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The Xbox Games Showcase gives us a glimpse at future offerings from Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda, and Xbox partners. Here are the big announcements in games, release dates, and more:Call of Duty Black Ops 6Tweet may have been deletedThe showcase kicked off with a first look at Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Set in the Gulf War era after the fall of the Soviet Union, the latest CoD installment will feature new maps and...zombies. The game releases October 25. Following the showcas

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Humanoid robots are one of those dreams that sometimes feel like we’re on the precipice of realizing. Boston Dynamics has its Atlas robot, and Tesla is pursuing robotics, while companies like Mercedes, Amazon, and BMW are or will be testing robots for industrial use. But those are all very expensive robots performing tasks in controlled environments. In the home, they might still be far off.Enter Apple. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg has said its robotics project

Image: Microsoft Game Studios It’s a mad world once again. At its Xbox Games Showcase at Summer Game Fest, Microsoft revealed the latest entry in the sci-fi shooter series: Gears of War E-Day. It’s being developed by The Coalition, Xbox’s internal studio dedicated to all things Gears. The game doesn’t currently have a release date, but it being built on Unreal Engine 5.
The announcement trailer harkens back to the classic “Mad World” commercial for the origina

Microsoft’s holiday lineup of new Xbox consoles. | Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making the white version of the Xbox Series X official today. The new console option won’t include a disc drive, and will be entirely all-digital. Inside it’s identical to the Xbox Series X, with the same performance for existing Xbox games. This new white model will be available with 1TB of storage later this year, priced at $449.99.
Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed the new white Xbox Series X d

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is making the white version of the Xbox Series X official today. The new console option won’t include a disc drive, and will be entirely all-digital. Inside it’s identical to the Xbox Series X, with the same performance for existing Xbox games.
Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed the new white Xbox Series X during the Xbox Games Showcase today, alongside a 2TB “Galaxy Black” version of the original Xbox Series X. There’s also a 1TB Xbox Ser

Image: Microsoft Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is arriving on Xbox and PC on November 12th. The next installment in the legendary franchise will include hot air balloon trips, aerial firefighting, and much more.
During the Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 developer Asobo showed off commercial flight, air ambulances, and even aerial advertising. Asobo has been working on adding a variety of new planes to the game, and you’ll even be able to fly as part of a search and

Image: Xbox Game Studios Microsoft is officially putting a release window on Fable, which is now set to arrive at some point in 2025. After an initial trailer at last year’s Xbox summer showcase, today, we got to see some early gameplay, though the new footage was mostly focused on the characters and story of the fantasy game. Fable will be centered on a hero named Humphry, who “will be forced out of retirement when a mysterious figure from his past threatens Albion’s very exis

Image: Microsoft It’s been four years since we first found out that a new Perfect Dark game was on the way, and now Microsoft has revealed the first gameplay during the Xbox Games Showcase today.
The new Perfect Dark is a reboot of the original game, being developed by The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics. In the gameplay trailer we got a first look at Joanna Dark in a near-future Cairo setting. “Team Perfect Dark has pulled inspiration from elements of the first two games, but crafte

Image: Bethesda Softworks The Fallout games have seen a big boost in popularity since the live-action TV series, and Fallout 76 is primed to take advantage of that with its next major expansion. It’s called Skyline Valley, and for the first time, it will actually expand the game’s map, introducing a new Shenandoah region in the south. Bethesda says that players will “investigate the cause of an electrical storm circling overhead and unveil the mystery around Vault 63 where they

Image: Bethesda Softworks Bethesda’s sci-fi universe is about to get bigger. Bethesda has finally unveiled Shattered Space, the first major expansion for Starfield, which comes nearly a year after the open-world RPG debuted. Based on the first trailer, it has a much darker tone than the main Starfield campaign. No release date was revealed, but it’s coming sometime in 2024.
Here’s the official premise:
A mysterious power stirs in the city of Dazra on House Va’ruun’s

Image: Bethesda Softworks The rumors were true: the next Doom is heading to a dark fantasy realm. At Xbox’s big June showcase event, id Software officially unveiled the next entry in the demonic shooter series, which is called Doom: The Dark Ages. As the name implies, it takes the franchise back to a medieval-like era, with the slayer killing enemies in a more fantasy realm. In that way, it seems to serve as a prequel of sorts. It still looks as gruesome and gory as ever, though. Also, you

Image: Activision Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will debut on October 25th, according to an Xbox store listing. The next installment in the popular franchise will be set in the early ’90s, and it will launch day one on Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service. Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Black Ops 6 will include a new campaign, a multiplayer mode with 16 new maps at launch, and a new zombies experience.The main campaign is set in the early 1990s af

This could be you. | Image: Ikea Corporate publicity stunts involving virtual reality are almost always bad, but Ikea’s new Roblox store feels especially silly. The company announced last week that it plans to pay 10 people £13.15 or €14.80 per hour to work in The Co-Worker Game, a virtual Ikea store in Roblox. The company is taking applications until June 16th, only from candidates in the UK or Ireland who are 18 or older.
Being paid to be an NPC. What a world. The virtual empl

Image: Microsoft Microsoft is back with another Xbox Games Showcase this year, and this time around, there’s a Call of Duty direct straight after the main show. This is Microsoft’s first Xbox Games Showcase to feature games from across Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda, and Xbox Game Studios, as well as third-party titles.
I think this is going to be a big Xbox showcase, with a runtime that could approach the two-hour mark. Get ready for new game reveals, lots of release dates, and some

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge At last month’s iPad Pro M4 launch, Tim Cook said it was “the biggest day for iPad since its introduction.” That was pretty clearly not the case: it was a day of really nice incremental hardware updates to a tablet that already had more power than most people know what to do with.
But Cook’s proclamation could still be true, at least in retrospect. Apple just needs to stick the landing and use WWDC to show us a powerful operatin

Image: David Pierce / The Verge Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 41, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope you like gaming gadgets and silly spy movies, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about the tough times at Humane and how Suicide Squad flopped, watching the TikTok dancing cult documentary and Furiosa, swapping my crappy Roku for a slightly less crappy Appl

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times' revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player's flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections &mdas

TL;DR: Pack up for your next adventure with help from the Saris Bones EX 2-Bike Trunk Rack, now on sale for $199.99. You can also get the 3-bike model for only $30 more.Headed on a camping trip or looking to hit some trails this summer? The Saris Bones EX Trunk Rack lets you easily transport two bikes to your favorite trails, parks, campgrounds, and scenic routes for just $199.99 (reg. $229).This trunk bike rack is light at only 11 pounds, which makes it easier to work with and install. Its uniq

Shopping for a laptop is already hard enough due to the sheer number of options. But your task gets even more difficult when you need a laptop for a very specific purpose, like photo editing. This demands even more research and scrutiny on your part, which may sound like a tall order. Talk about analysis paralysis.If you're in the market for a photo editing laptop and are having a hard time making the final decision, you're in luck, because we're here to help you choose something you'll love. In

In the realm of cybersecurity, "best VPN" and "paid VPN" are effectively synonyms. VPNs (aka virtual private networks) that are completely free to use do exist, but it's reasonable to assume that using one means maybe having your data logged and sold (or leaked) or downloading an app bundled with malware. They need to keep the lights on somehow. A general rule of thumb is that paid, premium VPNs are the safest and most reliable VPN services out there (and we've got our own favorites). But there