The Verge

The Apple Watch SE in its current form looks just like an Apple Watch. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It's impressive watching Apple sell people virtually the same Apple Watch design year in and year out, adding a feature here and there but changing precious little about the way it looks. It's also fine - nobody actually needs to buy a new watch annually, but it does make the yearly refresh sort of ho-hum.But there's something rumored on the horizon that might invigorate things: the plastic Apple Watch SE. I found the rumor intriguing last month when Bloomberg's Mark Gurman set it loose, but haven't thought much of it since. However, today he wrote to his Power On newsletter subscribers that Apple is using plastic to make the watch more kid-friendly," adding that this could allow for a better array of colors." Then it clicked. There's... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge ROMhacking.net, a longtime stalwart of the online classic gaming world mostly turned the lights off on Saturday. Nightcrawler, who created and runs ROMhacking, announced that the site, which has hosted community-made alterations for classic games, has stopped taking submissions and will only post news going forward.ROM hacks like those the site hosted can be as minor as replacing the original Mario sprite with his Super Mario Bros. 3 incarnation, or as thorough as Mario Builder 64, essentially a game in its own right that lets you create your own levels for Super Mario 64, a la Super Mario Maker - a Nintendo series that arguably owes a lot to the ROM hacker community.Hobbyist contributors to ROMhacking regularly submitted tweaks for... Continue reading...

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Judi Dench, Keegan-Michael Key, and Awkwafina are among multiple actors and influencers" whose voices could become part of Meta's AI offering, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The company is apparently working to wrap up deals quickly so it can develop and show off the new voices at its Meta Connect conference in September.Specifically, at least one tool will be a digital assistant product called MetaAI," according to multiple unnamed sources in a New York Times report. Meta is negotiating with all of the top talent agencies in Hollywood to secure the voices, the Times writes. And it may pay the actors who sign on millions of dollars." Meta doled out similarly fat stacks to the celebrities represented by the recently-discontinued Meta... Continue reading...

Image: Warner Bros. M. Night Shyamalan's latest is a pitchy mess about who gets a pass. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Nvidia has reportedly told Microsoft and at least one other cloud provider that its Blackwell" B200 AI chips will take at least three months longer to produce than was planned, according to The Information. The delay is the result of a design flaw discovered unusually late in the production process," according to two unnamed sources, including a Microsoft employee, cited by the outlet.B200 chips are the follow-up to the supremely popular and hard-to-get H100 chips that power vast swaths of the artificial intelligence cloud landscape (and helped make Nvidia one of the most valuable companies in the world). Nvidia expects production of the chip to ramp in 2H," according to a statement that Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo shared with T... Continue reading...

Promotional art for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was the final cover game for Game Informer. | Image: BioWare Following GameStop's sudden announcement that it would be shutting down Game Informer after 33 years - which includes GameStop making all of the work on Game Informer's website disappear and reportedly laying off the entire staff - people across the video game industry are sharing their tributes to the gaming magazine.As someone who grew up poring over each issue, it was such a thrill and an honor to see our games grace Game Informer," said Neil Druckmann, head of creative at The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog and an executive producer on the hit HBO show. Sad that such a staple of our industry is now gone. Good luck to everyone involved. Your work will be missed."Thank you for what you have brought to the video game industry,"... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images Former President Donald Trump has expressed a newfound fondness for Mark Zuckerberg, after years of railing against him.In an interview with Fox that aired on Friday, Trump said Mark Zuckerberg recently called him to apologize" after Meta's AI assistant falsely said the assassination attempt on Trump didn't happen. (A company blog post written by Joel Kaplan, Meta's global head of policy, attributed the erroneous responses to hallucinations" in the system.) In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump claimed that both Meta and Google were RIGGING THE ELECTION!!!" by suppressing information about the shooting.Zuckerberg's apology could help thaw his contentious relationship with Trump, who has long held a public... Continue reading...

The Dear Sydney" ad did not go over well with Olympics viewers. | Screenshot: Google Google is not winning any gold medals for its Olympics ads this year. After days of backlash, the company has decided to pull its controversial Dear Sydney" ad from Olympic coverage.In the 60-second ad, a father seeks to write a fan letter on behalf of his daughter to her Olympic idol, US track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The premise is the sort of treacly ad you'd expect to see at the Olympics, but things take a twist when instead of helping his daughter write a letter, he just has Gemini do it for them. This has to be just right," he says, before prompting Gemini to tell Sydney how inspiring she is, that his daughter plans to break her record one day, and to add a sorry, not sorry" joke at the end.From the get-go, the ad has... Continue reading...

It looks like the SQ8 E-tron, but it's not. | Image: Audi Audi is giving its all-electric Q8 E-tron some premium add-on packages across the lineup as the automaker's overall EV sales are falling quarter over quarter this year.The 2025 Audi Q8 E-tron SUV and Sportback now have a sportier" S line competition appearance package that feels a bit like a parts bin consolidation. It adds body components from the $90,000 SQ8 E-tron, making the vehicle wider, and includes a body-color Singleframe and special 21-inch five-spoke black wheels. It also gets black-painted brake calipers with S branding and door projection lights for the edition.While the package is only launching in Europe right now, the company is evaluating" bringing it to the US as well, according to Audi's product communications... Continue reading...

Image: Riot Games Riot Games is surprise launching Valorant on Xbox Series S / X and PS5 consoles today. After a brief beta period in June, the console version of Valorant will be available in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Brazil and features all the same gameplay, heroes, and abilities as the PC version.Valorant on console won't have crossplay support because Riot Games wants to maintain competitive integrity." That means PC players won't be getting controller support, either. The game will support cross-progression, so any skins and progression will carry over between PC and console. Both PC and console players will also receive simultaneous platform releases, including balance patches, new agents, map updates, premium content, and more. ... Continue reading...

Image: Squid Shock Studios Humble Games restructured" and reportedly laid off its 36-person team last week. The publisher, which is part of the IGN-owned Humble Bundle, started helping developers release games in 2017 and published notable games like Slay the Spire and Signalis. The resulting fallout from the layoffs has left developers working with the publisher uncertain about many plans for future games, leaving their console ports in jeopardy.Amir Fassihi, studio director of Dead Mage, the team behind the in-development Wizard of Legend 2, is worried that the restructuring could impact their project. We do not want to make any changes," Fassihi tells The Verge. However, we're unsure what changes will be forced on us because everyone in the publisher we... Continue reading...

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images Inside the MAGA-fueled fever dream of the 2024 Bitcoin Conference. Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Getty Images Net neutrality is officially on hold after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the rule from taking effect.The court granted a stay, extending an earlier temporary pause. This time, net neutrality will be blocked until the court says otherwise after reviewing the petitions from broadband providers who opposed the rule. Those internet service providers (ISPs) successfully showed they would likely succeed on the merits of their challenge, the panel of judges wrote.The American public wants an internet that is fast, open, and fair," Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement on the stay. Today's decision by the Sixth Circuit is a setback but we will not give up the fight for net neutrality."T... Continue reading...

Image: NZXT Want to get into PC gaming and feel like you don't have enough pricey subscriptions in your life? Desktop PC builder and retailer NZXT can ship you a whole gaming rig for as little as $59 per month - as long as you provide your own mouse, keyboard, and monitor.The Flex subscription program has been available for at least several months, based on NZXT's posts, and the pricing and specs of the machines listed have changed over time. Now, it's updating its three-tiered approach to PC renting with new specs, with its base Player: One entry-level sub running $59 per month for a tower running an Intel Core i5 14400F and Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU. Stepping up to the mid-tier Player: Two costs $119 per month for an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU and RTX 4070... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple announced its latest iPad Pro and iPad Air tablets a few months ago, and after several quarters of soft sales, the new products led to a significant boost for the company's iPad division. Combined with strong performance in services and Mac, Apple posted quarterly revenue of $85.8 billion, up 5 percent from the year-ago quarter. iPhone and wearables revenue was relatively flat as consumers await a new wave of products soon.By the time Apple reports its next earnings, the company will have introduced the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Among other improvements, the Pro models will have slightly larger displays, while the standard iPhones will pick up the Action Button that debuted last year. Those... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Intel's on a long, long road to recovery, and over 15,000 workers will no longer be coming along for the ride. The chipmaker just announced it's downsizing its workforce by over 15 percent as part of a new $10 billion cost savings plan for 2025, which will mean a headcount reduction of greater than 15,000 roles, Intel tells The Verge. The company currently employs over 125,000 workers, so layoffs could be as many as 19,000 people.Intel will reduce its R&D and marketing spend by billions each year through 2026; it will reduce capital expenditures by more than 20 percent this year; it will restructure to stop non-essential work," and it'll review all active projects and equipment" to make sure it's not spending too much.This is... Continue reading...

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images Apple has asked a federal judge to dismiss the Justice Department's antitrust case against it, claiming that the government is asking the court to sanction a judicial redesign of one of the most innovative and consumer-friendly products ever made: iPhone."The DOJ and 16 state and district attorneys general claimed in their March lawsuit that Apple has illegally monopolized the US smartphone market. The government claimed Apple broke the law by maintaining a closed ecosystem for the iPhone in pursuit of profits and at the expense of consumers and innovation. The government pointed to several examples in its complaint, including allegedly suppressing message quality between iPhones and competing platforms like Android and preventing... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge In an interview with CNBC, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the July 19th outage caused by a CrowdStrike update cost his company half a billion dollars in five days. Delta canceled more than 5,000 flights that weekend and had blue error screens still visible at airports days after the initial crash. Among the costs Bastian said Delta incurred were more than 40,000 servers that we had to physically touch and reset" as well as compensation payments to travelers left in the lurch.Asked about a continuing relationship with Microsoft after the crash, Bastian said he regards it as probably the most fragile platform" and asked the question, When was the last time you heard of a big outage at Apple?" He placed some blame on the valuations... Continue reading...

Now that you can actually buy it, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better option for Fortnite Festival than PDP's Riffmaster. | Image: PDP With secondhand Fender Stratocaster guitars for Rock Band 4 still fetching high prices on the resale market nearly a decade later, it's no surprise that PDP's recent Riffmaster controller has been challenging to find. Thankfully, after months of quickly selling out, I'm here to tell you that the PlayStation version is now readily available at Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop for its full retail price of $129.99. The Xbox-licensed version, which works with both Xbox consoles and PC, is also available at Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop for the same price.With an edgier appearance that makes it look like a Brutal Legend weapon, the Riffmaster replicates the functionality of the original Rock Band 4 guitar while sprinkling in some unique... Continue reading...

The 2025 Ford Maverick Lariat in green. | Image: Ford Ford updated its midsize Maverick truck lineup for 2025, including new looks, updated infotainment, and - by popular demand - a hybrid all-wheel-drive option.The hybrid Maverick originally only came with front-wheel drive, so you previously had to opt for the gas-only version if you needed to play pretend F-150 for some tasks (and didn't want to change your whole personality).The new hybrid Maverick still has the same power capabilities as the previous year, even with AWD. It has a 2.5-liter hybrid engine with a 94kW electric motor that outputs 191 horsepower and 155lb-ft of torque. The AWD model gets 40 miles per gallon in the city, while the FWD version gets 42. The truck can hold 13.8 gallons of fuel.The cheapest Maverick, the XL,... Continue reading...

Spectre Divide. | Image: Mountaintop I am getting absolutely stomped in Spectre Divide, the just-revealed 3-on-3 online shooter from a new game studio staffed by talent from Oculus VR, Valorant, Apex Legends, Halo Infinite, and more. I am not good at this free-to-play PC game. But I can't stop thinking about how I might get good - by intelligently swapping between two bodies to outmaneuver my enemies.If only I'd placed my doppelganger here instead of there, I could've had my own back. What if I had teleported my clone behind enemy lines to flank them while I drew their attention elsewhere? Maybe if I'd planted the bomb with one body while camping that door with the other, I'd have caught them unawares?I've never played a shooter like this before - even if, at first, it... Continue reading...