, ADATA’s enterprise brand TRUSTA is debuting the TRUSTA AI Scaler Toolkit, a software‑defined architecture designed to offload parts of LLM inference across GPU, DRAM and SSD resources. TRUSTA is also introducing the PCIe 5.0 T7P5 SSD, rated for up to 13,500 and 10,300MB/s read/write speeds and 447MB/s‑per‑watt efficiency, alongside new DDR5 RDIMM modules up to 128GB and 6400MT/s.
ADATA Industrial is showcasing its A+ IntelliManager platform for cloud‑based device monitoring, as well as the IU2P41BP PCIe Gen4 U.2 SSD with capacities up to 8TB. New DDR5 ECC CU‑DIMM and CSO‑DIMM 7200 modules target edge AI and industrial control systems.
In the Smart Living zone, ADATA is presenting the industry’s first 4‑RANK DDR5 CUDIMM module developed with MSI and Intel, offering 128GB per stick. The company is also highlighting sustainable designs such as the XPG NOVAKEY RGB DDR5 memory, which is built with recycled materials and capable of 8000MT/s. The Project BulletX is a new portable SSD (USB4, up to 4000MB/s) and Project TapSafe is designed for the security-conscious with NFC security built in.
XPG’s gaming lineup includes the INVADER X ELITE chassis with panoramic glass and walnut accents, the DOCK open‑frame case, and new cooling hardware such as the LEVANTE VIEW PRO 360 with a 6.7‑inch curved display. XPG is also expanding its PSU range with the PYMCORE SFX Platinum 1000W and CYBERCORE III 1200W, and introducing new NIMBUS PLUS and NIMBUS gaming chairs.
KitGuru Says: Adata is active in a lot of key tech markets, going well beyond gaming and into datacentre territory.
The post CES 2026: ADATA’s high-speed XPG memory, panoramic case first appeared on KitGuru.
Has it been half a century already? Believe it or not, Apple is turning 50 years old this year, and to celebrate the occasion, auction house RR Auction is hosting a huge 50th anniversary Apple sale with a whole bunch of desirable collectibles, some of which are expected to fetch half a million dollars or more. One of them is an ultra-rarePortable speakers are a confusing product, with some being much better than you'd expect and others which you would think would be amazing are actually awful; before you even consider the subjectivity…
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