All Popkulturist machines coverage, newest first. Reviews and dispatches on the hardware and AI tools that have entered everyday life and stayed there. Some pieces arrive late on purpose, others while the launch event is still warm — when there's something useful to say before the buzz becomes the story. Tech criticism, not consumer guidance.

Ledger

The Steam Machine Costs $1,049 Because a Data Centre Outbid You

Valve meant to sell its living-room cube for around 750 dollars. It costs 1,049, and the missing three hundred did not go into the machine. It went into a bidding war for memory and storage against the data centres, and you were never told you had entered it. I bought both Steam Decks on day one, and I will be sitting this one out.

Valve's Steam Machine, a small black cube, on a media stand beneath a television
Argument

The Machine Can't Make Your Game. It Can Still Take Your Job.

In March, Electronic Arts laid people off at DICE, the Stockholm studio behind 'Battlefield 6'. The game had come out a few months before as the best-selling title in America in 2025, and sold seven million copies in its first three days. So the sequence reads: ship the biggest game the studio has made in years, then sack the people who made it.

The EA DICE studio building on Södermalmsallén in Stockholm, its glass facade carrying the EA and DICE logos under a clear blue sky
Argument

Franchises Were Always Going to Get AI First

I watched 'Star Wars: The Ghost's Apprentice' on a Tuesday night in February, mostly to confirm it was bad. A guy who goes by Kavan the Kid made it in fourteen days, alone, on off-the-shelf tools: Veo, Midjourney, and Runway. I wanted to roll my eyes and close the tab.

Featured image: a young Jedi with a blue lightsaber in the rain, from the AI-generated fan film 'Star Wars: The Ghost's Apprentice'