Get ready to put your driving ability to the test! Learn the basics in the car park and then prove your skills on the road. Control your speed and respond correctly to hazards to gather maximum points! Virtual Driving School is a serious, skills-based game that gives players tips on how to become safer drivers, in a hyper-real, virtual environment. Modelled around a ‘Sim City’- style simulated world, you can visit city streets and highways. Choose from and a wide range of unique driving challenges and scenarios that require precision and concentration. It’s an exciting ride!

Pokemon Character Guide: Deluxe Edition

$60 | Releases August 30

Preorder at Amazon

Pokemon Character Guide: Collector's Edition

$200 | Releases August 30

Preorder at Amazon

After 30 years, the world of Pokemon has grown massive with hundreds of pocket monsters and multiple regions to explore. Plenty of books have been published over the years, but Pikachu Press's upcoming Pokemon Character Guide is aiming to be a comprehensive and luxurious look at the franchise. Out on August 25, you can preorder this deluxe edition book for $60 through Amazon, or if you want to go all out, a feature-packed $200 Collector's Edition is also available.

Pokemon Character Guide: Deluxe Edition $60 | Releases August 30

Clocking in at 336 pages, the Pokemon Character Guide features entries on over 1,000 Pokemon. Exploring every region in the franchise, the book also shines a light on the various Pokemon animation projects, the video games, Pokemon: The Trading Card Game, and much more. The book also includes a foreword written by The Pokemon Company president and CEO, Tsunekazu Ishihara, and it's enhanced with a ribbon bookmark, premium golden gilded edges, Pikachu endpapers, and a comprehensive index. As an added bonus, the Pokemon Character Guide also features a special chapter focused on Legendary and Mythical Pokemon.

Preorder at Amazon Pokemon Character Guide: Collector's Edition $200 | Releases August 30

The Collector's Edition of the Pokemon Character Guide features the same content as the Deluxe Edition, but it comes packed with extras. The book itself is packaged inside a collector's box that features ornate designs, and it's accompanied by two collectible video game prints, two collectible animation prints, an exclusive Pokemon: TCG playmat, and a certificate of authenticity.

Preorder at Amazon

Another great option for budding Pokemon researchers is the Pokecology: An Illustrated Guide to Pokemon Ecology hardcover book that launched just a few weeks ago. This officially licensed 208-page volume explores the Pokemon universe's unique ecologies based on data from the official Pokedex entries throughout the series, alongside illustrations from illustrator and real-life animal behavior researcher Chihiro Kinoshita. The book is published by Pikachu Press, the same company behind the upcoming Pokemon Character Guide. It's available for $11 (was $15) at Amazon.

Pokecology: An Illustrated Guide to Pokemon Ecology

$11 (was $15)

See at Amazon

To complete your Pokemon library, you can also pair the Character Guide and Pokecology books with the official Pokemon Pocket Guide Box Set. This is a massive two-volume paperback box set that covers almost 900 Pokemon. Both entries combined offer over 1,100 pages of content, with details on Pokemon descriptions, stats, abilities, movies, and evolutions. Each Pokemon entry is also accompanied by an illustration, with the first volume covering Pokedex entries No. 1 through 442, and Volume 2 ranges from No. 443 through 898. Pokemon from the Paldean region are sadly excluded, but with Pokemon Winds and Waves coming out next year, this pocket-friendly set of books will come in very handy for when you catch legacy pocket monsters in the Switch 2 game. You can also purchase each volume on its own at decent discounts, but you'll save a few bucks more when you buy the box set edition, which is available for $20.29 (was $29).

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Lego The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith (8,278 pieces)

$650 | Releases June 4

Preorder at Lego

Lego has officially revealed its newest--and biggest--Lord of the Rings set yet, a massive 8,278-piece recreation of the White City, Minas Tirith. Available now to preorder for $650, the set will release first on June 1 for members of Lego's free rewards program, Lego Insiders, and it will be followed by a global launch on June 4. As an added bonus, any purchases made between June 1 and Jun 7 will also receive the Lego Icons: Lord of the Rings Grond battering ram set as a Gift with Purchase.

Lego The Lord of the Rings: Minas Tirith (8,278 pieces) $650 | Releases June 4

Based on the iconic location as seen in Peter Jackson's third Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, the Minas Tirith set is a diorama piece that combines an expansive cityscape with detailed interior scenes, including the citadel throne room. The assembled set measures over 23.5 inches high, 24.5 inches wide, and has a depth of 14.5 inches. Essentially, you're going to need a lot of room to display it in all its glory.

It also comes with the following 10 minifigures:

• Aragorn (in King Elessar garb)
• Arwen
• Denethor (with tiny tomatoes)
• Faramir
• Gandalf the White
• Gondor Guards (four in total)
• Peregrin Took

Preorder at Lego Gallery

As mentioned above, this is Lego's largest LOTR set yet, dwarfing impressive past releases like the Rivendell and Barad-dûr Tower by a significant margin. All of these sets are still available to order in case you'd like to complete your collection, alongside smaller LOTR kits like Sauron's Helmet and the Balrog Book Nook.

More Lego Lord of the Rings Sets

• Balrog Book Nook (1,201 pieces) -- $109 ($130)
• Barad-dûr Tower (5,471 pieces) -- $459
• Sauron's Helmet (538 pieces) -- $70
• The Shire (2,017 pieces) -- $270
• Sméagol & Déagol (181 pieces) -- $110 ($120)
• Rivendell (6,167 pieces) -- $499

Moving to other realms beyond Middle-earth, you can also preorder several more upcoming Lego sets. The company is expanding its line of video game console replicas with a Sega Genesis set and it's also celebrating 25 years of Shrek with an absolutely cursed diorama set.

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The Xbox Elite Controller 2 has remained one of the best options for gaming on not just Xbox consoles, but PC, for several years now, but it appears it's about to get an upgrade. Images of the Xbox Elite 3 Controller have appeared online via a Brazilian regulator, and they show a few new features that players should be very excited about.

As spotted by Tecnoblog (via The Verge), the new Xbox Elite 3 Controller features two scrolls wheels on either side of the headset connector, for reasons unclear. A pair button will also make it easy to shift between local play and cloud play, letting you choose whether the controller is connected directly to your system or to your Wi-Fi network.

Xbox Elite 3 controller leaked pic.twitter.com/4sMEpQm9Sd

— Xbox News & Deals (@XboxStockAlerts) May 14, 2026

The other big change is the inclusion of a removable battery pack. Previous Elite Controllers used a non-removable battery, much like PS5 controllers use, but offering the removable option should let players continue to use the same controller long after the original battery has degraded. Microsoft has made a point of including traditional AA battery compartments in most of its wireless controllers over the years, giving players the option of purchasing separate rechargeable packs if they so choose.

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For a long time, the common wisdom was that game consoles would usurp PC gaming, leaving it a niche hobby, ignored by the greater gaming community. And indeed, for a long time consoles were the most popular way to play mainstream games. But recently, especially since the release of the current generation of consoles, the very opposite seems to be coming true. PC gaming has been expanding while consoles falter.

Looking forward to the next Xbox and PlayStation consoles, analysts are predicting $900 as the low end of possible pricing--and that number is seeming more and more optimistic. That's a lot of money to spend for a dedicated machine that, for most console owners, is just used for playing Call of Duty or the latest football game. Consoles are becoming too expensive for all but the most dedicated gamers to justify--especially when gamers in their teens and early 20s have grown up in a world where a console is no longer needed to play the vast majority of games.

While the gaming industry as a whole is still massive, the traditional sector of games are struggling. Games industry sales tracker Circana reported that last year, games spending in general dropped by 4% compared to last year. Hardware spending specifically dropped 27% percent. Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 sales dropped by 70% and 40%, respectively. Nintendo's numbers were bolstered by the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, but still saw a 10% drop. Both PS5 and the current Xbox consoles have seen multiple price hikes in the last 18 months, and the Nintendo Switch 2 launched at $450 in the US, 50% higher than the launch price of the first Switch.

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