The Verge

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Epic Games will let developers keep 100 percent of their net revenues from the Epic Games Store for six months if they choose to make their games or apps exclusives for that time through its new First Run program, the company announced on Wednesday.Typically, Epic lets developers keep 88 percent of their revenues, with the company taking a 12 percent cut. For developers who launch a product through First Run, the split will return to 88 / 12 once the six months are up.Developers who choose to participate in the Epic First Run program will see a few other benefits as well. Epic says First Run games and apps will be presented to Store users with new exclusive badging, homepage placements, and dedicated collections" and will be featured... Continue reading...

Samsung's gaming hub. | Image: Samsung Samsung says it's planning to bring cloud gaming apps to its 2020 smart TVs later this year. Samsung made the announcement during a Gamescom event earlier today, but it's not yet clear which 2020 smart TV models will be updated with cloud gaming apps, nor an exact release date outside of later this year."Today, we are thrilled to announce that we will expand cloud gaming apps to our 2020 model-year TVs later this year, giving tens of millions of players access to their favorite games and services," said Mike Lucero, head of product for gaming at Samsung.Samsung originally launched its gaming TV hub for its 2022 smart TVs and monitors last year with built-in cloud gaming apps before bringing separate game streaming apps to its 2021... Continue reading...

We've tested and reviewed every laptop on this list ourselves. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Here are the best laptops for video editing of every shape, size, and price point. Continue reading...

Image: @ZGFTECH via X Somebody has already unboxed a VR headset that is almost certainly Meta's Quest 3, even though the device isn't supposed to launch until sometime in the fall.You can see a video of the unboxing in this video on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The device comes in a brown box, and you can see the person who is filming the unboxing pull out the headset and the two Touch Plus controllers. Everything looks exactly like what Meta showed off when it announced the headset in June.

Unlike the latest iPad, the 2022 iPad Air works with the second-gen Apple Pencil and is only $50 more. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge It's anybody's guess whether or not Apple will release a new iPad during its rumored September iPhone 15 event, but if you need one now, the latest iPad Air has thankfully returned to its all-time low price. You can currently buy the Wi-Fi-enabled iPad Air with 64GB of storage for $499.99 ($100 off) at Best Buy in all five shades. The tablet's also on sale over at Amazon, although it's only in stock in a few colorways.Considering the latest 10th-gen iPad sells for just $50 less, the iPad Air offers a lot of value for your money. We think it's the best iPad for most people for many reasons, like the fact that the Air works with the second-gen Apple Pencil, unlike that 10th-gen iPad. At the same time, it comes equipped with a faster... Continue reading...

Image: Google Google spent big money to score the rights for NFL Sunday Ticket and bring the popular service to YouTube and YouTube TV this season. So it makes complete sense that you're about to start seeing Sunday Ticket plastered all over the company's major platforms as Google looks to maximize that investment and make sure everyone is keenly aware of Sunday Ticket's new home and expanding features.If you have a recent Chromecast or a TV in your living room that runs Google TV - think Sony, TCL, Hisense, and others - that heavy promotion will be starting as early as today. Sunday Ticket will be getting prominent placement on the Google TV homescreen.Starting this football season, NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV will be fully... Continue reading...

Peloton said in its Q4 2023 earnings call that a recent bike seat recall was costlier than expected. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In its latest earnings call, Peloton reported a net loss of $242 million for the quarter. It also lost 29,000 subscribers from last quarter and had a higher-than-anticipated monthly churn of 1.4 percent. While some of that was attributed to summer doldrums, Peloton noted that costs for a recent bike seat post-recall substantially exceeded" initial expectations to the tune of $40 million. An estimated 15 to 20 thousand members also chose to pause their subscriptions ahead of receiving replacement seats.But speaking of recalled products, Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy said in its quarterly shareholder letter that the company plans to resume US presales of the Tread Plus this holiday season for a retail price of around $6,000. (For context,... Continue reading...

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images The first GOP primary debate ahead of the 2024 presidential election is taking place tonight in Milwaukee. Most of the Republican Party's top candidates will be onstage vying to overtake Donald Trump's top polling position while the former president is reportedly skipping the event.We won't know what questions will be thrown at the candidates until they're asked, but The Verge will be watching for any mention of how the nomination contenders set themselves apart on major tech issues, like banning TikTok, data privacy, and breaking up Big Tech.How do I watch tonight's Republican debate?Previous debates have been simulcast across a variety of major networks and cable channels, but Wednesday's event will be exclusively aired on Fox News,... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge WhatsApp will soon let users create new group chats without having to name them, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced. Unnamed groups will instead be given an auto-generated name based on their participants. In a screenshot shared by Zuckerberg, we can see one such group titled Rocco & Li-Chen."Although it's a minor feature, not having to name each and every group chat should be helpful for those times when you're sending group messages for one-off events. I'm personally in a dozen or so WhatsApp groups that are just titled Drinks?" which were set up for a one-off event and were never intended to be an ongoing group chat. Being able to see a list of participants in the chat list rather than a nondescript group chat title feels like... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge A London jury has found that a teenage member of the Lapsus$ hacking group carried out the high-profile cyberattacks on Rockstar Games, Uber, and Nvidia, according to a report from the BBC. The Southwark Crown Court jury found 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj guilty on 12 counts, including blackmail, fraud, and several violations of the UK's Computer Misuse Act.Kurtaj was arrested several times within the past two years but continued to carry out cyberattacks on several companies, such as Nvidia, by using social engineering and SIM-swapping techniques. London police arrested Kurtaj for the final time in September 2022 after he violated bail conditions that banned him from using the internet.According to the BBC, prosecutors told the court that... Continue reading...

Two years ago, we told you how Qualcomm was eying the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, building a reference design that eventually morphed into the Razer Edge. And while Razer's handheld was eventually hamstrung by truly ridiculous pricing, Qualcomm is now building three new chips to replace the previous one.Today, the company's announcing the Snapdragon G Series handheld gaming portfolio" with three distinct tiers: a Snapdragon G1 for game-streaming handhelds with over 10 hours of battery life on Wi-Fi, a Snapdragon G2 for full-featured mobile and cloud gaming" with 5G, and the Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 to start chasing PC gaming handhelds on performance. Image: Qualcomm The G1 tier is Wi-Fi 5, G2 adds Wi-Fi 6 and... Continue reading...

The Mythic I is a computer, but it's nothing like your computer. Computers used to be made out of wood, endlessly customizable, and totally personal. Now they're all metal rectangles. Can one guy in his LA house help bring the old way back? Continue reading...

Image: Rob Flaherty, Biden 2024 deputy campaign manager There's no escaping him. Dark Brandon," Joe Biden's undying alter ego, has appeared on everything from baseball caps to crop tops. Now, his menacing red eyes are staring out from the FoxNews.com homepage - where the first GOP presidential debate is set to stream later tonight.Throughout the entire day, Biden's reelection team will be running an ad campaign featuring the meme on the Fox News website. The ads call attention to Biden's campaign promises to protect abortion rights, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and defend social security, as first reported by People magazine Wednesday.Tax cuts for yacht owners?" one ad reads. Good luck with that, champ." There he is. The Dark Brandon" meme is being pushed... Continue reading...

Cloud III Wireless versus Cloud II Wireless. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge My colleague Cameron Faulkner called the HyperX Cloud II Wireless among the most comfortable headsets I've worn." Today, HP is announcing its successor - the Cloud III Wireless - and I'm happy to say it's better in most every way.When I heard the new Cloud III Wireless would offer quadruple the battery life at 120 hours versus 30 hours, I figured there had to be a catch.It's rare that a product just... gets betterBut after hours comparing the Cloud II and Cloud III side by side and back to back, I haven't heard, seen, or felt one yet! The new PC, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch headset does cost $20 more, weighs an extra ounce, and not everyone will appreciate the additional padding - but it's got the same balanced, punchy sound... Continue reading...

India is now the first nation to successfully achieve a soft landing near the Moon's southern pole. | Photo by INDRANIL MUKHERJEE / AFP via Getty Images India's Chandrayaan-3 mission has made space travel history today by successfully achieving a soft landing near the south pole of Earth's Moon, just days after Russia's Luna 25 spacecraft crashed while trying to land in the same region. India is now the fourth nation to achieve a soft Moon landing and the first to have successfully touched down on the lunar south pole - a little-explored area of the Moon that's believed to contain water ice.Three other nations - the US, China, and the former Soviet Union - have all previously achieved a soft landing near the Moon's equator, a safer region with (comparatively) amiable temperatures and terrain and reliable sunlight to recharge solar-powered instruments. During a live stream of the... Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI has announced that businesses can now fine-tune GPT-3.5 Turbo using their own data - OpenAI claims the resulting custom model can match or exceed the abilities of GPT-4 for certain tasks. Later this fall, the company says it will open up the arguably more advanced GPT-4 for the same purpose.Fine-tuning lets businesses essentially hone ChatGPT to a more focused model that's especially efficient for certain tasks. The supervised training would make a bot that's unique to the client company so that it offers, say, reliable responses in a specific language or with more concise wording. Until now, business customers were limited to GPT-3 variants for this, like davinci-002 or babbage-002.The model would come pre-trained, like GPT-4,... Continue reading...

HBO and Max content leader Casey Bloys. | Photo: Warner Bros. Discovery HBO and Max content leader Casey Bloys is coming to the Code Conference next month to discuss the state of streaming and the company's big rebrand with Vox senior correspondent Peter Kafka.Bloys spent nearly two decades working on HBO's programming and has overseen a parade of critical and cultural hits, from Game of Thrones to Succession. Now, he has to expand that sensibility to include programming that fits in the context of Max - the much broader new streaming service that includes a world of content from DC, Discovery, Food Network, and more.The platform's transformation into Max comes as streaming services are finally starting to feel some pressure. Their days of rapid growth and endless content budgets are behind them, and... Continue reading...

Photo by Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images Google has made clear it is going to use the open web to inform and create anything it wants, and nothing can get in its way. Except maybe Frank Sinatra. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft Paint could be the next Windows app to get the AI treatment. According to a report from Windows Central, Microsoft is exploring ways to bring AI-powered features to the app in Windows 11, which could include the ability to generate a canvas based on a text prompt.Sources tell Windows Central that the AI feature will be powered by the same technology behind Bing's Image Creator, a tool that spits out an image based on your description. You can see how the integration might look in what appears to be an internal mock-up posted by Windows Central.The image shows a Magic Paint" button, along with a sidebar that lets you enter a description of an image for it to generate. It seems like you can then transfer that image to your... Continue reading...

Vehicles and housing structures are partially submerged after Tropical Storm Hilary flooded a community of unhoused people on August 21st, 2023, in Cathedral City, California. | Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images Disasters have no borders, and a summer of unexpected catastrophe across the US shows it. California is notorious for drought and fire, not tropical storms like Hilary that barreled over Los Angeles this week. The East Coast expects hurricanes, not the pollution nightmare triggered by smoke that drifted in from blazes hundreds of miles away. Hawaii's native greenery isn't supposed to burn, and yet fires engulfed Maui.Climate change is sending new calamities to new places - a phenomenon that can be observed not just in the US but all over the world. It's piling disaster upon disaster on communities figuring out how to adapt to these new realities. Often, they're faced with some new crisis while still recovering from a previous one.C... Continue reading...

Image: Clay Enos / Netflix Zack Snyder is heading far from Earth for his next film. The director of 300 and Justice League just revealed a teaser trailer for Rebel Moon, a sci-fi movie coming to Netflix in December. This is the first proper look at the film, though Netflix previously released a behind-the-scenes featurette at its Tudum event in June. Today's trailer was revealed as part of Gamescom Opening Night Live in Germany.Rebel Moon appears to be Synder's attempt at creating his own sci-fi epic. Here's the basic premise:

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is surprise launching Age of Empires IV on Xbox Series X / S and Xbox One consoles and Xbox Game Pass today. The latest game was announced for Xbox consoles last year with a 2023 promise, and Xbox Cloud Gaming players will also be able to stream Age of Empires IV.Age of Empires IV originally launched in late 2021 on PC, and Microsoft added the title to its PC Game Pass service. Microsoft has added a tutorial to the console port of Age of Empires IV, which helps players get used to the controller layout. There's also optional cross-play multiplayer support between PC and Xbox players and full keyboard and mouse support.Real-time strategy (RTS) games aren't an obvious fit for consoles and controller play, but Microsoft released... Continue reading...

Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge Microsoft Designer, the company's free AI-powered design tool, is now broadly available to Edge users in the US. This means you can access Designer from Edge's sidebar, allowing you to generate designs without opening up a separate tab or program.After launching Designer last year, Microsoft announced in April that it would build the tool into Edge. The integration lets you create a number of designs, such as social media posts, fliers, greeting cards, invitations, and more - all from Edge's sidebar.Once you enter a prompt, Designer's AI will pull up a grid of suggested designs, complete with text and a photo. You can also tweak any of these designs to your liking, whether you want to swap out a photo, add an illustration, or change... Continue reading...

Image: Level Infinite The Command & Conquer series is getting another mobile game. The new title, Command & Conquer: Legions, offers a reimagined storyline," a new approach to strategy gameplay" that opens endless strategic possibilities," and includes iconic heroes and villains, factions, and a vast array of units" from the series, according to a blog post.Legions is set to launch later this year on iOS and Android. There will be a closed beta test on Android that kicks off this month in Australia, Canada, France, Mexico, New Zealand, and the Philippines.The game is being released by Level Infinite, which has reached a licensing agreement with Command & Conquer owner, EA. Level Infinite is also working on Assassin's Creed Codename Jade, a mobile entry... Continue reading...

Image: Bungie The first saga in Destiny's universe is coming to an end with an epic battle between light and darkness. Destiny's light and darkness saga has always been about The Traveler, a mysterious entity in the universe of Destiny that hangs motionless in the sky as a source of light for Destiny players. Now, The Traveler is asking Destiny 2 players for help, and it's time to answer that call on February 27th.A mysterious enemy, The Witness, has already entered The Traveler, and now, Destiny 2: The Final Shape players will have to venture inside to help defeat The Witness. What awaits inside is the Pale Heart, a first linear destination that's unlike anything we've seen in Destiny during its nearly 10-year history. Image:... Continue reading...

Photo by JC Olivera / Getty Images Opening Night Live 2023 will have over two hours of trailers and announcements. Just don't expect too many world premieres. Continue reading...

Image: Suzanne Tenner / Lucasfilm Ltd. At this point, live-action Star Wars shows are no longer novel. In fact, it's getting pretty crowded out there, with everything from the ongoing adventures of The Mandalorian to series like Andor, Obi-Wan, and The Book of Boba Fett. So, a new story like Ahsoka needs to do something a little different to stand out from the ever-growing pack. And in its first two episodes, the series manages to do just that by focusing on a very specific and important part of the Star Wars mythos: mystery.The show starts out like classic Star Wars, complete with a title crawl (this time in red text) followed by a massive spaceship slowly making its way through the inky expanse of space. The story - which takes place roughly during the same period as The... Continue reading...

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Netflix won't charge DVD.com customers for any discs they still have after September 29th, the company announced from its DVD.com account on X on Monday. That generous offer, combined with Netflix's recent announcement that it may send customers as many as 10 extra discs from their queues, means that some people might end up with a bunch of disc copies of movies, courtesy of Netflix.DVD.com customers will need to visit a special link on DVD.com by August 29th to apply for the promotional offer. Netflix will then send up to 10 random discs based on the movies in the subscriber's queue.

The Atari 2600 Plus. | Image: Atari Atari has announced it's relaunching its most well-known console as the Atari 2600 Plus on November 17th for $129.99, with preorders open now. It's a fully functioning, 80 percent scale, HDMI-outputting version of the console that comes with a 10-in-1 game cartridge. Atari says it even supports both 2600 and later 7800 game cartridges and will work with the original joystick and paddle controllers.Aside from being a little smaller and gaining HDMI and USB-C ports, the 2600 Plus is mostly unchanged. The front bears a strip of wood paneling with a light-up Atari logo, while four toggle switches flank its cartridge slot. Atari says the cartridge socket is a little bigger to help with sticking cartridges. On the back by the HDMI and USB-C... Continue reading...

Image: Xbox Microsoft has shared the minimum PC specs you'll need to play Forza Motorsport when it's released on October 10th. While it looks like it'll be playable across a range of PCs (in addition to Xbox Series X / S consoles), you'll still need some high-end specs if you want to play the game on ultra settings.Forza Motorsport can run at native resolutions up to 4K and beyond," as it also supports ultrawide resolutions. The game lets you leverage Nvidia's DLSS 2 and AMD's FSR 2.2 upscaling technologies. But if you're looking for DLSS 3 support (or DLSS 3.5, now), a blog post says, We will continue to optimize and improve Forza Motorsport on PC after launch."Additionally, it offers shader pre-compilation and pre-caching that should mitigate... Continue reading...

We'll likely get a proper look at the cameras soon if Philips officially unveils them at IFA. | Image: Philips / FCC The first images of what are believed to be Philips Hue's new home security cameras have emerged online, just a few weeks after rumors first emerged that the company was entering the smart home security market. First spotted by the German-language tech site Hueblog, at least two of the four speculated camera models have now been granted regulatory approval by the FCC.The registration documents contain some technical details alongside a breakdown of the cylindrical camera unit. The images show the black variant (though a white model will also supposedly be available) both with and without a battery unit. The battery adds some considerable length to the camera if you're not looking to buy the wired version.According to a warning... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Microsoft announced a restructuring of its proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition earlier today that involves transferring cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft. It's a big change in Microsoft's $68.7 billion deal that's designed to appease UK regulators that blocked the acquisition earlier this year, but it might also trigger a refresh review from the EU.The Commission is carefully assessing whether the developments in the UK require another notification to the Commission," says European Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta in a statement to The Verge.Another notification to the EU could signal a further review of a deal that regulators at the European Commission cleared earlier this year.... Continue reading...