The Verge

Logitech’s cloud gaming handheld has Xbox integration. | Image: Logitech Logitech is officially announcing its G Cloud Gaming Handheld today after a teaser and a leak last month. The Android-powered $349.99 handheld will arrive in North America on October 17th, with access to the Google Play Store, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Nvidia’s GeForce Now service. While you’ll be able to play Android mobile games, the focus is really on cloud gaming, and the handheld has been engineered this way to provide 12 hours or more of battery life.The Cloud Gaming Handheld has a seven-inch 1080p IPS touchscreen with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 60Hz refresh rate. The white handheld includes two offset analog thumbsticks, a D-pad, and Y, B, A, and X buttons. There are also four buttons at the front: Logitech G, home, menu, and a context... Continue reading…

RGB colors on Xbox Elite 2 controllers | Image: Microsoft Microsoft now fully supports RGB colors on the Xbox button of its Elite 2 controllers. While platforms like Steam have offered color options for the Xbox button on Elite 2 controllers, Microsoft is now natively supporting this on its own Xbox consoles in a new September update issued today.Xbox owners can pick from 16 million different hues for the Xbox button on Elite 2 controllers and even different saturation levels. It comes just as Microsoft starts shipping its new $129.99 Xbox Elite 2 Core controller today. Image: Microsoft You can pick from 16 million different colors. Alongside the controller customization, the September Xbox dashboard update also includes a redesigned Full library view that includes... Continue reading…

Vampire Survivors is slightly increasing its price ahead of leaving early access. | Image: Poncle When it was announced that Vampire Survivors — a darling of the indie gaming community — is increasing its price on September 21st ahead of its V1.0 release, some folks may have expected the worst. Thankfully, its developer, studio Poncle, has now announced that the game’s list price on Steam will increase by a paltry $2, bringing it to $4.99 starting at 6PM ET.That means there’s still time to grab the game for $2.99, the price it’s been since entering early access back in December 2021. Studio Poncle says that the decision to increase prices ahead of the game’s full release was to “keep the option open to eventually enter some of the usual seasonal sales.” The game is also available on PC Game Pass, with no mention of any plans to... Continue reading…

Image: EA EA has announced a number of deals about major teams and leagues being featured in the newest — and final — FIFA game. Now, we have news of a fake team — AFC Richmond, the fictional club from Ted Lasso, will be playable in FIFA 23. The team will be available in a handful of modes, including career mode, where you can take on the role of a polygonal Ted Lasso as manager. The club’s stadium, Nelson Road, will even be featured in the game.Human actor Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent in the show, said in a statement, “It is so f***ing cool to be in FIFA. I’m not sure this is going to help dispel the CGI rumors but f*** it, totally worth it.” FIFA 23 is due to launch on September 30th on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Stadia. It’ll be the... Continue reading…

Image: Disney The first trailer for Disney’s Strange World introduced us to its pulp sci-fi style of adventuring — and now we have a better look at the family who will actually be doing the exploring.The latest clip from the film reveals three generations of explorers led by a reluctant Searcher Clade (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is living in the shadow of his famous father (Dennis Quaid) while traveling with his adventure-obsessed teenage son (Jaboukie Young-White). Also along for the ride are Gabrielle Union as an ace pilot and Lucy Liu as some kind of presidential figure.Just as important, the trailer gives a closer look at some of the weird sci-fi elements of the movie, including flying schools of jellyfish-like creatures, bright pink dinosaurs, and a... Continue reading…

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge In June, I wrote that to build trust, platforms should try a little more democracy. Instead of relying solely on their own employees, advisory councils, and oversight boards, I wrote, tech companies should involve actual users in the process. Citing the work Aviv Ovadya, a technologist who recently published a paper on what he calls “platform democracy,” I suggested that social networks could build trust by inviting average people into the policymaking process.I didn’t know it at the time, but Meta had recently finished a series of experiments which tried to do just that. From February to April, the company gathered together three groups across five different countries to answer the question: what should Meta do about problematic... Continue reading…

Volvo’s Concept Recharge, released in 2021, is meant to preview the upcoming EX90 SUV. | Image: Volvo Volvo announced that it will unveil its new flagship electric vehicle, the EX90 SUV, on November 9th. The EX90 is meant to replace the company’s current flagship, the gas-powered XC90 SUV, as Volvo transitions to an all-electric car manufacturer by 2030.In the run-up before the announcement, the Swedish automaker teased a number of interesting features, including long-range lidar and in-car sensors to detect when a driver may be distracted or intoxicated.The new technology, some of which will come standard in the vehicle, is designed to boost Volvo’s reputation for safety at a time when the auto industry is leaning more on high-powered sensors and AI-powered software to prevent fatal traffic collisions.Volvo says the new EV will... Continue reading…

The Amazon Fire HD 8 in blue. | Image: Amazon Amazon is announcing a quartet of new 8-inch Fire tablets today led by the Fire HD 8, which the company claims is 30 percent faster than its predecessor from 2020. Its starting price is also $10 more expensive at $99.99 this time around. Alongside the Fire HD 8, the ecommerce giant is also announcing new Fire HD 8 Plus, Fire HD 8 Kids, and Fire HD 8 Kids Pro tablets. They’re all available for preorder today for $10 more than before and will ship next month.Aside from the speed increase, with the new Fire HD 8 being powered by an unspecified six-core rather than a quad-core processor this time around, the new tablet’s specs are very similar to the 2020 model. (Amusingly, Amazon also said its 2020 model was 30 percent faster than its p... Continue reading…

The Netgear Wi-Fi 6E USB adapter comes with a docking station for better placement. | Image: Netgear Netgear is releasing its most capable networking USB dongle yet, the first one that can add the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard to many modern PCs. The company’s new $89.99 Nighthawk A8000 is a USB 3.0 adapter that can easily add interference-free 6GHz wireless connectivity to laptops or desktops.While plenty of laptops and devices have been released in the past year that are capable of Wi-Fi 6 (5GHz), only the latest ones are shipping with higher bandwidth Wi-Fi 6E. If you’ve already upgraded your router, then the Nighthawk will connect your existing devices to a dedicated 6GHz lane. It still runs at a maximum 1,200Mbps, just like 5GHz Wi-Fi, but it’s more likely to consistently hit those high speeds on the new frequency. I... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Twitch is reducing how much money it shares with some of the biggest streamers on the platform.Right now, the majority of partnered streamers receive a 50 / 50 revenue share on subscriptions to their channel. That means 50 percent of net revenue goes to Twitch, while 50 percent goes to the streamer themselves. However, Twitch has negotiated premium subscription terms with some bigger streamers that give them a 70 / 30 revenue split, and that split is what’s going to change.The changes kick in on June 1st, 2023Under the new policy, streamers with premium terms will keep 70 percent of their subscription revenue on the first $100,000 earned. But after that, the share will go down to a 50 / 50 split. The changes kick into effect on June... Continue reading…

Nick Barclay / The Verge Starting Wednesday, TikTok is expanding its elections rules to make it harder for politicians and political groups to fundraise using the platform — and plans to ban all fundraising activity soon. The changes come only six weeks before the November midterm elections.In a blog post, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, said the company would immediately turn off all advertising and monetization features, like gifting and tipping, for politicians and parties on the platform. Additionally, accounts belonging to governments, politicians, and political parties will have to apply for verification.TikTok expects to roll out a sweeping ban on campaign fundraising“By prohibiting campaign fundraising and limiting... Continue reading…

Figma’s new ownership sparks an outcry within the digital design community. | Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge The world of creative technology was rocked last week by news that industry giant Adobe had acquired Figma, makers of a hugely popular suite of UI and UX design tools, for a whopping $20 billion. The response from designers was immediate — and for the most part, extremely negative.Figma has been hailed as an underdog success story, having been designed from the bottom up with approachability and teamwork in mind. It offers premium features such as real-time collaboration on a free-to-use basis and browser-based accessibility that allows entire teams of people to work together across platforms from potentially any device. It’s also one of the strongest rivals to Adobe XD, Adobe’s own UX / UI design application, which hasn’t been able to... Continue reading…

LG’s unreleased rollable. | Image: 뻘짓연구소 More than a year after LG unceremoniously exited the smartphone business and abandoned plans to release a rollable smartphone, a lengthy hands-on video has given us a comprehensive look at the unreleased device. LG’s rollable cropped up in a short clip earlier this year, but this new video is far more comprehensive, showing off the phone’s design and features from every angle.What I find most surprising is just how finished the device looks. Although LG had said it wanted to release it before the end of 2021, I’d always assumed this was an ambition rather than a concrete plan. But this hands-on video appears to show a device that’s almost ready to be shipped to stores, complete with final-looking retail packaging and a case accessory. X... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge As the conversation concerning Twitch and the platform’s allowance of gambling streams continues to swirl, the platform has struck its first blow. In a tweet on Tuesday evening, Twitch stated that it will ban “streaming of gambling sites that include slots, roulette, or dice games” in a policy update effective October 18th.

The haptics could come at a cost. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge iOS 16 added a feature that finally lets you turn on haptic feedback while typing, meaning you’ll feel a small vibration under your fingertips every time you press a key on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard. But those small vibrations might come at a price: in a new support document, Apple says that turning on the haptic feedback could affect your iPhone’s battery life (via 9to5Mac).Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t specify how much the setting could change your battery expectancy; the note on the support page only says that “turning on keyboard haptics might affect the battery life of your iPhone.” While I can’t imagine the haptics are too much of a battery drain, if you’re looking for ways to save as much battery as possible, turning off the... Continue reading…

Spectrum Vehicles van. | Image: Charter Communications A judge slashed a $7 billion ruling down to closer to $1.15 billion in the case of an 83-year-old woman who was stabbed to death by a Charter technician in 2019. Dallas County Court Judge Juan Renteria did not specify why he reduced the amount in his decision (pdf). The company says it will appeal.According to lawyers for the family of Betty Jo McClain Thomas, the massive award was assigned by a jury in July for two reasons: “systemic safety failures that led to the robbery and stabbing death of an 83-year-old woman by a cable repairman and for using forged documents to try to keep a jury from hearing the lawsuit.”Jurors found Charter Spectrum tried to use a forged document to force the case into arbitrationCharter submitted a terms... Continue reading…

This is the old version. The new one will fill in based on how much battery you have. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple’s latest iOS 16.1 beta addresses a major complaint about the battery percentage indicator that was introduced with iOS 16: now, the battery icon will be filled in based on how much juice it actually has. The battery percentage still appears within the icon, which personally isn’t my favorite design, but now the whole thing looks a lot closer to how it should have been from the start.Here’s an example of the revised indicator from a colleague running the newest iOS 16.1 beta. Users in the iOS beta subreddit shared examples as well. The battery, at 76 percent, is mostly filled in. The improved indicator isn’t the only battery status update. iOS 16.1 beta 2 can also show the battery percentage above the time on... Continue reading…

Image: Netflix Sonic Prime, Netflix’s upcoming animated series about Sega’s speedy blue blur, will be released sometime in “winter 2022,” according to a new teaser trailer for the show released on Tuesday. Previously, we had known that Sonic Prime would be out this year, and now we have a slightly more specific window for when the show will actually be available to stream.At first glance, the new trailer doesn’t reveal too much about the show itself; we can see that Sonic will be fighting Shadow, one of his many rivals, as well as the villainous Eggman. (Big the Cat also makes another appearance.)But text in Tuesday’s trailer mysteriously teases that Sonic will “shatter your world.” That line appears to reference the show’s multiverse aspect,... Continue reading…

Windows 11’s 2022 Update is available today. | Image: Microsoft The first major Windows 11 update makes the renovations feel more complete Continue reading…

The slow-burn of escalating on-screen chaos in Vampire Survivors is part of its beauty. Also, the sound of the gem pickups is incredibly satisfying. | Image: Poncle If you play games on PC or own a Steam Deck, the time is now to pick up Vampire Survivors. The indie megahit is inching very close to its 1.0 release, but before that, the price is set to increase tomorrow, September 21st. Developer Poncle has not yet disclosed what the full price of the game will be, but it’s going to be higher than the current $2.99 you can get it for on Steam.Vampire Survivors launched in Steam Early Access back in December, and it’s remained that cheap, even as it grew a huge following and the developers added much more content to it through frequent updates. It’s also available to subscribers of Microsoft’s PC Game Pass, but this is your last chance to get it on Steam for about the price of a cup of coffee.If... Continue reading…

The claimed performance improvement of DLSS 3 in Cyberpunk 2077. | Image: Nvidia During today’s launch of its RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 cards, Nvidia has given an early look at the next version of its Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says DLSS 3 can boost performance by up to four times compared to simply rendering at native resolution.Nvidia says more than 35 games and applications are already integrating the technology, with the first games expected to launch in October. DLSS 3 will be exclusive to the latest RTX 40-series GPUs.In a demonstration, Nvidia showed off how DLSS 3 was able to boost the framerate of Cyberpunk 2077 from under 30fps to around 100fps. With its older DLSS 2 tech, performance was only boosted to around 60fps. In a second demonstration, M... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The Bulwark, a US political news and analysis site, has quietly started using AI to help illustrate its articles. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a publication use machine learning art generators in this way, but it is, to this reporter’s knowledge, the first time said publication has not made a whole song and dance about it — which is significant news.In the past, magazines like The Economist have turned their AI-generated covers into cover stories, or writers have accidentally become stories through their use of AI illustrations. But, as far as we can see, The Bulwark hasn’t even publicized this change. Instead, it’s just started doing it — a sign of a maturing technology. The news was spotted by Wagner James Au on his blog and... Continue reading…

The Chevy Equinox EV will likely be among the vehicles purchased by Hertz. | Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge General Motors is teaming up with Hertz to expand the number of electric vehicles available on the rental car company’s platform. GM announced it will sell 175,000 EVs to Hertz over the next five years, a deal that the companies are calling the largest of its kind yet.The new EVs will come from all of GM’s brands, including Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, Buick, and BrightDrop, the automaker’s commercial vehicle division. The announcement follows a similar move by Hertz to purchase 100,000 vehicles from Tesla and 65,000 EVs from Polestar.One of the major barriers to mass adoption of electric vehicles is cost. EVs are just way too expensive, with the average price hitting an all-time high earlier this summer of $66,000. That’s disappointing... Continue reading…