Entertainment

Earlier this week, Xbox boss Asha Sharma posted a poll asking “Xbox or XBOX?” A few minutes ago, she tweeted a picture of the Xbox profile on X with all-caps branding. I don’t like it.

This year’s Summer Games Done Quick has an excellent lineup, with promising runs featuring a Wind Waker co-op randomizer, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as the closer, and, uh, a mod that puts Half-Life mechanics into Jak and Daxter.

Before Star Fox mania descends on the Switch 2, Nintendo has an adorable platformer launching next week. And the new trailer makes it seem like there are going to be lots of strange critters to uncover, including what looks like a weirdo take on Kirby.

Subnautica 2 is off to such a fast start that I just had to update our story from yesterday: the game has now sold 2 million copies in 12 hours, and reached a peak concurrent player count of 651,000 across all platforms.

The musician, producer, and long-time Taylor Swift collaborator described people who use generative AI tools as “Godless whores” in a rant on Instagram:

Bobby Prince’s 1993 soundtrack for Doom is one of 25 recordings being inducted into the Library of Congress this year, a lineup that also includes Taylor Swift’s “1989” album and Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).”

That means Spotify-hosted shows will be able to be distributed and monetized on Apple Podcasts. In addition, the company is flipping the switch on integration with Libsyn, Podigee, Audioboom, Audiomeans, and Podspace, so users of those services can distribute and monetize their video podcasts on Spotify.

At least according to a leaked listing from Best Buy, which suggests pre-orders for the next Grand Theft Auto on May 18th. Which means we might finally find out just how much the game will cost. And hey, trailer number three would be a nice bonus, too.

The new premiere date is April 30th, 2027. Per Nintendo’s X account:

The live-service field is a mess, Fortnite included, but maybe the solution is to mash every online shooter into one experience.

During its upfront presentation, Netflix offered a glimpse at its upcoming NFL games:

Managed accounts, which offer a music-only experience with parental controls for the under-13 set, were previously reserved for Premium Family subscribers. Now, free users can also create kids accounts, with their own playlists, suggestions, and wrapped experiences. It’s coming to Argentina, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, and Sweden first.

It sure seems like Laika has another banger on its hands, at least based on the new trailer for the dark fairy tale Wildwood. The stop-motion movie hits theaters at just the right time of year, too, premiering on October 23rd.

After being announced in August, 2024, Subvert opened its doors on May 12th, 2026. It’s a music co-op where over 20,000 artist members are the owners. They set the policies, and there are no fees. It’s also one of the few platforms to ban AI content and training. Definitely check it out.

I can still be easily sucked into a book of cross section artwork, so it’s fascinating to see the process of how the complex illustrations are made. Artist John R. Mullaney condensed the long process of creating a cross section of The Mandalorian’s N-1 Starfighter into a timelapse that’s four minutes well spent.

We’re still a ways out from Pokémon Wind and Waves’s release on the Switch 2 some time next year, but The Pokémon Company has just uploaded a video of the NHK Symphony Orchestra recording the games’ main theme to tide us all over.

It’s been a while since we heard anything new about Disney’s Agatha All Along followup, VisionQuest, but Disney has just pegged the series for an October 14th premiere.

The new extended scene from episode 4 of Pluribus doesn’t include any major revelations, but it is an entertaining three minutes of Rhea Seehorn tripping out.

Star Wars is making its long-awaited return to theaters with The Mandalorian and Grogu next week, but the galaxy far, far away still has a home on streaming. Disney announced that season 2 of Mando spinoff Ahsoka will premiere in early 2027. That’s more than three years removed from when the show debuted.

During its annual upfront presentation today, Disney announced that Avatar: Fire and Ash will stream on Disney Plus beginning June 24th.

Netflix launched a new website in an attempt to highlight the impact of its films and TV shows over the past decade. Some stats shared by the streamer say Netflix contributed $325 billion to the global economy and created over 425,000 jobs for actors, writers, directors, researchers, and VFX artists.

Clips of Hacks creators Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs are making the rounds as they promote the (amazing) HBO Max show’s final season. They have a unified message about using AI for creative purposes: “It’s so deeply offensive to me on every level,” says Aniello in an interview at Wired. “The grist and the struggle and the friction, it’s what makes art good,” says Statsky in an On with Kara Swisher appearance.

Spotify initially acknowledged there were “some issues” with the app at 12:49PM ET and gave the all clear at 4:57PM ET.

Available starting on June 1st for Lego Insiders or June 4th for everyone else, Lego’s $650 Minas Tirith is larger and more expensive than its $500 Rivendell and $460 Barad-dûr LOTR sets. Up front it’s a micro-scale recreation of the fortified city but on the back you’ll find scenes scaled up for the set’s 10 included minifigures.

Prime Video hasn’t mentioned how many episodes its ordered to adapt the Rebecca Yarros dragon-riding romantasy novels that are so widely beloved by BookTok, but Meredith Averill (The Haunting of Hill House, Locke & Key) will serve as showrunner and executive producer. An expected release date also hasn’t been announced yet.

If Palantir can stick its logo on French workwear, why not The Verge? That gets my vote in our new call for Verge merch ideas.

Charli xcx just invested in Nothing and was announced as the company’s first global brand ambassador. For their first promotion together the startup claims it had the singer wear the Nothing Headphone A for five days straight to test their 135-hour battery life.

Details about the project have been vague since it was announced in 2021, but it’s now been canceled. Sega is pulling back from free-to-play titles following weak performance of its own titles, and live-service games industry-wide. The Super Game was initially expected to release in March 2026.

Mark your calendar for November 11th.

Though HBO’s Westworld has come and gone, Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has tapped Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp to pen the script for a new Westworld movie that probably won’t have much to do with the show.