Technologies

Dune: Spice Wars Early Access Preview — Beautiful but Complicated

This video game brings Arrakis to life in impressive detail, but controlling the planet will take all of your focus.

The timer on my phone pinged me as I crossed my fourth hour in Dune: Spice Wars, and I felt good about my progress. I commanded a massive Fremen army through Sietch Tabr, and my crew of Fedaykin had just reclaimed an area from the Harkonnen. I heard the familiar «for Liet!» as I sent another wave in to support this new outpost, successfully boxing in what was left of the Baron’s forces. What started as a battle of four armies was about to be reduced to two, and the final army hadn’t taken any new territories from me in over an hour. Victory felt close, which was why my heart sunk extra deep when the message that I’d just been defeated unexpectedly filled the screen. While I was busy waging war on the surface of Arrakis, the leader of The Smugglers had bought enough favor within the Landsraad to secure all the support needed to ensure the planet would be under their control for the foreseeable future.

If none of that made sense to you and your only exposure to Arrakis is what you saw in Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 Dune movie, Dune: Spice Wars may not be for you. Like the Dune universe itself, this strategy game is complex in ways I still don’t feel like I fully grasp, even a week after this game in the Early Access form being made publicly available on Tuesday, 26 April. But if you’re already a fan of the generations of stories told around planet Arrakis and have a lot of time to spend on a deep strategy game, you’re going to have a great time even if the computer delivers a sudden and crushing defeat.

A military base surrounded by red sands in Dune: Spice Wars

Dune: Spice Wars starts you off with a choice between four familiar armies: House Arrakis, House Harkonnen, The Fremen and The Smugglers. Each of these armies have essentially the same goal — to control Arrakis through any means possible. And in this real-time strategy game with 4X elements, meaning the goals are to expand, exploit, exterminate and explore, victory can come in one of three ways depending on how you play. You can take the classic strategy route and crush your enemies through sheer overwhelming violence, you can control all of the governing positions of Arrakis and rule as a duly elected leader or you can seek a victory through hegemony and buy control of Arrakis through influence gained throughout a campaign. Neither path is necessarily easier than the other, but your play preference will influence which outcome is the most readily available.
Each army has obvious strengths and weaknesses for each of these victory conditions. The beloved House Atreides makes a victory through governance easier, while Harkonnen could more easily win through hegemony if you took that path. The Smugglers are natural spies and influencers, great at building trust through trade, while Fremen of Sietch Tabr have the unique ability to gain desert power through partnership with other Sietches as you come across them. Each army is more than capable of victory through domination, but that only works in your favor if the other armies aren’t hiding in a corner of the map trying to win through other means.

No matter which army you choose or how you decide to play, once the fight for Arrakis begins you have so much to do. There are constant distractions from the task at hand, from Landsraad council votes to internal rebellions stoked by enemy armies to constant random sandworm attacks. Ignoring any of these things has dangerous consequences: Your enemies might gang up on you and encourage the Landsraad to double your cost to train soldiers or a village may suddenly turn on you and the militia garrisoned there may choose to burn it all down, forcing you to start over again. This is a separate process from maintaining your own intelligence and counterintelligence missions and making sure you have enough resources to keep expanding your empire. Oh, and the longer the game goes on, the more spice needs to be paid to CHOAM or you’ll get new taxes on other resources. It’s a lot, and can become overwhelming late in the game.

A dusty desert landscape in Dune: Spice Wars

This might not be such a challenge to manage if the folks at Shiro Games had seen fit to give this game a proper tutorial. Instead, at the start of your first play-through there’s a set of text and image slides you can click through to explain how it all works. But there are so many different systems and menus that a more interactive and playable tutorial would help you along. More than this, the first couple of minutes in this game are crucial. While you’re reading a tutorial, the other three armies are securing their second spice field. The game deserves a better introduction, and I hope it gets added before this title leaves early access on Steam.

To the credit of the folks at Shiro Games, this game is easily the most faithful to the Dune universe that I’ve played. While the Atreides and Harkonnen need to rely on spice harvesters which need to be rescued at wormsign or conflict from another army, Fremen spice gatherers have no such difficulties. There are some troop types that rely on projectile weaponry, but it’s not the dominant form of combat. There are clear places the sandworms can’t travel, the movement and combat types for each army are varied in ways that make sense and the larger map feels consistent with Arrakis in the books. It’s not perfect — at one point I was playing as the Fremen and spotted a roaming group of soldiers the game had simply labeled «Locals,» which doesn’t make any sense at all — but this is loads better than what Dune fans have had in the past. I also lost a Fedaykin squad to a sandworm attack, which is technically possible in the context of the world but feels extremely unlikely given who the Fedaykin warriors are.

Dune: Spice Wars is fun even when I’m losing, but I’m also very much the target audience here. I’ve been reading these books for going on 25 years, and many of my teenage evenings and weekends were spent playing Dune II, Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune. I get a genuine kick out of being able to zoom in and see an Ornithopter scanning a new area, or watching a Harkonnen hit squad fire up their half-shields before rushing into battle. But if I’m being totally honest, I don’t have time to dedicate 5 hours to a game on a regular basis, so I’d love to be able to jump into a quick skirmish where the only victory condition was domination. This game is great if you’re a huge Dune fan who also loves 4X strategy games and has a lot of time on your hands, but that venn diagram doesn’t have a ton of overlap. I hope Shiro Games uses the time in Early Access to at least address the learning curve so it won’t push away what audience it has.

Technologies

Why Are Switch 2 Games So Expensive? Trump’s Tariffs May Not Be Sole Factor

It still comes down to money.

Wednesday’s reveal of the Switch 2 had a lot of buzz from Nintendo surrounding its successor to the Switch. One shocking bit, though, was the high price of its games. There’s a lot of confusion, especially with news of President Donald Trump’s increased tariffs on many trading partners, including Japan.

After the Switch 2 Direct, Nintendo released the full details of the upcoming console and games on its website. The price of Mario Kart World shocked gamers and led to some disdain, as the $80 MSRP was $10 more than what most new games cost today. This led many to wonder if this would be a new normal for game prices due to Trump’s tariffs or if Nintendo was just being greedy. The answer, however, might be something completely different.

Are Nintendo Switch 2 game prices hiking?

To start, some details need to be cleared up. Some people have posted on social media that the price of Nintendo’s Switch 2 games, at least in the US, will be $90. That is incorrect, as of right now.

One X user posted Switch 2 EU prices for Mario Kart World, which start at 80 euros for a digital version and 90 euros for the physical copy. Typically, US and EU games match in price, which caused some to assume that this pricing would be the case for the US.

Nintendo Switch 2 games will be more expensive physically than digitally.
Mario Kart World will be 90 freaking euros phisically. pic.twitter.com/iXuRwzlFqH

— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) April 2, 2025

US retailers, however, already posted their Switch 2 game prices, and Nintendo-published games are listed at $80.

Will Trump’s tariffs cause the Switch 2 to cost more?

As for Trump’s tariffs, that is unlikely to be a driver of this price bump. Tariffs are not applied to digital goods, and when the prices were published, there were no tariffs on Japan. Plus, games are similarly expensive in other countries like Canada and the UK.

With that cleared up, why are Nintendo games on the Switch 2 so expensive? One likely reason is game storage.

Read More: All the Nintendo Games You Can Update to Switch 2 for Free

The Switch 2 uses what Nintendo calls game-key cards, which are Switch 2 cartridges that don’t have all the game data on the cartridge itself. This helps save on production costs as storage is expensive. The original Switch cartridges went up to 32GB of storage, which doesn’t seem like a lot these days, with some games taking up 100GB or more of storage, but this is for the original Switch. Only a few games, like The Witcher 3, went above 32GB because the graphics for the Switch weren’t on the high end like with a PC, PS5 or Xbox Series console, where a Witcher 3 install size starts at 50GB.

Switch 2 games are going to be bigger in size — there is little doubt about it. CD Projekt Red confirmed it would put its Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on one 64GB cartridge, and there will likely be other games to surpass that 64GB. With the max size of the cartridge doubling in size, it adds to the price of the physical card, as not only does storage have to be bigger, but they will need to transfer data faster. That can get more expensive for physical copies, unlike optical discs, which are still the same price whether it has 20GB or 100GB on the disc.

What does all this mean for gamers?

This leads to a dilemma for publishers: Put the entire game on the physical card and sell it at a loss, increase the price of the physical copy with the full game on it or use the game-key card to have a card with minimal storage, requiring gamers to download the entire game.

Read More: The 17 Best Nintendo Switch Games Right Now

It appears that Nintendo went with door No. 2. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, knowing the company. Anyone who wants to save money on games knows that Nintendo will seldom bring the price down of its own games. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, for example, is 8 years old and is still full price on Nintendo’s website.

According to an industry analysis from Niko Partners, this new pricing could become the new normal in a couple of years when it comes to physical cartridges.

«While there has been some sticker shock regarding the price of games increasing from $60 to $70 or $80, these price points are set to become industry standard over the next two years, especially so for Nintendo first-party games,» Niko Partners said in a statement Wednesday. «One reason for the higher price is the increased cost of the new and faster Game Cards themselves, with higher capacities being more expensive to manufacture than a PS5 Blu-ray disc.»

Nintendo didn’t respond to a request for comment about the higher price of its games.

That said, this doesn’t explain the lower price of Donkey Kong Bananza, which comes out in July; that’s listed on Nintendo’s site for $70. This could mean the game isn’t using a larger storage card, but that can’t be said for sure until the game comes out. It’s unclear how things will change in the future.

Technologies

Nintendo Switch 2 Pre-orders in US Delayed Due to Trump’s Tariffs

The Switch 2 launch is still happening on June 5, and preorders outside the US seem unchanged.

Nintendo Switch 2 preorders in the US were to start April 9, but it appears those plans have changed due to the new tariffs imposed this week by President Donald Trump. It’s unclear if this means Nintendo will also have to increase the price of the Switch successor, which currently starts at $450.

Nintendo said Friday that it’s delaying Switch 2 preorders in the US, but its June release date is unaffected.

«Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions,» the company said in a statement. «Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.»

Nintendo didn’t indicate if preorder dates outside the US would change, but Eurogamer reports that preorders are live at various retailers in the UK.

A tariff of 24% has been applied by the US to goods from Japan. Were that rate to be applied directly to the Switch 2’s announced price, it would rise to $558, but it would be up to Nintendo how much of the tariff it will pass on to consumers.

This is a developing story.

Technologies

Twelve South’s Foldable Wireless Charger for iPhone and Apple Watch Is Up to 27% Off at Amazon

This handy accessory makes it easier to travel with your Apple gear and stay charged wherever you go.

Whether you’re traveling for business or off on a wonderful family vacation, charging your stuff shouldn’t be something you have to worry about. Taking extra chargers and cables can be a pain, and they all take up space in your bag. But the handy Twelve South Butterfly SE charger is a compact alternative that can wirelessly charge an iPhone and an Apple Watch at the same time. And it’s available with up to 27% off right now at Amazon.

That top line discount applies to the pink version, though the white model is only $7 more and other colors are seeing 15% off the usual $100 price tag if you have a strong preference. It’s not clear how long the discounts will last, though.

Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.

The charger itself offers a way to wirelessly charge a iPhone and Apple Watch from a single AC outlet, and you can even charge your AirPods when your phone is done, too. And because this is a Qi2 charger you’ll get a full 15 watts of wireless charging for compatible devices — including the best iPhones.

When you’re not using the Butterfly SE, it folds up so it can be slid into a pocket, bag or luggage without taking up too much space. It really is the perfect partner for people who like to travel light.

Unfortunately, this charger doesn’t come with an AC adapter in the box, so you’ll need to provide your own. Make sure it’s rated for 20 watts or more. If you need to buy one, Apple’s 20-watt USB-C charger is just $15 right now.

Why this deal matters

We all carry multiple devices around with us these days. Anything that can make charging them more convenient is a win in our books, especially when you’re traveling. This charger takes up little space when it isn’t being used and charges quickly when it is.