Clive, much like this deal, is on fire. | Image: Square Enix With so many major game releases happening this year — and even this week — you could almost forget that a new mainline Final Fantasy dropped just a couple of months back. Well now, it’s already on a sizable sale. Final Fantasy XVI is selling for $49.99 ($20 off) at both Amazon and Best Buy, its lowest price yet.Final Fantasy XVI is the most gritty and blood-soaked installment of the series to date, taking a chapter or three from George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones when it comes to sex and political intrigue. It may be rote to describe it as “this ain’t your daddy’s Final Fantasy,” but once you hear main protagonist Clive drop some f-bombs, it will be clear. The game also brings some interesting new twists on series mainstays, like... Continue reading…

Image: Annapurna Interactive Stray, the hit Annapurna Interactive game starring a cat, is getting a “feature adaptation” from Annapurna Animation, according to a press release. Annapurna didn’t share much else about the movie — we still don’t know when it might come out or what it might look like — but if you were a fan of the game and looking for another way to experience the game’s universe, now you can look forward to this upcoming film.In the press release, Annapurna also said that it plans to adapt more Annapurna Interactive titles in the future, though it didn’t specify which games might be turned into movies or shows. Scrolling through the studio’s list of games, there are a lot of good candidates, though; perhaps a Kentucky Route Zero miniseries? A Donut... Continue reading…

“Sincerely Accra” is a part of the Gold Coast Report podcast network. | Image: GCR This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.Hope everyone has had an enjoyable Labor Day weekend. For today’s issue of Hot Pod, I have a Q&A I conducted with Afripod’s chief content officer and head of strategy, Kevin Y. Brown. The African podcasting platform — headquartered in Kenya — is considered the largest in the continent and is in the middle of an interesting partnership with radio stations. I got to hear Brown’s thoughts on the new initiative and — as well as how Afripods is spreading awareness of podcasting as a medium throughout Africa. I also have a lightning round of deals and announcements for today’s issue. Since I’ll be off for the rest of the week, Hot Pod will... Continue reading…

Whether you need a powerful and reliable speaker for your home or you want something that can come with you on your adventures, the Tronsmart Bang Max portable party speaker is up to the task. The Bang Max delivers the sound quality power to function as your at-home go-to speaker but is lightweight enough to toss in your bag and bring along.

Apple products tend to offer excellent hardware and software qualities. So when you buy an iPhone or one of the excellent Macs, you're investing in a device that should work reliably and last you for years to come. Though usually, the company's cables aren't as durable, and you may need to buy several units during an iDevice's lifetime. Fortunately, there are plenty of Lightning cables available out there, and we've highlighted the best ones below.

A dredger shoots sand onto a beach in France. The boat pumps sand from offshore sand bars before shooting it back onto beaches in an effort to fight erosion. | Image: NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP via Getty Images People are dredging an alarming amount of sand from the seafloor, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned today. An average of 6 billion tons of sand are taken from marine environments every year, according to a new global data platform from UNEP.That comes out to more than 1 million dump trucks of sand extracted per day to make concrete and glass, build new artificial beaches, or replenish eroding coastlines. The pace is getting even more untenable, putting increasing pressure on marine life and coastal communities. “It’s not sustainable.”“It’s not sustainable. The amount of sand that we are withdrawing from the environment is considerable and has large impacts,” Pascal Peduzzi, director of a UNEP center for analytics... Continue reading…

Samsung's foldable phone lineup has come a long way from the original ones that were released a few years ago. The Galaxy Z Flip 5 and the Galaxy Z Fold 5 both represent the best of what the company has to offer right now in the foldable phone space, and they are — in many ways — superior to their peers in the same segment. They have drastically different designs, but their differences go beyond just their folding mechanisms.

Unified messaging platforms, or chat aggregators, are a great way to keep your growing list of messaging apps in check by letting you access and manage multiple apps from one place. This can help you streamline communication across different services and even devices. Beeper is one such unified chat app that I use on my phone and laptop to manage a whopping amount of messaging apps from a single hub.

That’s Android with a capital A, sir. | Image: Google Google is releasing a grab bag of updates to its mobile apps and services, including an At a Glance Google Assistant widget, enhancements to its Lookout visual accessibility app, and Zoom calls in Android Auto. This comes with a side of branding updates designed to remind us that Android is fun but also a serious Google product. It all arrives as we anticipate Android 14’s imminent release, which is a slightly less exciting milestone when you realize that most new Android features come throughout the year in updates like this rather than in one big OS platform upgrade. Image: Google At a Glance surfaces useful things like current weather updates and travel info. The new At a Glance widget takes a useful Pixel... Continue reading…

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge The best from Apple, Bose, Samsung, Sony, Beats, Google, and more Continue reading…

Image: VW How do you tweak a classic hot hatch for the electric era? If you’re Volkswagen, you simply announce that the “I” in GTI now stands for “intelligence” instead of “injection” and call it a day. Just kidding. Obviously, VW went much further in unveiling the new GTI concept, or ID.GTI, which had its official debut at IAA Mobility in Munich this weekend. The reinterpretation of the 1976 original GTI has a lot more state-of-the-art tech and an electrified powertrain. But moreover, it could signal the future of this particular form of quick-footed hatchback. The VW ID.GTI is just a concept, but a production version will be coming to Europe at some future date. The US market may be part of the mix as well, but time will tell. The VW ID.GTI... Continue reading…

Not our finest moment. | Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge Baldur’s Gate 3 sounds like a fantastic single-player experience. I wish I’d tried that instead of playing with my closest friends! This isn’t about difficulty: I fully expected to be beaten, shot, stabbed, and otherwise destroyed for taking on enemies too fast. I just wish developer Larian had designed a multiplayer experience that gave me the first freaking clue what’s going on. Want to make sure you don’t miss an important conversation that might determine the course of the game? Better make sure you’re watching your companions’ character portraits on the left of the screen like a hawk! At any moment, they might click on something or walk somewhere that triggers a cutscene, and a tiny conversation indicator is the difference... Continue reading…