Way back in the ancient days of the year 2020, the world went through this pandemic thing called COVID-19. For those of you not old enough to remember such ancient history, it was a fairly significant health issue that caused a few disruptions throughout the world, including in these here United States. Trump was president at the time of the wild spread of the pandemic. There were shutdowns. There was a supply chain shitstorm. People argued over masks and school closures while staring at shelves where toilet paper used to be available so we could wipe ourselves. The government displayed such an impressive failure of leadership that I myself questioned why we should have a government at all if this is how it was going to behave.
But, to be fair, there were also some impressive things from government to come out of the pandemic. Trump’s administration initiated Operation Warp Speed to develop and distribute COVID vaccines so we could all get back to our lives. While the first Trump administration didn’t do so great at the distribution part of the plan, and managed to coat the world in incredible amounts of misinformation around the pandemic and these vaccines, it was still an impressive feat to bring these vaccines to market in record time. One of the government agencies that powered Operation Warp Speed was the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), which was responsible for collating research on previous pathogens similar to COVID-19 and for building out the trials for the vaccines that would eventually come to market. If it weren’t for NIAID, it’s unlikely the government’s response to the pandemic would have been as rapid, or successful.
And if you think I’m wrong about that, there’s a chance that the next pandemic will provide us with an answer. That’s because this second Trump administration is actively choosing to remove exactly this sort of pandemic work from NIAID’s proactive efforts.
NIH director Jay Bhattacharya explained the restructure at an event with other top agency officials on 30 January. “It’s a complete transformation of [the NIAID] away from this old model” that has historically prioritized research on HIV, biodefence and pandemic preparedness, he said. The institute will focus more on basic immunology and other infectious diseases currently affecting people in the United States, he added, rather than on predicting future diseases.
Nahid Bhadelia, director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Massachusetts, says the decision to deprioritize these areas will leave people in the United States more vulnerable to pathogens that are constantly evolving in wildlife around the world and spilling into human populations, sometimes sparking outbreaks. “Just because we say we’re going to stop caring about these issues doesn’t make the issues go away — it just makes us less prepared,” she says.
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This is one of the things I’ve found about Trump’s second term most perplexing. His reelection efforts were arguably chiefly torpedoed by the pandemic. There’s an old saying in parenting that even a child can learn a lesson from pain. If a child touches a hot stove, they will get burned and will not touch it again. By installing the likes of RFK Jr. and his cadre of conspiracy theorists to manage the health of Americans, and by keeping the very agency that allowed for his rapid response to COVID from doing likewise in the future, it appears Trump wants to keep touching the hot stove. I don’t get it.
And it’s not like we don’t have outbreaks of infectious disease happening right now. We absolutely do. The measles infection count that has gone on for 14 months in this country is insane. There’s no reason COVID can’t mutate and come right back into our lives as a major health issue. Or there could be another novel pathogen that grinds all of our lives back to a halt once more. For a man so concerned with building walls, he’s tearing down the virtual protection that is proactive research and knowledge.
“NIAID’s work clearly neither prevented the pandemic nor prevented Americans from experiencing among the highest levels of all-cause excess mortality in the developed world during that time,” [Bhattacharya and subordinates] wrote. “Given the increasing prevalence of allergic and autoimmune disorders and the burden of common infections in the population over the past few decades, the NIAID must focus research on these conditions with a greater sense of urgency.”
This is a wild fictionalization of what occurred at NIAID. The agency doesn’t make healthcare policy. It advises the Executive Branch on what is needed to prepare for new and existing diseases, performs research into detecting those diseases before they become pandemics, and provides research and planning into how to respond to them. When Anthony Fauci led NIAID in 2017, he warned the administration of all of this and asked for funding to prepare for it. Not only did he not get his funding, but the administration also made staff and budget cuts impacting our pandemic preparations.
“We do need a public-health emergency fund. It’s tough to get it … but we need it,” Fauci said. “Because what we had to go through for Zika — it was very, very painful when the president asked for the $1.9 billion in February and we didn’t get it until September.”
But the Trump administration did not create such a fund, and instead cut spending for federal agencies responsible for detecting and preparing for outbreaks. In May 2018, Trump’s national security advisor disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team, while in October 2019, the administration declined to renew funding for a pandemic early warning system.
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This administration is doing it again, except worse. This time, it’s not removing some funding and some staff that were used to prepare us for the next pandemic. Instead, he’s just removing the mission of pandemic preparedness from NIAID entirely. And there are future plans to remove funding for research on novel pathogens, as well.
The instructions to agency staff members to rebrand the institute’s language are only the first step towards implementing this new vision, according to the NIAID employees. NIH principal deputy director Matthew Memoli has ordered more changes, including the review of the portfolio of grants funding biodefence and pandemic preparedness, in the coming weeks and months, they say.
This is crazy. It’s as though we’re all in the back seat of the family minivan, while mom and dad drive us somewhere… except we have no GPS, no maps, the steering wheel moves on its own, and the windshield is made of lead.
The stove is still hot. And, unfortunately, as Trump makes another attempt to touch it, it won’t be his fingers that are singed, but our own.
A 10-week-old boy named Hugo has become the first baby born in the UK from a womb transplanted from a deceased donor, after his mother Grace Bell — who was born without a viable womb due to a condition called MRKH syndrome, which affects one in every 5,000 women — underwent a 10-hour transplant operation at The Churchill Hospital in Oxford in June 2024.
Hugo was born just before Christmas 2025, weighing nearly 7lbs, at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in west London, following IVF treatment and embryo transfer at The Lister Fertility Clinic. Bell’s transplant is one of three completed so far as part of a UK clinical research trial that plans to carry out 10 such procedures from deceased donors, and Hugo is the first baby born from any of them. Earlier in 2025, a separate effort produced baby Amy, the first UK birth from a living womb donation — her mother had received her older sister’s womb in January 2023. Globally, more than 100 womb transplants have been performed, resulting in over 70 healthy births.
The Steam Deck is getting seriously tough to snag right now, with availability basically falling off a cliff in many regions.
What started as just a few hiccups in the US and parts of Asia has totally snowballed into a major, worldwide shortage, hitting Canada, Europe, and Japan hard.
Valve has actually confirmed the culprit: a crunch on memory and storage components. This supply squeeze is a direct fallout from the exploding demand for AI data centres, a huge, ongoing trend.
A quick look at Valve’s official store confirms it: the handheld console is totally out of stock in Germany, Austria, Poland, France, and a bunch of other EU nations, plus Canada and Japan.
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Interestingly, as of this moment, you can still find stock in places like Australia, the U.K., Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan.
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Valve has offered a brief but necessary explanation, noting that the Steam Deck OLED is facing intermittent stockouts in certain areas due to, you guessed it, memory and storage shortages.
The core issue is the AI infrastructure boom. Tech giants and hyperscalers are pouring billions into massive data centres filled with specialised AI GPUs. These systems demand absolutely enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and high-density NAND storage.
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Because AI companies are willing (and able) to pay top dollar, chipmakers are naturally prioritising those massive orders. This inevitably leaves less production capacity for consumer gadgets like the Steam Deck. Essentially, your favourite gaming handheld is now in a direct, high-stakes competition with powerful AI clusters for the same critical pool of memory and storage chips.
The Steam Deck isn’t the first piece of tech to feel this painful pinch. RAM modules and SSDs were hit much earlier, with prices spiking dramatically, sometimes two to five times, compared to last year. Major laptop makers such as Dell, Lenovo, and Framework have already announced price increases that are directly tied to these component cost jumps.
Even Apple has issued a warning that memory constraints will heavily impact its Q2 earnings as the company scrambles to lock down supply. While the Steam Deck might be the first gaming handheld to be impacted this severely, it’s highly probable it won’t be the last if these global supply pressures continue.
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Valve’s East Asian partner, Komodo Station, has suggested that market availability in their region might get back to normal by the end of the month.
However, on a global scale, concrete restocking timelines remain frustratingly unclear, giving buyers in affected regions zero certainty. The simple, harsh reality is this: the Steam Deck shortage has worsened significantly, and there is no definite end in sight.
The Shark EveryMess 3-in-1 can vacuum wet and dry spills, and act like a spot cleaner
It’s impressively compact and comes with a range of attachments
Available to buy now for $149.99 / £199
Shark has expanded its spot cleaner lineup with a multitalented new machine. The Shark EveryMess can vacuum liquid and solid messes, or work as a spot cleaner on upholstery. I saw one in action at Shark’s HQ, where it sucked up a Coke spill from a cream carpet with not so much as a trace of sticky soda left behind.
This 3-in-1 combination is pretty unusual — in this corner of the market, you typically get wet-and-dry vacuums or spot cleaners, but it’s rare for an appliance to do both. It’s available to buy now from $149.99 in the US, and £199.99 in the UK (scroll down to check out the best prices at a range of retailers).
What’s more, it’s impressively compact. The US and UK versions have slightly different proportions, but either would fit into an average-sized kitchen/utility room cupboard. (The US version is 10.5 x 16.5 x 13.5in / 26.7 x 41.9 x 34.3cm L x W x H. The UK version is 22.7 x 36.9 x 36.4cm / 8.9 x 14.5 x 14.3in.)
(Image credit: Shark)
There are multiple compatible attachments for tackling different kinds of messes: an extending Crevice tool for tight corners, a wider Squeegee tool for covering larger spaces, and a dedicated Stain Eliminator attachment for tough, set-in stains.
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Although it’s marketed as a 3-in-1, this doesn’t look like a sensible replacement for a full-sized wet floor cleaner, because none of the attachments are especially big. However, for smaller, trickier cleanups of any kind, it seems ideal — Shark lists broken glass and permanent marker as examples of awkward cleanups this appliance can happily tackle.
Another obvious market for such multipurpose cleaners is pet owners. Not only is the EveryMess suitable for cleaning everything from muddy pawprints on your soft furnishings to the occasional toilet-training accident, but Shark says it’s especially good at picking up pet hair at the same time.
(Image credit: Shark)
Shark boasts about a ‘Rinse & Ready’ self-clean function, but it’s a little more rudimentary than it sounds: to rinse out the tubing, you can simply vacuum up a pitcher of fresh water. For especially disgusting messes, Shark recommends lining the main bin with a 15-50L plastic bag so you don’t need to get your hands dirty when it comes to disposal.
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The EveryMess is designed for use with Shark’s ‘StainForce’ two-part cleaning solution, and the brand suggests you’ll only get that kind of extreme, stain-busting performance with that specific formula. The spray nozzle part clips straight onto the cleaner cartridges, replacements of which can be purchased separately at a cost of $24.99 / £24.99 for two, or $14.99 / £14.99 for one.
And of course, you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
The Durobo Krono strips the e-reader down to its pocketable essentials, but a lack of polish and questionable features keep it from challenging more refined rivals.
Durobo Krono e-ink e-reader
Reading on the go is always kind of a pain. Either you’re doing it on a smartphone, which isn’t great for your eyes, or you might try to lug around an iPad or a larger e-paper reader like a Kindle. That’s why there’s a surprisingly large fanbase for pocket-sized e-eaders. I even consider myself a part of that fanbase, considering how much I’ve enjoyed using one myself. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
The front lobby of Kumo, an Amazon office building at 1915 Terry Ave. in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)
Amazon plans to exit an office building near its Seattle headquarters, 12 years after taking over the space during the height of its growth in the city.
Amazon is not renewing its lease at 1915 Terry Ave. in the Denny Triangle area of downtown Seattle, the company confirmed to GeekWire on Tuesday. The tech giant, which has occupied the seven-story, 251,000-square-foot space owned by Seattle Children’s since 2014, will move out at the end of May and relocate employees to other offices.
The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported on the planned move.
The seven-story building in the Denny Triangle neighborhood is owned by Seattle Children’s. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)
Kumo, as Amazon calls it, is a 1950s-era building located just a few blocks from Amazon’s main office towers and the Spheres. Amazon did not say how many employees work from the building.
The company employs approximately 50,000 corporate and tech employees in Seattle. More than 1,400 workers in Seattle were impacted by company-wide layoffs of 16,000 people announced at the end of January.
PSBJ reported that since 2020, Amazon has given up more than 1 million square feet of office space in Seattle, most of it in the Denny Triangle.
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The company has been growing its footprint across Lake Washington in Bellevue, where it has opened new office buildings and said it plans to employ 25,000 people as part of its regional HQ.
The United States installed a record 57 gigawatt hours of new battery storage on its electric grids in 2025, a nearly 30% increase over the prior year that arrived even as the Trump administration cut tax credits for wind and solar in last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
The figures come from a Solar Energy Industries Association report published Monday, which also projects the market will grow another 21% this year by adding 70 gigawatt hours in 2026 alone. Battery tax credits themselves survived the legislation largely intact, and the majority of last year’s new installations were stand-alone systems not tied to specific solar projects.
In Texas, solar met more than 15% of electricity demand throughout the summer and beat out coal for the first time, and the SEIA report predicts the state will overtake California this year in total deployed storage. Supply chain restrictions reinforced by the bill and project cancellations could slow the pipeline this year, the report cautions.
Tap Space’s founder started with just S$50 to kickstart his business
From keychains bearing the names of MRT stations to miniature bus models, transport merchandise is taking off in Singapore.
One business riding this wave is TapSpace, founded by 29-year-old Danial Sim—he started with just S$50, and now, he can sell thousands of items in a single day.
We spoke with Danial to find out more about how a holiday inspiration grew into a full-fledged business, with a store that regularly sees queues and can sell over a thousand products in a single day.
The idea for Tap Space struck him during a holiday in Korea
(Left): Danial Sim in South Korea; (Right): Seoul’s transport keychains inspired by real-life stations./ Image Credit: Danial Sim/ KAvenyou via Facebook
The idea for TapSpace struck Danial during a holiday in Korea in August 2023. There, he noticed a vibrant public transport culture and a genuine appreciation for transit systems through collectible trinkets—something he realised was largely missing back home in Singapore.
At the time, Danial was working in engineering and laboratory roles, hardly the typical background for someone launching a creative merchandise business. Though the idea of making transport-themed collectibles had lingered in the back of his mind, he had put it on hold due to the demands of his job.
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Yet his love for public transport—and the nostalgia it evoked, from the sights and smells to the interiors—stuck with him throughout his daily travels around Singapore. Hence, a year later, in Aug 2024, he finally decided to give it a shot, starting with a S$50 investment to test the market.
That modest investment went towards sourcing local manufacturers for small-batch items like keychains. Danial’s breakthrough came when he found a Singapore supplier willing to work without minimum order quantities, a rare opportunity that let him test the market without a massive upfront commitment.
Starting from ground zero
Image Credit: Kevin Chng via Google Reviews, Tap Space
Tap Space’s first merchandise line launched with just four MRT station keychain designs: Changi, Orchard, Punggol, and Sengkang, each priced at S$9.90.
To market his products, Danial started from scratch, launching a TikTok account with zero followers. Every single night, after dinner, Danial would religiously start a TikTok livestream to show what he’s come up with and engage with potential customers.
Beyond TikTok Shop, Danial expanded to Shopee after noticing that many Singaporeans prefer it for online purchases. Tap Space also regularly held pop-ups at hobby fairs to reach an even wider audience.
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Danial’s hard work paid off eventually. Every day, he would gain “a few hundred followers” on social media, which proved to him that there was an appetite for transport trinkets in Singapore.
Gradually, customers also began requesting additional stations—Choa Chu Kang, Jurong East, Woodlands—laying the foundation for new product lines. Danial continued expanding, and today he has over 250 MRT and LRT-inspired key chain designs.
Tap Space broke even in one year
Every brand has its watershed moment. For TapSpace, it arrived in Aug 2025 at Takashimaya during a two-week invitational pop-up event coinciding with Singapore’s SG60 National Day celebrations.
Image Credit: Tap Space
The event marked a milestone for the business—it broke even, selling 1,500 pieces on the first day and completely selling out by day three.
It also showed Danial that Tap Space could grow beyond a hobby. After the pop-up, he took the leap from full-time employment into full-time entrepreneurship, recognising that the growing demand for his products required his full attention.
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Shortly afterwards, he even opened a physical retail space at Burlington Square, giving customers a place to browse his collectibles in person.
Expanding Tap Space’s product range
Tap Space’s store at Burlington Square./ Image Credit: Tap Space
Beyond MRT stations, Tap Space also offers other iconic transport symbols as keychains, such as the ‘May I have a seat’ and priority seating icons. The shop even sells MRT handles as keychains—initially sourced from local scrap yards, though Danial has since located the original supplier for these authentic pieces.
People thought the transport handles were 3D printed, like a fake thing. However, when they realised that it’s the actual thing, they buy them for funny uses, not just as keychains, but for the gym, or to walk their dogs.
Danial Sim
Tap Space turns transport handles and transport symbols commonly seen on Singapore’s public transport into functional merchandise./ Image Credit: Tap Space
Apart from keychains, Tap Space has expanded into stickers, miniature models of buses, trains and taxis from different eras, figurines, and desk mats. Some of these products are even sold in blind boxes.
To balance local support with efficiency, Danial works with local manufacturers for small-batch restocking, while larger production is handled by specialised suppliers across Asia—China, Malaysia, and Thailand—for faster turnaround times.
Ambitions to go beyond merchandise & expanding overseas
Today, Tap Space’s store sees steady demand. According to the founder, it requires restocking two to three times weekly, a frequency backed by the “daily” queues it sees every day.
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People just see public transport as something that you take; they don’t really think of it as a memory. When you turn it into something memorable and collectible, people be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that this can have so much memories in this one keychain or in this one design.’ That’s where it starts off.
Danial Sim
Miniature trains and buses are also part of the key offerings at Tap Space./ Image Credit: Tap Space
The shop attracts a wide range of customers, from parents with children to groups of overseas tourists seeking authentic souvenirs beyond the usual Merlion keychains. Many visitors come just to browse the carefully curated, cosy space, which, according to Danial, has been described as a ‘museum for mini Singapore transport.’
The founder has also managed to secure consignment placements in major retailers, including Popular bookstores and Toys “R” Us.
Looking ahead, Tap Space’s ambitions go beyond merchandise into technology. Danial is exploring NFC-enabled keychains that link to LTA wayfinding and EZ-Link systems, aiming to merge physical collectibles with digital utility.
As part of his efforts of “expanding thoughtfully,” Danial is also in the midst of coming up with bilingual versions of station designs, such as Japanese and English, which may appeal better to international visitors.
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International expansion is also not off the table. Danial recently hosted a successful pop-up in Kuala Lumpur showcasing products inspired by Malaysian public transport, though he has not shared concrete plans for further expansion.
The transformation of mundane infrastructure—train handles, station signs, bus liveries—into coveted collectibles demonstrates that business opportunities often hide in plain sight, waiting for someone willing to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
You don’t have to start with a lot of money. Can be like me: start with S$50. Use the money you have. You shouldn’t go all out; you should just try the small market first. If you go for small pop-ups around Singapore and there is interest, then why not?
Apple’s plan to add touchscreens to its premium MacBook Pros is coming into focus. Bloomberg reports that when the new laptops launch this fall, they’ll feature a Dynamic Island, not unlike Apple’s iPhones, and an interface that changes depending on where you touch your Macbook’s screen.
This “dynamic interface” is reportedly designed to make the transition between mouse input and touch input smoother on Apple’s new laptops. Bloomberg says that if users touch an onscreen button, the version of macOS running on these new MacBook Pros will be able to pull up a contextual menu “that provides more relevant options for touch commands.” Parts of the interface, like macOS’ menu bar, will also be able to enlarge to make menu items easier to select with a finger. Those tweaks are on top of the expected features from touchscreen Apple products, like smooth scrolling and the ability to pinch and zoom into and out of images, files and web pages. The only thing missing from these increasingly iPad-like laptops, per Bloomberg, will be a touchscreen keyboard, because they’ll already have a more comfortable physical keyboard attached.
To make these new laptops extra enticing, both the 14-inch and 16-inch touchscreen MacBook Pros will feature OLED screens for the first time, likely the reason Apple will be able to include a Dynamic Island-style webcam in the first place. Up until now, the company has offered OLED screens on its iPhones, Apple Watches and more recently the iPad Pro, but it hasn’t brought the display technology to laptops. That could reportedly change with these new MacBook Pros.
Plenty of Windows laptops include touchscreens, and Microsoft and its partners have incorporated dynamic interface elements in the past to make these touchscreens more natural to use with Windows. Apple is late to the party in this respect, but it’s also potentially set up to succeed. Much of modern macOS already looks touch-friendly, and Apple’s has expended significant effort making it possible to port touch-based iPad apps to macOS and develop applications across platforms. That, paired with the right interface, could make the experience of using a touchscreen MacBook nicer out of the box, even if it doesn’t get rid of the awkwardness of reaching over your keyboard to touch a screen.
MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness, an investment fund formed by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner.
The company’s goal is to make its processors 10 times better at training LLMs and delivering results than Nvidia’s GPUs.
Other investors in the round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, and Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, the startup’s founder and CEO Reiner Pope announced Tuesday in a post on LinkedIn.
Although the company didn’t release its latest valuation, Etched, MatX’s closest competitor, raised a $500 million round at a $5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month. Etched didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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MatX’s latest round comes more than a year after its Series A of about $100 million, which was led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch earlier reported that the 2024 round valued the startup at more than $300 million.
Before co-founding MatX in 2023, Pope led AI software development for Google’s TPUs, the tech giant’s proprietary AI chips. His co-founder, Mike Gunter, was a lead designer of the TPU hardware before leaving to launch the startup.
The new funding will help MatX produce its chips with TSMC, with plans to start shipping them in 2027.
Kojima Productions has officially revealed the PC system requirements for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and the good news is that they are far more approachable than many recent big-budget releases. According to Sony’s PlayStation Blog, the PC version launches March 19 and includes a wide range of graphics presets designed to scale from budget systems all the way to high-end rigs.
Kojima Productions
At the entry level, the game targets 1080p at 30 frames per second with hardware that many gamers already own. A GTX 1660 or Radeon RX 5500 XT paired with an Intel Core i3-10100 or Ryzen 3 3100 and 16GB of RAM is enough to get started. That alone makes the game feel refreshingly accessible in a landscape where minimum specs often demand much newer GPUs.
Sony
Moving up the preset scales is a predictable process. Medium settings aim for 1080p at 60fps with an RTX 3060 or RX 6600, while the recommended tier targets 1440p at 60fps with an RTX 3070 or RX 6800. The very high preset pushes into 4K at 60fps territory with an RTX 4080 or RX 9070 XT. Every preset requires 16GB of RAM and a 150GB SSD install, which is becoming standard for modern AAA titles.
Handheld gaming and modern upscaling take center stage
One of the most interesting additions is a dedicated Portable preset designed specifically for handheld gaming PCs. This mode targets devices such as the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, with full support for modern upscaling and frame-generation technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2. These tools allow players to push higher resolutions and frame rates without requiring top-tier hardware.
Sony
On top of that, the game includes Guerrilla’s in-house Pico upscaling technology from the Decima engine, which can be used alongside frame generation and works across different graphics cards. Ultrawide support is also included, with cutscenes designed for 21:9 displays and gameplay extending to 32:9 aspect ratios.
With the PC launch arriving on March 19, these requirements suggest that many players may already have the hardware needed to jump in on day one. If anything, this release feels like a reminder that not every blockbuster needs extreme specs to deliver a next-gen experience.
