The console industry is in a weird place, and both Xbox and PlayStation have a chance to change the narrative a bit with their showcases at Summer Game Fest. Sony did that by focusing on the single-player titles it’s known for, and then it was Microsoft’s turn.The Xbox Games Showcase was focused mainly on games we already know, but there was also some confused messaging about the company’s exclusivity strategy. Gears of War: E-Day won’t be launching on the PS5, which was a big surprise, but other major first-party titles like Fable and Halo: Combat Evolved are still coming to Sony’s console. That makes it hard to tell just how focused Microsoft really is on exclusives.In a blog post recapping the event, the company said that “Games already announced for multiplatform releases will stick to that plan — we’re committed to investing in and growing Xbox both on console and beyond,” suggesting that future first-party titles will be only for Xbox consoles.The event came at an interesting time for Xbox. Microsoft’s gaming division went through an executive shake-up in April, and new boss Asha Sharma has been making some smaller but welcome changes, while also promising what she calls the “return of Xbox.” Given how confused the Xbox brand has been of late, it seems likely bigger changes are on the way.There were at least a few surprises, though, including a first look at Sony’s Crazy Taxi revival and a very brief teaser for Persona 6.You can follow all of our coverage from the Xbox showcase right here. Fable will be getting a story expansion sometime after launch. Sega used generative AI as part of making the new Crazy Taxi, apparently. A return of Xbox console exclusives. Another look at Call of Duty. Clockwork Revolution is also an Xbox console exclusive. Persona 6 exists, and that’s all we know Spyro’s back. A spooky new Castlevania for October. Fly over some national parks. Microsoft’s Xbox 25th anniversary console comes in translucent green Minecraft Dungeons 2 gets a September release date Crazy Taxi is going on tour. The DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages adds a throwable spear. Back to hell. Bad Magpie looks like Untitled Goose Game with a different bird. It’s not Persona 6, but… State of Decay 3 launches in 2027. Fable launches in late February after recent delay Halo: Campaign Evolved arrives July 28th Gears of War: E-Day isn’t coming to the PS5 The Xbox Games Showcase is starting soon. Xbox and PlayStation have a lot to prove

Remember when the only subscriptions you needed to pay for monthly were the obvious ones? Spotify or Apple Music so you could listen to anything without an ad cutting in halfway through the chorus. Netflix, Amazon Prime, maybe Disney+ for the kids or if you love Marvel. That was the whole list for the average user. You'd glance at your bank statement at the end of the month, wince a little, and then move on with your life. Now, there's a whole new column to worry about. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot, Replit, Lovable, and so on.

The N3 Ultimate doesn’t mind being off center. | Photo by Thomas Ricker / The Verge Sorry Anker: JMGO now makes my favorite flagship portable projector. The N3 Ultimate is an excellent portable 4K projector that defeats moderate ambient light at severe placement angles and can rival more expensive home theater installations at night. After a few weeks of testing, I think the raw adaptability exhibited by the JMGO's N3 Ultimate justifies its current $2,399 price ($500 off its $2,999 list).Modern all-in-one projectors built around Google TV are already super accommodating when it comes to placement. Set one down on a living room table or campsite rock and it will begin searching for a screen or blank wall while avoiding o …Read the full story at The Verge.

Most AI users spend a lot of time optimizing prompts, collecting templates, and searching for better instructions. I did the same for months, assuming a bigger prompt library would automatically lead to better results. Instead, it created more complexity. The more prompts I saved, the harder it became to decide which one to use. Eventually, I stumbled across a different approach that focused less on individual prompts and more on reusable workflows. That shift completely changed how I work with AI. Instead of building a collection of prompts, I started building a system, and the difference was immediately noticeable.

Have you ever wondered what the most indispensable app is for your favorite musician or how the world’s tech CEOs stay focused? Well, that’s the sort of thing we aim to uncover in our Verge Weekend Questionnaire. Think of it as a spiritual successor to Five Minutes on the Verge.Every Saturday, a different guest submits to our rapid-fire menu of questions, and we bring you their unfiltered answers. Subjects come from a variety of worlds. We talk to content creators, authors, politicians, developers… basically anyone interesting. We want to know how they get their work done, how they unplug, and, of course, what GIFs and memes they’re sending to their friends and loved ones.Want to know what legendary designer insists on only opening one browser tab at a time and who holds the Game Boy up as their favorite gadget of all time? Check back each week for all that and more. Benn Jordan longs for the days of tech that didn’t spy on you Welcome to Night Vale host Cecil Baldwin shares his tech pet peeves The man behind the legendary MPC, Roger Linn, stays focused with a single browser tab NPR’s Manoush Zomorodi talks about living with too much tech

PC builders love to say that building a rig is the easy part; the hard part comes later. Maintaining your PC's performance and longevity, so that it always feels like new, is something we all agree on. That said, the habits that actually make that happen are often ignored when they stop being convenient. Deep-cleaning your PC is perhaps the most ignored maintenance tip ever, and I speak from experience. I know I should clean the dust out of my tower every 6 months or so, but I'm too lazy to stick to that frequency. Wiping the dust from the graphics card, RAM, cooler, and the case takes a few seconds, but removing the stubborn dust deposits from every single component is easier said than done. Still, that's exactly what you need to do to avoid overheating and performance throttling. Ignoring this slightly inconvenient maintenance habit is responsible for your sluggish PC. It's also silently stealing lifespan from your components. If you care about protecting your expensive hardware, deep cleaning should be an integral part of your PC's upkeep.

The internet still runs on two addressing systems that don't really get along: IPv4 is the one practically everyone still has to understand, with its familiar four-number addresses, and it ran out of available addresses to hand out years ago. IPv6 is the official successor, first standardized in 1998 and updated since, and despite nearly three decades of deployment work, it's widely used in some places and still absent or only partially implemented in many others. That leaves the internet stuck in a messy halfway house: IPv4-only in some places, IPv6-first in others, and dual-stack across the entire middle. And that's exactly the situation nobody wanted from a replacement to IPv4.

Apparently, the "return of Xbox" means a retreat from other platforms. At its Xbox Games Showcase today, Microsoft revealed that Gears of War: E-Day - which was previously rumored for a PS5 launch in addition to Xbox and PC - will not be coming to PlayStation. It'll be an Xbox console exclusive and is launching on October 6th.The announcement was preceded by a trailer, which opened with a street-level view of an alien attack, with the extraterrestrial invaders being fought off in an urban landscape, including an electronics store and grocery shop. It looked like familiar Gears gameplay: lots of blood and lots of cover. It also may have bee …Read the full story at The Verge.

Sometimes it feels like the very tools meant to boost your productivity end up detracting from it. With all the notifications, messages, and pings coming in, I often find myself checking incoming alerts more than I do actually getting anything done. If you want your productivity helpers to actually leave you alone for once, you can do a lot worse than to build the QuietDash, a Raspberry Pi-powered eInk display that doesn't pester you.

Aitana Lopez, AI avatar by creative agency The Clueless. | Image: The Clueless This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI confusion, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it started At first, AI influencers were relatively easy to identify - and to ignore. Aside from the occasional bursts of hype, they didn't seem to change much about the way social media worked. The earliest virtual influencers - Lil Miquela with her blunt fringe and freckles, Imma with her bubblegum pink bob, and Shudu Gram with her flawless complexion - were obviously digital productions. Collaborations …Read the full story at The Verge.

If there's anything AI has been really good at, it's taking the drudgery out of keeping meeting notes. No longer do you or a designated note-taker need to sit there and write down everything, else it'll be forgotten forever. However, when you attend so many meetings and are inundated with a ton of recaps, you sometimes need a recap recap. Fortunately, Microsoft is working on just that, with a new meeting recap app that ensures you won't miss a thing.

As AI coding shows zero signs of slowing down, code curators find themselves debating the pros and cons of using LLM-generated code. Some projects, such as the Linux kernel, have tentatively accepted AI-created code, while Flathub has flat-out banned it. Now, another open-source project has made its stance clear: it doesn't want AI-generated code, so it's banning all public pulls for the foreseeable future