Disney and Electronic Arts just announced a multi-year licensing deal in which the gaming behemoth will have exclusive rights to make games in the Star Wars universe. Disney won’t be letting EA have the rights to mobile gaming platforms, but EA does get the rights to make Star Wars games for pretty much everything else.

Since Disney acquired Star Wars, everyone has been simultaneously excited to have George Lucas out of the picture when it comes to the movie franchise and nervous about the future of LucasArts, which Disney decided to shut down last month...

Maybe it’s because electronics are so seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, but only a few people really give their PCs a second thought when it comes to maintenance. Many have never seen the inside of their desktop, or the last time they cracked open the case was to install new components.

Now, you probably know that dust can affect your PC’s performance, clogging fans and insulating your components, making them nice and toasty (some components can heat up by 30+ degrees past normal operating temps when insulated by dust...

In the age of belt-tightening, it makes sense to be smart about your gaming obsession and save some cash wherever you can: switch to a free-to-play MMO, try out that homemade Mountain Dew recipe you found online, and start looking for other ways to trim the fat from your budget.

One piece of cost-cutting wisdom I really think we ought to question is whether or not crafting a DIY gaming machine is really worth the time, money and effort you put into it. We put together this infographic (featuring our new VANQUISH gaming PC line)...

The war between consoles and PCs continues, the attitude coming out of Microsoft seems pretty defiant regarding the public rumblings about possible DRM on their new system. Adam Orth, creative director at Microsoft Studios, has expressed (in a tone-deaf way) that he thinks always-online devices are awesome, and he doesn’t get why you troglodytes are all up in arms about this completely unnecessary and draconian control mechanism over your own property.

Gamers have always been enjoying games that reach literary heights with storytelling. I’m referring to titles like Myst that just pull you in and completely change the way you look at life afterwards. Recently, the mainstream media is starting to take notice that games can also have vivid and detailed story lines. Naturally, the old-guard has gone out of their way to defend “real art” from the invasion of video games...

I’m just telling you right now that you need to stop reading this and go sign up for the ESO beta right now! Then come back and finish this post to find out what you’re in for. I’ll wait…

…Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk turkey. If you’ve been so neglectful of Elder Scrolls awesomeness, or you’ve just emerged from your fallout shelter for supplies and haven’t had a chance to check out the trailer (which is six freaking minutes long!), you need to stop reading...

If Electronic Arts was one of the millions of hosted SimCities dotting the digital landscape, it’s mayor just quit. On Monday, EA announced that John Riccitiello will step down from the CEO position of the company, following news of poor earnings and the massive snafu with the company’s launch of the new SimCity game. However, the CEO’s exit isn’t entirely due to the botched release of Maxis’ highly anticipated sequel in the SimCity franchise...

Anyone who’s been keeping up with tech news and opinion pieces has seen the familiar war of words: “Is PC Gaming Dead?” or “Is This Really the Last Console Generation?” Plenty of exaggeration is thrown around to dramatize the truly relevant question of whether it’s better to play on a console or a PC. But, the answer is actually far more complicated than most of these articles usually let on.

It should be revealed that many gamers don’t limit themselves to just one platform. There’s a spectrum of player preferences out there...

Gamers have high expectations when it comes to their systems, especially when they have the freedom of customizing any hardware configuration in a tower chassis. Due to this, many gamers simply dismiss the idea of using a portable gaming PC because of old myths stating you can’t get any decent performance from such a small and supposedly constricted device.

At Digital Storm, we understand the natural impulse towards a desktop computer versus a laptop when considering performance, but we want to prove that those myths are no longer true.

Earlier this month, I wrote a post featuring the explosive growth of one of competitive gaming’s leagues rising stars, MLG (Major League Gaming), whose popularity can be writ large for the success of the industry in general. The competitive gaming genre has finally pushed its way into the mainstream.

Bungie is hoping to ride its success as the creator of the massive Halo series into a new game with Activision (which just acquired the studio). But will their new game simply be a FPS repeat (as beautiful as their track record has been) or a big flop, as so many new pretenders to WoW’s MMO throne have been? Given the amount of money Activision is sinking into this project, it’s going to be fascinating to see how it unfolds...

Multiplayer based games seemingly drive the industry. In many cases, a single-player campaign seems to be little more than an add-on for delivering a bigger and better multiplayer experience (you know who you are, Call of Duty). Of course, there’s more to the online gaming scene than just first person shooters, and entire professional leagues have grown up around the click-to-attack MOBAs or mouse-twitching RTS games.

Laptops are often considered a second choice for gaming because despite their mobility, there just doesn’t seem to be as much room for tweaking and upgrading when compared to desktops. In truth, this isn’t always the case, and there are some methods that can squeeze some extra power and life out of your gaming laptop.

Major League Gaming (MLG) was founded in 2002 by Sundance DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso, and over the last ten years, they have grown from simple beginnings with a few hundred viewers to a juggernaut of streaming video, famous teams and players, prize pools in the millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of viewers for major championship games.

The MMO gaming industry has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Ever since World of Warcraft claimed the throne, other game developers have made attempts to imitate the successful Blizzard formula with various degrees of success. And let’s face it, when you have 10 million people paying you up to $15 a month, there’s a lot of motivation to capture some of that market.

Running any high-performance system at very high temperatures for too long can lead to decreased performance and shorter equipment life span. Enthusiasts and gamers are always battling against lowering their system temperatures as it allows them to overclock their system while minimizing the risks of damage from prolonged, excessive heat. Since cooling is such an important role, gamers have always felt more comfortable purchasing a desktop versus a laptop...

Women in the gaming industry has always been a subject that can immediately spark some heated discussions, but lately the issue has once again come to the forefront of the community for a number of reasons. Between the awful treatment women are subjected to while playing online and the objectification of female characters in so many games, it’s sometimes a wonder that any women choose to go down this path.

When we know that a gaming session is going to take us into what can only be called “all hours of the night,” many of us turn to energy drinks, coffee, and sugar-filled snacks to make it through the next raid, the next map, or just to find a good save point. Most of us are also well aware that this is far from the healthiest choice we can make, but since it’s so easy and convenient, we fire up our gaming PCs and do it anyways.

Imagine yourself pouring every last bit of effort in your favorite online game, you’re getting so close to winning and all of sudden you get dropped from the server due to a poor internet connection. Gamers go through this scenario one too many times when they’re on a wireless network. This guide will teach you how to minimize lag and maintain a strong and stable connection.

All of those specialized gaming mice with a dozen extra buttons and multiple monitor setups sure would look great with your PC, but are they really going to add value to your experience? A lot of users have assumed that these high-end peripherals are strictly for hardcore gamers, and that you can’t get any real benefit out of them if you’re just interested in casual gameplay. This, as it turns out, isn’t necessarily true, as these peripherals aren’t just about becoming a better gamer.

A high-performance gaming PC can be a real investment, but it won’t do you any good if you don’t perform regular maintenance to keep it in peak condition. Without regular maintenance, some gamers may start to experience intermittent video playback, slow or choppy frame rates, overheating issues, and sudden crashes after using their systems for an extended period of time. A lot of these problems can be avoided with a few simple measures.

Overclocking a processor is the process of pushing the CPU past its factory settings in order to increase the overall performance of your computer. It can be a dramatically large performance boost if your CPU is bottlenecking the rest of your computer components or if you have a SLI or CrossFire graphics card configuration. For the serious PC gamer, this may be just what you need to get an edge on the competition, but overclocking the processor isn’t something you should just jump into without understanding what it is and what it really means for your computer.

Mouse grip styles more than just finding the most comfortable resting position, the way you hold a mouse can have a big impact your game play. This guide will help you determine which type of mouse and it’s grip style will work best for you. In general, there are three basic grips that most gamers employ, depending on personal preferences, type of games played, and what mouse is used.

Triple monitor gaming is getting a lot of attention from serious gamers. Not only does the expanded real estate on a gaming pc create a better sense of immersion for single player games, it can actually give a player a real advantage in online play. The increased perspective that comes from multi-screen gaming is so impressive that some people consider it to be cheating. Whether that’s true or not, seeing so much more of the game environment can certainly change the entire experience....

A storm’s been brewing here at Digital Storm, and this one will be like no other. For the past couple of months our engineering team has been hard at work designing a new gaming computer, one that will be exclusive to Digital Storm and will excite the entire gaming spectrum.

This sleek and aggressively styled product is designed to be a true departure from the big and bulky desktop towers that have become the standard for PC gamers.

A gaming mouse can do a lot to increase your chances in winning and enhancing your gaming skills. While most games let you get by with a standard, two-button, one-wheel mouse, if you want to play competitively you will need to step it up. There are a ton of features that can improve your gaming experience, from the special ergonomics to on the fly DPI-settings and even on-board profile storage. A gaming mouse can make a night and day difference in how enjoyable your gaming sessions can be and is an essential component when tricking o...

While every PC game can work with a standard keyboard, you can gain an advantage by using a keyboard designed specifically for gaming. Gaming keyboards are designed to increase your speed and reactions in real-time strategy games or first-person shooters.

High-performance gaming keyboards are designed to properly output long sequences of actions with custom macros and are responsive enough to maintain an edge in competitive play. There are a ton of options available and after you’ve tried some of these keyboards, you may start wondering how you ever thought a regular keyboard was ever “good enough.”

Diablo 3 was one of the most highly anticipated PC games of this generation. It set a new record for the fastest selling PC game ever, with more than 3.5 million sold in the first 24 hours, and it went on to sell 3 million more throughout its first week. It was originally released on May 15, 2012 in multiple territories, and everyone has, of course, weighed in with their reviews of the game. With the recent release of the 1.0.3 patch, though, this may be the time to take a retrospective look at the game as well as the controversies.

Whether you're a casual PC gamer or a serious competitor, the vast number of options on how you can customize your computer can leave individuals with a special and unique configuration that "works for them." There are countless ways to customize your gaming computer configuration to provide the most immersive experience – you just have to know where to start. Your selection of components will make a direct impact on the overall performance of the PC.

For as long as there have been PCs, there have been PC gamers. Of course, things have changed a lot since back when people were trying to break their high score on a Commodore 64 playing Dig Dug. Even 10 or 15 years ago, the market for a dedicated gaming computer was still just coming into its own. Even then, all we had were basic white box computers for playing solitaire and minesweeper.

We’re very lucky and proud to have such an amazing customer base. Our customers push our engineering teams every day with the most innovative and extreme configurations possible. One of the most exciting parts of being a system builder is taking a dream build that a customer wants and turning it into reality. What’s very special about this is that we’re constantly learning and innovating from such projects.

The New Year is finally here and there’s a storm brewing at Digital Storm! I’m proud to say that we have a ton of great upcoming product launches and new innovative solutions for our customers. We’ve been figuring out what could we do to improve our product line and the customer experience. This year is going to be a great one!

Our team has been burning the midnight oil for the past few months working on something that will truly set Digital Storm apart. I’m talking about something that has never done before...

We're giving away a fully loaded ODE gaming PC to one lucky Facebook fan on December 25th!

The team behind NVIDIA GeForce interviewed Digital Storm and asked us how our top gaming PCs are built, what we thought of SLI, and how anyone else might be able to build one themselves. We covered topics about: Intel's new X79 platform and why it matters to gamers, what system we're most proud of, why our customers choose SLI, tips on building your own system, and what makes us special.

Is it really worthwhile to purchase an expensive Solid State Drive (SSD), will it really make a difference while gaming?

That is a question we get asked so often by our customers I felt it necessary to take some time here at DS unlocked to try and do my best to answer it. SSDs are after all, one of the hottest topics among gamers, whether to adopt or use their money elsewhere in their rig.

Early on, SSDs were so expensive and saddled with such limited storage space that normal gamers couldn’t even imagine purchasing one for their gaming pc, but now, SSD prices have dropped and storage space has increased.

The long awaited release of Battlefield 3 has arrived, and after all the hype and anticipation, a lot of you have jumped in and purchased a copy of one of the best PC games of the year.  A game that isn’t a watered down console version like so many other PC games nowadays; Battlefield 3 is an incredible first person shooter that was built with hard-core PC gamers in mind.

So what kind of hardware do you need to get the absolutely best Battlefield 3 experience possible?