The Verge’s entertainment section collects the latest news from the worlds of pop culture, music, movies, television, and video games. Whether you want to know what to watch on Netflix or how to make the most of your streaming service budget, the entertainment section acts a reliable source. There’s simply too much to read, watch, hear, and play. Let us be your tour guide.
There’s a new cowboy outfit coming that I simply must own.
There’s a new cowboy outfit coming that I simply must own.
If Avowed and Monster Hunter Wilds haven’t taken up all of your time, the remaster of Xenoblade Chronicles X is coming to the Switch on March 20th. It may be a decade old, but its sci-fi world is still a huge and wondrous place to explore — and you can get a deeper look at it in this new overview video from Nintendo.
As I write this, it’s hunting a Mankey outside of Viridian City in Pokémon Red. It’s using the new Claude 3.7 Sonnet “hybrid reasoning model” and shows its thinking in a side window.
The stream is less interesting and slower-paced than the original Twitch Plays Pokémon. But it’s fun to see Claude’s thinking process, especially when some of it has mirrored my own while playing Pokémon games.
Update: Claude is playing Pokémon Red; I initially missed that in the Twitch description.
Ahh MySpace. A website from simpler times when the worst you had to worry about from social media was falling out with the friend that didn’t make your Top 8. It has since puttered along morphing into something completely unrecognizable...until now. Game designer Ste Curran has created SkySpace, a website that’ll take your Bluesky profile and make it into a MySpace page complete with a customizable background, a Top 8 you can set, and even a music plugin.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service is expanding to yet another country, with the Australian launch coming on March 31st. The timing is good for fans of the post-apocalypse: The Last of Us’ new season starts streaming in April.
Netflix’s slasher franchise continues, this time with the spinoff Prom Queen. While it may not be as inventive as a three-part movie event, the first teaser does look it could still be fun. It starts streaming way ahead of Halloween, too, with a May 23rd premiere date.
We finally have word about the second season of the best thing on Peacock. The return of Poker Face — a clever detective series from Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne — will once again include some great guests, which this time means Cynthia Erivo, John Mulaney, and Katie Holmes, among others. No trailer yet ahead of the spring 2025 premiere window, but you can check out the first images below.
OBS, or “Open Broadcaster Software,” is an open source tool that’s used by streamers to broadcast their gameplay on platforms like Twitch. Elgato, which makes hardware and software for streaming, will join companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm in the “diamond tier” sponsorship tier, according to Elgato GM Julian Fest in an X thread.
Though it seemed like Mattel’s grim and angsty live-action Barney film adaptation was on the back burner for a while, the studio announced today that it has partnered with A24 to produce the project along with Daniel Kaluuya’s 59% Productions, and tapped Ayo Edebiri to pen the script.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
She’s one of over 1,000 musicians, including Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox, and Hans Zimmer, who’ve put their names behind an album protesting UK AI policy. Each of the 12 tracks is a recording of an empty studio or performance space.
The UK government is today closing a consultation on proposed changes to copyright law that would give AI companies the right to train on copyrighted works unless rights holders opt out.
After months of speculation, Activision has finally revealed that it has used AI to generate some assets in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Fans noticed a zombie Santa with six fingers over the holidays, alongside weapon decals and player cards that seemed to be AI generated. Activision hasn’t detailed what parts of Call of Duty are AI-generated, but it had to confirm “our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets,” to adhere to Steam’s new policies.
[store.steampowered.com]
Puck reports that Kennedy, who has steered franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, has informed the studio and others that she will step down by the end of 2025.
In 2023, Kennedy announced three new Star Wars films before murkier reports appeared last year about a new trilogy, and we just saw a new trailer for Andor season two. If there is a change at the top, then it could come with some clarity about the series’ future on big and small screens alike.
[puck.news]
0It seems like Warner Bros. Discovery has been pleased with My Adventures with Superman because the studio has kicked off production on a Green Lantern-centric spinoff series as well as a new show revolving around Teen Titans mainstay Starfire according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“The hope here is that people will start moving away from Twitter as a source of information and go to other sites and platforms,” according to the GM of the gaming-focused forum. Screenshots and X links will still be allowed, though “screenshots will need to feature the name of the account and the date it was posted so that we can all avoid trolls and people misrepresenting others.”
Many subreddits recently banned X links.
[resetera.com]
The poker roguelike is also getting a bunch of new collaboration cards featuring games like Civilization VII, Bugsnax, and Assassin’s Creed.
The announcement follows the news that Balatro will be getting a revised rating in Europe after an appeal.
There are countless chill beats to work / study to, but few of them are as ominous as this new eight-hour-long mix from Severance. Not only is just the right amount of creepy, but it also includes some great close-up shots of those bizarre computers.
If you find yourself with a hankering for retro gaming and only have access to a macOS computer running Google Chrome, developer Nolen Royalty has created a painful way to play Pong, as spotted by Tom’s Hardware.
You can download Faviconic, described by Royalty as “a tool for running games inside your tab bar,” from GitHub, but performance appears to be absolutely abysmal once gameplay transitions into hundreds of favicons.
Microsoft will bump how many points it takes starting April 20th, 2025, writes Pure Xbox. Afterward, those who use the Rewards auto-redeem feature to cover their subscription after accruing enough points will need to set it up again.
Now, it costs level two Rewards members 17,000 (previously 12,000) points for a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, while PC Game Pass takes 10,500 (previously 7,500) points, the outlet notes.