It’s all about the court of public opinion.
Microsoft’s new Xbox leader starts to talk strategy for the company’s gaming business.
Xbox is Microsoft’s gaming identity moving forward.
Asha Sharma has a new strategy for her return of Xbox.
Leadership reshuffling signals the mounting pressure on Microsoft’s AI bet.
Dreame plans to build everything from hypercars and hair dryers to China’s Elon Musk. It’ll either win big or go down in flames.
How two Chinese tool brands are becoming household names.
From window shopping and browsing to reviews and recommendations, retailers and tech companies envision a future filled with artificial intelligence — whether shoppers want it or not.
On The Vergecast: how online shopping became boring in an era of unmitigated mass consumption. Plus, what a small nonprofit is doing to save and recycle textile waste.
7
Verge Score
The Find X9 Ultra has the best 10x telephoto lens yet, but would be a better phone without it.
I thought the Vivo X300 Ultra’s extender lenses were a gimmick. Now I’m hooked.
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra and its Leica co-branded special edition are closer to cameras than ever before.
Cook’s relentless optimization propelled Apple’s fortunes to new heights and an era of predictable profitability.
Does Tim Cook’s newly announced successor have what it takes to regain the company’s lost ground in the AI race?
John Ternus inherits a smart home platform that’s been waiting a decade to matter. His first act could be making it happen.
Cook and incoming CEO John Ternus made a computer company the most important audio company of the 21st century.
The conspiracy theorist, on the verge of losing his show, Infowars, to The Onion, has discovered Tim Heidecker’s comedy.
Square Enix just announced a bunch of news for its MMO, including an expansion called Evercold, an Evangelion crossover, and a port for Nintendo’s new console in August. The Switch 2 version will get a month-long (free) early access period, though it sounds like it will have its own separate subscription.
Singaporean police say the suspect was able to obtain the film through unauthorized remote access to a server.
The FCC is giving Amazon conditional approval to import future routers into the US, following its decision to grant Netgear conditional approval earlier this month.
”We remain committed to delivering innovative, reliable products our customers can depend on,” Eero says.
We already reported that Geely, which also owns Volvo and Polestar, is the Chinese automaker best positioned to sell its vehicles in the US. Now the company is reportedly in talks with Ford about that exact possibility — though it seems that negotiations have already stalled. Ford is considering licensing Geely’s tech for its own cars, but there are heavy restrictions on Chinese software in US vehicles.
[Wall Street Journal]
The main highlight is a prequel novel, Baldur’s Gate 3: Astarion, by T. Kingfisher, coming September 29th, plus a notebook, coloring book, and a cookbook, which are all coming out this year.
Publisher Random House Worlds says it plans for the initiative to continue with more titles next year.
If we’re getting a Call of Duty movie, I guess it only makes sense that we get a Battlefield one as well. According to the Hollywood Reporter, EA’s shooter series is being adapted into a film with longtime Mission Impossible director Chrisopher McQuarrie at the helm, and Michael B. Jordan attached as star.
Its latest concept embeds an E Ink panel into the vehicle’s hood making the tech nearly ready for mass production.
The criminal inquiry into Federal Reserve Chair Powell is widely perceived as retaliatory. The DOJ’s decision to end the investigation is also potentially politically motivated, as Senator Thom Tillis was blocking a vote on Trump’s choice to succeed Powell, Kevin Warsh, unless it was dropped.
Verge readers can also save on the latest Theragun Mini using our exclusive promo code.
Super cool to see how Apple’s videos come together. Here’s the actual introduction video from March, if you want to compare.
Samsung foundry workers are threatening to strike next month, demanding higher pay.
Initially, Google will invest $10 billion, but could pour up to $30 billion more into Anthropic if it meets certain performance targets, according to Bloomberg.
Amazon, which had already invested $8 billion in Anthropic before this week, also announced new investments into the company. It invested $5 billion on Monday and could commit “up to an additional $20 billion in the future.”
It’s slightly smaller than the full Cayenne EV, and costs a little bit less, with a starting price of $116,000 that can be specced all the way up to $170,000 for the top trim. It can do 0-60mph in 2.4 seconds while putting out 1,141 horsepower. And it’s 113 kWh battery offers up to 350 miles of range, with a peak charging speed of 400 kW.
A permanent price cut just as Viture’s competing glasses approach their retail debut on April 27th.
That’s new Xbox boss Asha Sharma to Game File’s Stephen Totilo, when asked if there is a timeline for making a decision about how Xbox might change its approach to exclusivity.
Totilo interviewed Sharma and chief content officer Matt Booty following their “We Are Xbox” memo published on Thursday.
[Game File]
The Amazon-owned company is testing robotaxi rides with employees as passengers to and from the Las Vegas airport. The plan is to offer the service publicly in the near future. But as many have noted, it may be tough going in a vehicle without any dedicated storage space for luggage.
Insta360 cameras and Antigravity drones can use Gaussian splats to digitize little chunks of the world.
Organizing playlists into folders was introduced in 2010, but only available on the desktop app. Now it’s reportedly rolling out to mobile users. Tap the + icon in your library, and you should see a new “folder” option. You can even play an entire folder of playlists, or shuffle them.
The billionaire CEO is starting to realize that he needs to solve autonomy before he can have a robotaxi business.
On The Vergecast: What’s next for Apple, the Xbox is back, and the Mythos mythology.
It may have a new design, but there’s still no proof this isn’t vaporware.
As Reuters reports, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre announced plans for a bill barring teens from social media until “January 1st the year a child turns 16,” similar to Australia’s.
“I can now confirm that we are planning to submit a bill to the Parliament before the end of the year. We are introducing this legislation because we want a childhood where children get to be children. Play, friendships, and everyday life must not be taken over by algorithms and screens.”
After moving its Nebula projector lineup under its audio brand last year, Anker has announced through its Chinese social media channels that it’s renaming Soundcore to Anker Audio-Visual, according to Notebookcheck and ITHome. It’s not yet known if this change is limited to China or if there will be a different name as part of a broader global rebranding.
It would add protections for many states, but also likely strip some from others.
Android Headlines spotted an unlisted promo video for the I/O pre-show’s second year, since removed from the Android YouTube channel. Apparently the show will stream at 1PM ET on May 12th, a week before I/O on May 19th, and will tee up “one of the biggest years for Android yet.”
[Android Headlines]
The new Instants app allows users to share disappearing, unedited photos and videos with friends.
OpenAI says its new GPT-5.5 model is its “smartest and most intuitive” model yet. That’s probably true, and yet…
ev:
OpenAI says a lot of things
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
DeepSeek says the V4 model can compete toe-to-toe with leading American systems from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
‘A photograph captures light on a sensor or film. It is a record of a physical moment.’
GitHub uses a queue for developers when lots of people are working on a single project. It’s designed to avoid changes clashing and developers breaking things, but yesterday it failed in a catastrophic way thanks to a bug that randomly reverted previously merged commits (code snapshots). GitHub also had other outages yesterday, on the same day I reported on employee concerns about GitHub reliability and leadership.
He threatened to “put a big tariff on the UK” if it doesn’t drop its tax on the revenue of tech giants, despite the Supreme Court ruling that he can’t actually do that. The president still thinks the tax, which brought in £944m ($1.3bn) last year, unfairly targets US companies.
[The Telegraph]
Prosecutors allege Gannon Ken Van Dyke had sense his Polymarket bets would pay off, since he was part of the operation.
Discord Nitro subscribers are about to get a more limited version of Xbox Game Pass.
Anthropic says the new app connectors are available to all Claude users, ‘with mobile in beta.’
Microsoft has scrapped Microsoft Gaming in favor of Xbox today, and it’s also starting to roll out a new Xbox logo. The new logo started appearing on Microsoft’s campus this week, just in time for Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s all-hands meeting earlier today. The new Xbox logo has a more glassy look, and I understand Microsoft has also been using this new design for some of its internal Project Helix materials.
