Aaron Souppouris

Editor-in-Chief

Aaron Souppouris has been writing about design, technology, video games and culture for more than a decade. (Like, way more – his first feature was published on Gaming Age in 1998.) After three years at The Verge, Aaron moved to Engadget in 2014 as a senior editor, reporting on everything from VR to immortal bacteria, before becoming features editor in 2017. As features editor, he ran a small team that won a Society for Features Journalism award in 2019 for its profile of Impossible Foods. After five years as Executive Editor, Aaron became Editor-in-Chief of Engadget in 2025.

Articles by Aaron Souppouris

A strong Intel is what the tech industry needs right now
Intel can now show that it has a plan. It hasn’t chosen the easiest route, but it’s one that, if executed properly, can lead it back to the top. And its vision will most likely be welcomed — let’s hope it can actually follow through.
The best gifts for the PC gamer in your life
Here's a list of the best gaming mice, gaming keyboards and other accessories to gift to the PC gamers in your life.
Analogue's latest retro dream is an all-in-one TurboGrafx console
The Duo focuses entirely on NEC's home console hardware, offering compatibility with every TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine game produced.
Pokémon Sword and Shield's second expansion arrives October 22nd
The second expansion for Pokémon Sword and Shield, "The Crown Tundra" (TCT), will arrive on October 22nd. TCT will take players to a new wintry area of the Galar region named for the expansion’s title. The news dropped during a presentation on The Pokémon Company's YouTube channel, which also detailed a new “Galarian Star Tournament” available in the update.
Capcom wants to bring 'Resident Evil Village' to PS4 and Xbox One
Resident Evil Village could join the growing list of next-gen games also coming to current-gen consoles. At its Tokyo Games Show presentation, Capcom announced that the eighth mainline Resident Evil game may make its way to PlayStation 4 and PC. "While Resident Evil Village is being developed specifically for next-generation consoles and PC, we're looking into delivering the experience on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as well," a Capcom producer said via a translator.
'Microsoft Flight Simulator' is getting a Japan-centric update next week
At its Tokyo Games Show event, Microsoft today announced a major free update to Microsoft Flight Simulator. Appropriately, the update adds a lot to the experience of flying in Japan. Six cities, including Tokyo, are getting improved with 3D photogrammetery, more handcrafted Japanese airports are on their way and 20 landmarks throughout the country are also being added in high resolution.
Confused about which console to buy? Just wait.
After months of speculation, we now have a clear picture of the next-gen consoles. If you haven't decided which to get, maybe you simply don't need one yet.
Grimes, FKA twigs and Twice's Chaeyoung give art talks for Google
After two million people listened to musician Maggie Rogers narrate an ASMRy video about Van Gogh's Starry Night, Google has released a second season of Art Zoom. The project combines the Google Arts & Culture division’s photography with wispy narration from musicians, and the first set of videos last year also featured Feist on Bruegel, Jarvis Cocker on Monet and Girl in Red on Edvard Munch. The 1975 frontman Matty Healy gets into Mondrian’s abstract art, K-pop group Twice’s Chaeyoung narrates Yoo Youngkuk’s Mountain, while Grimes covers Bruegel’s The Fall of Rebel Angels.
NVIDIA's RTX 3000 cards make counting teraflops pointless
With NVIDIA's first RTX 3000 cards arriving in weeks, you can expect reviews to give you a firm idea of Ampere performance soon. Even now, it feels safe to say that Ampere represents a monumental leap forward for PC gaming. However these cards stack up, though, it’s clear that their worth can no longer be represented by a singular figure like teraflops.
Analogue's portable Pocket console is delayed until May 2021
It's been nine months since Analogue announced the Pocket, a $199 portable console that can play Game Boy, Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket Color and Atari Lynx games from original cartridges. The console was scheduled to launch in 2020, but Analogue now says, due to the “unfortunate global state of affairs and supply chain challenges," the retro portable will ship in May 2021. The Pocket, like all of Analogue's consoles, is built around a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip.
Microsoft's next-gen Xbox promise was trouble from the start
Microsoft has, since the launch of the Xbox One X in 2017, been able to claim that it sells “the most powerful console.” It’s a claim that will extend into the next generation, as the Xbox Series X’s CPU and GPU are, in terms of raw compute, stronger than the PlayStation 5’s. For the Xbox One X, this has meant that cross-platform games almost always look or run better than they do on the PlayStation 4 Pro.
AMD's 4700G APU is a mid-range PC on a single chip
It's been a year since AMD's Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 CPUs changed the desktop PC market, with best-in-class productivity and "good enough" gaming performance. One area has been left behind, though: desktop APUs, which combine a processor with integrated graphics. Today that changes, as AMD is announcing a family of "4000G" APUs for desktop PCs.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla made me want to visit East Anglia
Ahead of Ubisoft's Forward gaming event, the company offered us some remote demos of two of its AAA releases this year. While my colleague had no issues playing Watch Dogs Legion, my substandard internet connection meant my session with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was taxing. After losing its way with back-to-back-to-back releases in the early-to-mid ‘10s, 2017’s Egypt-based Origins was a return to form for the Assassin’s Creed series, followed a year later by the similarly good Odyssey, which mapped mainland Greece and its many Aegean islands.
It doesn’t matter what the PS5 looks like
The PlayStation 5 is an unattractive piece of tech. Next to the clean, utilitarian and purportedly more powerful Xbox Series X, it's not a great look for Sony.
Nintendo adds monthly subscription to 'Fire Emblem Heroes'
Fire Emblem Heroes (FEH) is Nintendo's mobile money-maker. The free-to-play RPG has pulled in, according to SensorTower, $656 million since its release three years ago -- over $200 million more than all of Nintendo's other mobile games combined. That money train is running out of steam, though, and Nintendo wants to curb that with a $9.49 monthly subscription plan called Feh Pass. Despite being the company's most-successful mobile title in 2019, revenue was down significantly to $156 million, which is almost half that of the $295 million revenue from its 2017 launch year, and 23-percent down on the $205 million it made in 2018. This is a fairly normal pattern for a gacha title. Gacha games rely on a small number of high-value users spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on in-game currency (Orbs, in FEH's case). As the number of users playing a game drops, the number of high-value users typically drops in tandem.
Shure's first true wireless earbuds are the Aonic 215
Pro-oriented audio company Shure has launched a new consumer wireless audio line called Aonic at CES 2020. The Aonic 215 true wireless earbuds and Aonic 50 wireless noise-cancelling cans will both arrive this spring, and represent the brand's first real push for a slice of the high-end consumer wireless headphone market.
Sony can't build smartphone camera sensors fast enough
Sony is struggling to keep up with demand for its image sensors, according to a Bloomberg report. Although smartphone sales have largely plateaued in recent years, manufacturers appear intent on squeezing an ever-increasing number of cameras into our phones. This has led to a corresponding rise in sensor orders.
Sega's Genesis Mini is just $45 today
Following years of shoddy third-party consoles, Sega took matters into its own hands and produced a replica console worthy of the Genesis name. The Genesis Mini has everything we look for in a miniature: a faithful design, a great collection of games and solid performance. It scored 89 in our review back in September, with praise for its large selection of titles, faithful emulation, high build quality and intelligent interface. The only negatives we found were the controllers (they're fine, but we would've liked to see the six-button rather than the three-button controllers) and that some games don't quite hit the mark.
The Fujifilm X100F is on sale at $900
We love Fujifilm's X100F, but it's definitely not for everyone. It's a fixed-lens APS-C camera best suited for street photography, blending the excellent 24.3-megapixel X-Trans sensor found in mirrorless models like the X-T2 with a 23mm (35mm equivalent) f/2 lens. As is par for course with Fujifilm cameras, you'll find a ton of traditional dials for controlling ISO, aperture and exposure compensation. The X100F is also fairly flexible, with a hybrid viewfinder that can operate like a rangefinder, a traditional EVF or a blend between the two. One thing it's not, though, is cheap. At $1,300, you've always had to really want the X100F to even consider buying it. What about $900, though? That's the price it's just dropped to on Amazon, and... I'm very tempted.
How to set up a phone or tablet for a child
The days of simply remembering to buy some AA batteries are over. Parents now spend more time in the lead-up to Christmas and birthdays performing system updates and charging controllers than wrapping boxes or installing batteries. But there's another wrinkle in gifting electronics to children that, if you don't get right, will make your life way more difficult than it needs to be: family controls. While it's not for me, or anyone, to dictate your parenting style, I am constantly surprised at how poor a grasp my friends have on their children's electronic lives. Every horror story about a kid racking up hundreds of dollars of in-app purchases is absolutely preventable, and, when used correctly, family plans and controls can serve as a solid way to educate your family on online safety, controlled spending, the power of advertisements and other aspects of digital wellbeing. My family uses iPhones and iPads, so this article will largely focus on those devices, but Google has a similar suite of options for Android, which I'll briefly touch on and link out to for more information.

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