Sonos customers unleash frustrations over redesigned app in community AMA

Photo: Sonos A week after introducing a redesigned, sleeker app that omitted many core features, Sonos held an Ask Me Anything event on its forums today. The purpose was partly to make it clear that customer frustrations are being heard. But as has been the case since last week, the feedback skewed overwhelmingly negative. This company’s community remains pretty damn angry over losing software capabilities like local music search, sleep timers, and more with no warning.
Many participants a

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

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

Screenshot: YouTube Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got its first official trailer yesterday, revealing that the Mutant Mayhem spinoff will debut August 9th, with a 12-episode run on Paramount Plus. And from the looks of things, it’s just as gorgeous as the 3D-animated movie it sprang from.
The new trailer sees the four brothers split up by a mysterious villain named Bishop and forced to fight murderous robots without the help of their siblings. Bishop herself appears in the bell

During last night’s Major League Baseball telecast on Apple TV Plus, a grounder bounced off the right hand of Los Angeles Dodger player Enrique “Kiké” Hernández and right into his crotch. That gave New York Yankees batter Gleyber Torres enough time to get to first. Does that happen all the time? Sure. It’s just that Hernández was in the middle of an interview when it happened.
Game announcer Dontrelle Willis had just asked Hernández, who was w

Deadpool and Wolverine in Deadpool & Wolverine. | Screenshot: YouTube There’s virtually no indication in the trailers for Deadpool & Wolverine so far that Wolverine feels anything but disgust and irritation at Deadpool as they get down to whatever fourth wall-breaking multiverse shenanigans the film holds in store. That’s made all the more apparent by a Hugh Jackman whose increasingly craggy face only seems to be more fit to represent Logan as time goes on.
The new trailer le

Lost and Found Co. | Image: Bit Egg Despite its cozy appearance, Wholesome Direct 2024 is actually shaping up to be the most packed event of Summer Game Fest. The hour-long presentation featured more than 70 different games. Some were brand-new announcements, some were previously known games that got a fresh trailer or release date, and a handful of titles even launched during the event.
Now, 70 is a large number, so to help, I’ve curated the games that stood out to me the most. You can al

If you have this power bank, you should stop using it. | Image: Anker Anker says it’s recalling its 321 Power Bank (PowerCore 5K, model number A1112), citing a fire risk posed by a manufacturing defect. The 321 is a compact power bank with two ports — one for USB-C and one for USB-A. Anker says “only a small number” produced after March 2023 are affected, but it’s recalling all of them anyway.
Look for “Anker 321 Power Bank (PowerCore 5K, Black), Model: A1112&

Nanoleaf’s smart ceiling lights offer hundreds of colors and an array of impressive lighting effects. | Image: Nanoleaf The days are getting brighter, but with the current heatwave plaguing much of the US, how many of us can really go out and enjoy it? Luckily, Nanoleaf’s Skylight Smarter Kit is on sale for the first time, offering the rest of us a way to add some brightness to our day without melting to death. Normally $249.99, right now, you can buy the three-pack kit for $229.99 a