Game Boy games make Nintendo Switch Online feel like the ultimate retro subscription

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Nintendo Switch Online. | Image: Nintendo

With the way Nintendo tends to drip-feed retro releases, it’s easy to forget that it operates an excellent subscription service for fans of classic games. It’s one that showed a lot of promise at launch, and since then, it has steadily grown into something that largely fulfills that promise. There are still some issues, but it’s affordable and convenient — and with the recent addition of Game Boy games, it now has a very impressive library with plenty of room to grow.

In case you missed it, Nintendo both announced and launched Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games as part of its NSO subscription during its first Nintendo Direct of the year last night. Right now, there are nine original Game Boy titles available — including classics like M...

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Redwood Materials scores $2 billion DOE loan to boost its EV battery recycling operations

Image: Getty

Redwood Materials, the electric vehicle battery recycling venture founded by the former chief technologist at Tesla, has secured a $2 billion green energy loan from the Biden administration in what clearly is a major win for the nascent operation.

The loan originates from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, which famously helped put Tesla on the map and more recently provided a boost for a joint venture of General Motors and LG Energy Solution to help fund the construction of a new lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is scheduled to tour Redwood’s facility in Nevada on Thursday to announce the loan.

Redwood recently announced plans to build a...

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Matter is going to tackle healthcare next

The CSA announced it’s putting together a Health and Wellness Working Group. | Image: Connectivity Standards Alliance

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the group behind Matter, announced today that it’s putting together a working group to build a standards and certification program for health and wellness technology — basically, a specialized “Matter” that zeroes in on how Internet of Things devices can work together with wearables and other future forms of health tech.

Matter is a new smart home standard that allows IoT devices to communicate with each other regardless of which company made them. So long as you know a smart home device supports Matter, you know they’ll play nicely together. The CSA’s new Health and Wellness Working Group aims to apply the same concept to health and wellness tech. The ultimate goal is to help people age...

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Lucid joins the EV price war with a $7,500 credit for its luxury Air sedan

Image: Tim Stevens for The Verge

Lucid is giving buyers a $7,500 credit when purchasing some models of its luxury Air electric sedans. The company is the latest EV maker to offer a discount in what some auto industry experts see as a slowly developing price war for plug-in models.

The credit applies to select Air configurations for the Touring and Grand Touring models — but does not include the Stealth model, PurLuxe interior, or metal roof trims_._ The discount offer starts today and applies to US customers who order their vehicles by March 31st and take delivery by April 30th of this year.

Lucid is matching the federal EV tax credit

The amount of the credit offered by Lucid matches the federal EV tax credit that applies to sedans that cost less than $55,000 and SUVs...

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Here’s how you can preorder the new Zelda for $49.99

Though you’re going to miss out on owning this excellent box art in physical form. | Image: Nintendo

If you’re slightly miffed about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom being the first $70 Nintendo Switch game, there’s something you can do about that. No, I’m not talking about a “vote with your wallet” boycott or anything like that. Instead, if you’re a subscriber to Nintendo Switch Online, you can preorder a digital copy of the new Zelda for $49.99 by buying Nintendo’s digital game vouchers.

Spend $100 to save up to $30 on two games

The Nintendo Switch Game Voucher costs $99.98 and is redeemable for two qualifying, full-price games on the eShop. The game list includes preorders like the upcoming Zelda, the Advance Wars remakes, and recent hits that haven’t seen many discounts yet — such as Splatoon 3. So if you pay $99.98 for the...

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GM strikes a deal aimed at avoiding future chip shortage disruptions

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

General Motors has struck a “first-of-its-kind” deal with GlobalFoundries (GF) to lock down its supply of crucial semiconductors, a move aimed at avoiding the disruptions caused by the recent global chip shortage.

Under the agreement, GF will manufacture the chips at its semiconductor facility in upstate New York. The company, which is owned by the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment, has said it would invest $1 billion to build a second factory near its Malta, New York, headquarters.

Like all automakers, GM relies on computer chips to power a range of features in its vehicles: everything from automatic seats and infotainment systems to more advanced automated features. The deal with GF will provide a boost...

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How to remap a keyboard on a Mac

Don’t tell me where the Command key is. It’s wherever I want it to be. | Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Say you’re a Mac user who just got a fancy new keyboard, but it has a Windows layout. Or you want to use the same keyboard with both Windows and Mac machines. Or you’ve gotten used to a specific layout, and now your muscle memory is all wrong.

The biggest differences between Macs and Windows PCs are in the bottom row modifier keys. Windows computers have Ctrl, Win, and Alt, whereas Macs have Control, Option, and Command. macOS automatically maps the Alt to Option and Win to Command. But Windows uses the Control key for most of the shortcuts that Macs use the Command key for, which means you have to remember to copy / paste using your pinkie on one computer and using your index finger on another. Who wants that?

You could try to rewire...

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Amazon’s sleep tracking Halo Rise lamp is $40 off once again

Amazon’s Halo Rise smart lamp has returned to its lowest price to date. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Buying Amazon’s Halo Rise is kind of like purchasing a smart alarm clock, a sunrise lamp, and a contactless sleep tracker at the same time. The versatile gadget can function as all three and offers great value for your money, especially since it’s available at an all-time low of $109.99 ($40 off) at Amazon and Best Buy right now.

For those unfamiliar with Amazon’s newest wellness gadget, here’s the rundown: the Rise acts as a good smart lamp that’s compatible with Echo devices but can also mimic natural morning light, helping you to wake up during your lightest sleep stage. It also doubles as a decent sleep tracker that produces daily reports — so long as you position it correctly on your bedside table — and it can monitor your bedroom’s...

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EVs ‘are not enough’: Polestar and Rivian urge more drastic climate action

Image: Nilay Patel / The Verge

At this point, just about every car company has committed to spending the next few years adding electric and hybrid vehicles to their fleets or eventually phasing out internal combustion engines entirely.

But in a new climate study released this week, EV startups Rivian and Polestar have a more dire message: electrification alone will not be enough.

A new climate report from global management consulting firm Kearney commissioned by the two automakers indicates that, despite a massive rollout of new EVs and hybrids in the coming years, the global automotive industry is still “far off track” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a way that can meet targets set by the Paris agreement. And that does not even account for emissions from the...

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Google Stadia barely made a dent in the cloud gaming market

Regulators believe that Stadia’s comparatively limited game library contributed to its demise and fear Microsoft could similarly limit cloud gaming competitors by purchasing Activision Blizzard. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

When Google announced last year that it was closing down Stadia because the cloud gaming service hadn’t “gained enough traction,” it wasn’t abundantly clear exactly how the platform stacked up against competitors like Nvidia’s GeForce Now and Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming. Now, statistics shared by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) show that Stadia had a significantly smaller presence than rival services, with an estimated zero to 5 percent share of the cloud gaming market in 2022 (via 9to5Google).

The CMA said that its findings are based on global information provided directly by each company. The charts don’t include actual figures, and Google has remained tight-lipped regarding how many subscribers Stadia actually had....

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TP-Link’s new budget robot vac will clean for two weeks without being emptied

TP-Link launches its Tapo robot vacuum line this week. | Image: TP-Link

If you don’t like emptying your robot vacuum, but also don’t like the idea of shelling out over $500 for an auto-empty model, TP-Link’s new budget robot vac might be for you. It doesn’t empty itself, but thanks to a large 800ml bin, the company says you only have to deal with that dusty mess twice a month.

The Tapo RV10 Lite is one of the first robot vacs from the brand known for its Wi-Fi routers. And, in line with TP-Link’s reputation for high-tech at low prices, it's a seriously budget bot. The Lite features the big bin and costs $229.99, while its mopping-capable sibling, the Tapo RV10, has a smaller bin but room for a 300ml mopping reservoir on board. It costs $249.99.

There’s no LiDAR navigation, obstacle avoidance, or mapping at...

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240W fast charging will charge this smartphone fully in under 10 minutes

The Realme GT Neo 5 in black, purple, and white. | Image: Realme

This is getting ridiculous. Realme has just announced a new smartphone, the Realme GT Neo 5, that supports up to 240W fast charging. According to GSMArena, that will make it the fastest charging smartphone on the market, faster than the 210W offered by the Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition, and almost 100W faster than the 150W charging offered by OnePlus devices like the 10T. 240W is in line with the latest USB power spec announced by the USB-IF in 2021.

In practical terms, we’re really hitting the point of diminishing returns with fast charging wattage this high on smartphones. Realme advertises that the GT Neo 5’s 4,600mAh battery can be charged to 100 percent in nine and a half minutes thanks to its 240W charging. That’s super fast, but...

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Thursday’s top tech news: A prime Nintendo showing

Samus from Metroid Prime Remastered. | Image: Nintendo

And a chaotic day for Twitter.

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Sonos CEO says Amazon, Google aren’t ‘doing anything interesting’ in audio

The Verge

During Sonos’ Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Patrick Spence expressed the usual optimism about his company’s financial performance, sales momentum, and upcoming product roadmap. This man really loves the word “flywheel,” folks. But he also took clear jabs at Big Tech competitors, including Amazon, Google, and Apple, for barely putting up a fight in recent months.

With Amazon rumored to be taking a hard look at its ambitions surrounding Alexa and Echo products and Google largely focused on all things Pixel, Spence said that Sonos faced no serious competition during the crucial holiday quarter. “We’ve gone through fiscal Q1, which is the height of the consumer electronics and audio season and, you know, it was... we’ve seen some of the...

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Most people can tweet again, but Twitter still has issues

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter appears to be recovering from having technical issues that prevented people from tweeting, though problems with DMs, and accessing TweetDeck are still seemingly persisting. Downdetector reports that the problems started around 4:30PM ET, and the unfettered ability to tweet came back around an hour and a half later.

Tweets were visible during the partial outage, but several Verge staff members got a message saying that they were “over the daily limit for sending Tweets” when trying to post or retweet someone else’s post. Some Twitter users said were able to work around the error by scheduling tweets in the future.

Btw, here's how to schedule tweets one minute into the future so they post. pic.twitter.com/m6u4SNoSDZ

— IGN (@IGN) F...

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The biggest news and trailers from today’s Nintendo Direct

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The latest Nintendo Direct had all the big names — well, aside from Mario. But we got a fresh trailer for the next Zelda game, a surprise launch of the original Metroid Prime, a release date for Pikmin 4, and the addition of Game Boy games to the Switch Online subscription service. Plus, there were some excellent announcements for RPG nerds. Here’s everything you might have missed.

A new look at The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The wait for the sequel to Breath of the Wild has been tough, but at least we have a new trailer to make things a little easier. The latest is very dramatic.

Metroid Prime gets a remaster

The long-awaited remaster of the original Metroid Prime is making its way to the Switch, and it’s happening very...

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Nintendo’s first $70 game is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Image: Nintendo

Following in the footsteps of Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is venturing into the world of $70 games with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, according to the game’s eShop page.

Sony made the jump with the release of the PS5 in 2020, meaning PS5 exclusives like Demon’s Souls and Returnal cost that higher price. Microsoft said in December that its “new, built for next-gen, full-priced games” be more expensive moving forward as well, so if you want to buy games like Forza Motorsport, Redfall, and Starfield outright, you’re going to put aside a little more cash. And the era of the $70 game arguably arrived last fall, with third-party games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and The Callisto Protocol carrying that higher pricetag.

N...

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s latest trailer reveals a new car and airship for Link

Image: Nintendo

Nintendo released a new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at its Nintendo Direct showcase on Wednesday. The trailer gave us our best look at the new game yet, though is light on specific details; seems like Nintendo doesn’t want to spoil too much about the game even though we are just a few months away from release.

At the beginning, a mysterious, foreboding voice (Ganondorf?) demands that his “servants” eliminate the kingdom of Hyrule and its allies. Seems bad, especially when coupled with shots of the blood moon looming over the land — the forces of evil appear to be back in force.

But there is also a lot of joy in the trailer. Link soars through the skies, skates on a rail, and drives a car and some sort of...

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Metroid Prime Remastered is coming to the Switch today

Metroid Prime Remastered. | Image: Nintendo

It’s not Metroid Prime 4, but it’s still big news for fans of intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran: the original Metroid Prime is being remastered for the Switch. Even better, the game will be launching today in the Nintendo eShop (a physical version will be available on February 22nd). The news was announced during Nintendo’s first Direct presentation of 2023.

The first Prime launched two decades ago on the GameCube and was remarkable for the way it translated the moody exploration of Super Metroid into a first-person experience. It was followed by two sequels. A fourth game, the aptly named Metroid Prime 4, is in the works but was rebooted in 2019 with little information since then.

The last game in the series was the 2D action title...

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Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online today

The classic Game Boy version of Tetris is headed to Nintendo Switch. | Image: Nintendo

Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will be able to play Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games later today, the company just announced during its Nintendo Direct. And you’ll be able to play the multiplayer ones with a friend wirelessly — no Link Cable required.

Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games will all be available, but the GBA titles will be exclusive to people who pay for the more expensive Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack tier — the same one you previously paid for if you wanted N64 and Sega Genesis titles. It costs $49.99 a year instead of the $19.99 you pay for the normal Switch Online.

Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles available at launch include:

• Tetris
• Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins
• The Legend of...

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Advance Wars remakes finally get a release date

Nintendo

It’s been just one month shy of a year since Nintendo delayed the Advance Wars remakes, “in light of recent world events.” Since then, the games have sat in limbo with no word on when Nintendo would actually release them. Now, with the company’s first direct of 2023, Advance Wars 1 and 2 will launch on April 21st.

Calling all strategy fans! Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp comes to Nintendo Switch on 4/21!

Join Andy, Max, Sami, and more in two full story campaigns, each one filled with colorful turn-based tactical action and go head-to-head in local and online play.https://t.co/da81X3BBIm pic.twitter.com/KD9QrloRpv

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 8, 2023

Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp is a remake of the first two A...

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Disney’s laying off 7,000 as streaming boom comes to an end

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Disney is planning to lay off 7,000 workers to cut costs across the company. CEO Bob Iger announced the news in an earnings call on Wednesday, stating that the move is “necessary to address the challenges we’re facing today.”

Like many other companies across the country, Disney’s making the changes as part of its efforts to reduce costs in a “challenging economic environment.” Iger says he’s “targeting $5.5 billion of cost savings across the company” and that the layoffs will “help achieve this.” Iger didn’t say which departments the layoffs will affect.

Rumors about layoffs began emerging shortly after Iger took over for outgoing Disney CEO Bob Chapek last November. Iger initially stepped down from the role in 2020, and his takeover has...

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Pikmin 4 blooms this summer

Nintendo

To start off Nintendo’s first Direct of 2023, it gave us a release date for the gentle, wholesome alien plant collection Pikmin 4.

It’s been a long wait for Pikmin fans with the last game released in 2013 on the Wii U. A deluxe version of the game was also announced for the Switch back in 2020. Pikmin 4was teased during the last Nintendo Direct with a short trailer. This time around wasn’t much different but at least we have a release date: July 21st.

Nintendo was scant on details, but it’s Pikmin, you don’t need much. All you need is Olimar and his host of leaf-headed friends who like to follow him around. For this iteration it seems like you’ll confront an alien dog-like creature that seems too cute to be evil.

Pikmin 4 releases on...

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Overwatch League season 6 is bringing massive changes

Photo: Blizzard

The sixth season of the Overwatch League will be its biggest yet, literally. With Overwatch 2 in its first full year and finally in the hands of players worldwide, the League is making sweeping changes to accompany this new state of things.

To start, the Philadelphia Fusion and the Paris Eternal are no more. Paris has “relocated” to Vegas to become the Vegas Eternal, and the Philadelphia Fusion have undergone a complete rebrand, relocating to Seoul to become the Seoul Infernal. The Paris to Vegas pipeline had been in the cards (heh) for a while, as the Eternal’s Call of Duty League sister team, the Paris Legion, had rebranded to the Vegas Legion at the end of the 2022 season.

For the Fusion, while the franchise is owned by Comcast...

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Spotify now lets you exclude certain playlists from its recommendations

Giving you more control over your “taste profile.” | Image: Spotify

Spotify is rolling out a feature that will let you tell it to ignore music in certain playlists when it’s deciding what type of music you like. The feature is called Exclude From Your Taste Profile, and the company is pitching it as a way to keep your recommendations from getting overrun by “songs and artists that don’t fit” your general listening habits.

It’s easy to imagine several scenarios where this ability could be useful. Your sleep playlist could end up getting a lot of listen time but may not have the type of music or sounds you want to listen to while you’re awake. It’s a similar story with work playlists, which could be very different from your off-the-clock music tastes. (One of my co-workers commented that their lo-fi beats...

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Google’s head of VR is leaving to form an AI company with the former co-CEO of Salesforce

Image: Ramin Talaie / Getty Images

Clay Bavor, Google’s vice president of its forward-looking Labs division, is leaving the company to found an AI startup, as announced in a post on Bavor’s LinkedIn on Wednesday.

Longtime Verge readers may recognize Bavor as the face of many of Google’s virtual reality and augmented reality plans, including Google’s ARCore and its early VR hardware efforts. But in 2021, he was appointed to lead Google Labs, meaning his purview increased to also include things like Google’s Project Starline video chat booth and its Area 120 incubator, which was dramatically affected by Google’s recent layoffs. Bavor was also overseeing work on an in-development AR headset, my colleague Alex Heath reported in January 2022, and it’s unclear who might head up...

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Now Twitter Blue subscribers can write 4,000-character tweets

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Twitter has launched a longer tweet feature, giving Blue subscribers in the US the ability to post up to 4,000 characters at once. If someone you follow uses the feature, the tweet in your timeline will have a “show more” button to keep it from taking up your entire screen.

Currently, there are a few limitations to the feature (besides the big one that it’s behind a paywall). If your tweet is over the standard 280 characters, you can’t save it as a draft or schedule it for later. However, most other normal features should work as usual — you can add hashtags or pictures, and non-Blue subscribers will still be able to interact with the posts as normal.

Blue subscribers will also be getting the ability to quote retweet and reply with 4,000...

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Fitbit suffered another outage for the second time in 24 hours

Fitbit’s services are down... again. | Image: Victoria Song / The Verge

If you’ve had trouble syncing your Fitbit data again today, you’re not seeing things. It appears that Fitbit experienced yet another widespread outage where users couldn’t sync or view their data in the mobile app.

Downdetector received more than 2,000 outage reports for Fitbit as of 8:17AM ET. On Twitter, frustrated Fitbit users also reported issues with syncing, settings changing, third-party app integrations failing, and an inability to log in to Fitbit forums. Users reported many of the same issues on the r/fitbit subreddit. Some claimed that, while they were initially able to sync, the Fitbit app has since stopped working properly.

The @FitbitSupport Twitter account initially suggested that users try force-syncing or t...

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Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown hits Canada, but not the US — yet

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. The company had already started testing the change — in a few different forms — in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in “the coming months.”

Last week, Netflix faced pushback after notes about when and how it might block devices used beyond your household popped up on support pages for the US and other countries where the new “paid sharing” setup hasn’t rolled out yet.

Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren’t on...

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Hands-on with the new Bing: Microsoft’s step beyond ChatGPT

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The new AI-powered version of Bing can produce hilarious resignation letters, information on current news events, and mistakes.

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