Usually, the Steam Summer Sale means you’ll be picking up a bunch of half-priced games to fill up your already overflowing backlog. This year, however, Steam is upping the ante by offering a discount on the HTC Vive. Yep, the $800 VR headset.
The HTC Vive is now available on the Steam store for $750. That might not sound like a huge discount, but buyers will also receive a $50 Steam credit. So, if you were planning on spending at least $50 on Steam games and have an extra $750 lying around, this is a good deal. Plus, it comes bundled with Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Richie’s Plank Experience, and Everest VR, along with a free month of HTC’s Viveport subscription service.
The HTC Vive headset has met with some serious competition from the Oculus Rift now that both platforms have their own touch controllers, but the Vive remains at the top of its game. According to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the HTC Vive is outselling the Oculus Rift 2-to-1, and this sale could push those numbers even higher.
There are still some massive barriers to entry for most users, who will need a powerful PC to get the most out of the HTC Vive — plus a bunch of extra space to take advantage of the Vive’s room-scale VR experiences. Those barriers aren’t as high as they used to be, as PC manufacturers turn out more affordable VR ready laptops, desktops, and even backpacks.
More affordable hardware, coupled with a growing catalog of games, including some high-profile entries like Star Trek: Bridge Crew, are making consumer VR more enticing and accessible than ever.
It’s with that in mind that the Steam Summer Sale also includes a number of popular VR games at a discount alongside the HTC Vive hardware.
The marked-down games up for grabs include Vive Studios titles. They include Virtual Sports, Arcade Saga, Remembering Pearl Harbor, Knockout League, and Make VR.
So if you’ve been on the fence about VR, now would be a great time to get in on the action, but hurry up — the sale ends at 10 a.m. PT on July 5.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.