I’m not ready to call time on the “everything is an Xbox” strategy just yet, but you have to admit: Valve launching a home console that plays PC games does feel like a potential problem for Microsoft.
MrCraggle:
RIP to whatever Xbox was turning into.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Hideo Kojima’s two games are getting an anime series, Death Stranding Isolations, on Disney Plus in 2027.
Kojima will produce, with Takayuki Sano of E&H Production directing, and the announcement promises “a traditional, hand-drawn 2D animation style.” It’ll follow two new characters in the Death Stranding world, but that’s all we know.
The wearable company offers paid blood tests to US users through its Advanced Labs feature, which launched in September. But now users worldwide can upload their blood results into the app for free, and see biomarkers alongside their daily data. Whoop-organized tests will roll out internationally “in the coming months.”
Apple just updated its compatibility page for Apple Intelligence, and erroneously swapped every Mac to “M2 and later.” MacRumors spotted the goof, which is only live on the US site, and deduced that it was probably an effort to update the Vision Pro entry to account for the new M5 model.
Everyone’s expecting an imminent release for the new Apple TV and HomePod Mini, so yesterday’s surprise product drop sparked some excitement. But I’m not sure a high fashion phone pouch with Issey Miyake was quite what they had in mind.
Technostalgic
Me: Patiently waiting for the new Apple TV and HomePod mini announcement.
Apple: Here’s a sock.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Android Authority spotted a new home screen toggle in an Android Canary build. Google shrunk the mandatory widget a little earlier this year, but users want the option to remove it entirely. Then again, Google tested this toggle in 2023 too, and never gave it a release.
[Android Authority]
The same AI tech that powers Google’s NotebookLM can now be used to generate two to 10-minute podcast-style summaries of PDFs in Drive. It’s English-language only for now, and limited to Workspace users and subscribers to Google’s One AI Pro and Ultra plans.
[Workspace Updates Blog]
The ¥55,000 (about $355) console is approximately 25 percent cheaper than the standard discless edition, but requires a Japanese PlayStation account, is region-locked, and only offers the Japanese language too. Still, all that money saved will go a long way towards buying a cheaper Japan-only version of the Switch 2 to go alongside it.
