PC

Right up against the weekend here in late July, 2021, Microsoft released the first official Beta for Windows 11. This release is available to anyone who wishes to join the Windows Insiders program, and the software can be found in the Windows Beta Channel right this minute. As it is with any pre-release software, it's important to run this update ONLY on a machine that does not contain any important data.

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A new collection of games was revealed in Amazon Prime's "Free Games with Prime" for August of 2021. Games are available for claim by Amazon Prime members for a limited time, then remain available for use from that time thereafter. The turnover from one month to the other ushers out the game Battlefield 1 and in Battlefield V, making July and August a real decent pair of months for users that've never played Battlefield games before.

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Valve's Steam Deck, just like many of the company's hardware endeavors, has stirred up mixed responses to the portable PC gaming handheld. The device itself seems to have a yin yang characteristic to it. Its tempting price tag was offset by pre-order chaos, while its capable hardware, at least for a portable computer, was balanced by some puzzling decisions about its performance. The most controversial aspect seems to be the "30 FPS target" for the Steam Deck that Valve revealed. As it turns out, the story is actually more confusing than that simple statement.

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There is no shortage of football, a.k.a. soccer in some countries, video games, but very few actually manage to stand out and stay on top of the others. Of these games, EA's FIFA and Konami's PES are probably the most renowned and purchased titles. That said, Pro Evolution Soccer or PES will be no more, at least not in the way we know it. Not only is Konami renaming it into a more generic "eFootball" brand, but it is also switching to a somewhat controversial free-to-play or freemium business model.

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The next wave of Emoji will launch at the turn of the month - but not before Microsoft releases Clippy. The classic living paperclip character has officially made its way to the next upgrade in Emoji in Windows products, courtesy of a Twitter dare. After suggesting that they'd make Clippy into an Emoji if a Tweet reached a certain number of likes - that happened several times over, so here comes Clippy - with a few other changes to Emoji in tow.

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2020 and 2021 have so far been kind to the PC market that previously found itself battling for survival against mobile devices. While desktops and laptops will always have a place in the tech industry, recent changes to working and studying arrangements have cause PC shipments to spike and grow over the last year and a half. Although that growth is starting to slow down, the PC market still managed to grow in the second quarter of 2021, despite the ongoing component supply shortage affecting many industries around the world.

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Hearthstone is about to release a new set of cards with several new gameplay mechanics. Today we're going to look at two of these mechanics: Tradeable, which you can trade for other cards in your deck, if you wish, and Mount. The Mount cards we've seen teased by Hearthstone so far seem to be like animals: a ram, an Elekk (elephant-like creature), but the mechanic behaves more like we're dealing with a character pair straight out of Mad Max.

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The game Star Wars: The Old Republic is about to turn 10 years old. As the game celebrates a full decade online and active, there'll be a new expansion called Legacy of the Sith. This new expansion will be driven by the renegade Sith Darth Malgus, suggesting this isn't the last we've heard of the most infamous force of evil to never grace the face of a full-fledged Star Wars movie.

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Amazon heralded a return to some of the most beloved cult-classic video games ever made by LucasArts this summer in Prime Gaming. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you'll be able to "claim" a few games with Prime Gaming starting on July 1, then again on August 1 and September 1. The games are each LucasArts classic titles, each of them "iconic point-and-click adventures."

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Today we're taking a peek at the latest Valorant update, bringing Episode 3 Act 1 into play. The updates made in this update could change the way you play the game. As Max Grossman and Sal Garozzo, Co-Lead Designers for Valorant at Riot said this week, "Game-spanning changes like these can be painful as we are asking you all to relearn many things that you’re now comfortable with." They've asked gamers to find comfort in the fact that "your enemies are facing the same challenges."

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This week the folks at Epic Games have a shockingly popular game available for your perusal. Generally this game will cost you around $5, depending on which platform you're aiming to play with. That's the price on the Epic Games Store usually. But as the Epic Games Store does from time to time, now, this week, Among Us is free for you to download.

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Amazon Luna has a few new games in the mix in the month of June, 2021. The Luna+ channel will get games like Yakuza O, The Falconeer, and Killer Queen Black in June, joining games added in the month of May. Here in May, Luna+ added RAD, Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos, The Wonderful 101, and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV.

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