Valve loves to warn people about the risks of do-it-yourself Steam Deck maintenance, and this time it reminds you that trying to upgrade the built-in storage could lead to problems.
Following a PC Gamer article on modding the Steam Deck, Valve hardware designer Lawrence Yang warned against upgrading the NVMe SSD. While technically possible, the bigger M.2 2242 drives are hotter and more power-hungry than the 2230 models the handheld was meant to support. Yang added you could “significantly shorten” the longevity of the system. You’ve been told.
— Mat Smith
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You could get your hands on the device sooner than expected.
And if you don’t yet have a Steam Deck — or you fried yours with an ill-advised upgrade — Valve says it has boosted production and will ship more than twice the number of units each week.
If you reserve a Steam Deck now, you likely won’t receive it until at least October. However, since Valve is ramping up the volume of shipments, it may bring down that wait time.
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Covering the whole breadth of a video game’s influence is harder than it looks.
Nintendo
The Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007 — the rare Bond game that nailed the franchise tie-in and elevated the experience — is one of a handful of games that warrant a feature-length making-of documentary. Drew Roller’s GoldenEra tries to encompass the entire creative route, from its genesis as a small project at Rare’s rural farmland campus to the monster it became.
GoldenEra has gotten many of the original team on the record, supplemented by several journalists and talking heads from across the games industry. But multiple segments — those covering Perfect Dark, Free Radical Design and Timesplitters, GoldenEye fan films, and the modding community — feel slightly shallow.
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It’s acquiring a charger manufacturing company.
LG is entering the EV charging business by acquiring a South Korean EV battery charger developer called AppleMango. It said this should help it create “fully featured” charging stations with a user-friendly interface and real-time control and management. In particular, it’ll leverage its “sturdy, dust- and water-proof” outdoor digital display tech. LG plans to install an EV charger production line at LG Digital Park in South Korea by the end of 2022.
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That could affect performance for app loading and more.
According to testing by YouTube sites Max Tech and Created Tech, Apple’s 13-inch 256GB MacBook Pro M2 may have worse SSD performance than the equivalent M1 model. The $1,300 base model showed around 50 percent slower read speeds, and 30 percent slower write speeds. The 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 has a 256GB NAND flash storage chip instead of two 128GB chips like the previous M1 model. That would mean the driver can only use two lanes in parallel, restricting performance.
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Apple claimed Qualcomm might use two patents to sue again.
Apple and Qualcomm may have ended most of their feuding in 2019, but the fight isn’t over yet. The Supreme Court has denied Apple’s request for a hearing to invalidate two Qualcomm patents that played key roles in 2017’s attempts to ban Apple Watch, iPad, and iPhone sales over alleged modem-technology infringements. The court didn’t explain why it rejected the request, but a Justice Department amicus brief from May argued there was no evidence to indicate the patents harmed Apple’s business.
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No, Zelda, maybe ‘Silksong’?
Engadget
A Nintendo Direct Mini is scheduled for June 28th at 9 AM ET. It probably won’t feature news on Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, or any of Nintendo’s other franchises. Nintendo says it’ll focus on third-party titles on their way to Switch, and it could be a fairly meaty affair. It clocks in at 25 minutes, and Nintendo’s online showcases usually run at a fair clip. One of the more notable third-party games slated for a Switch debut, No Man’s Sky, already has a release date of October 7th, so that may not get a heavy focus. There’s always the chance of more details on Hollow Knight: Silksong, which will arrive next year.
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