Clockwork Revolution is a new steampunk RPG from Microsoft’s inXile

Image: Microsoft

At its Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, Microsoft debuted a trailer for a new steampunk RPG from its inXile Entertainment studio, titled Clockwork Revolution.

Here’s a short description of the game, from the reveal trailer’s description:

Clockwork Revolution is a time-bending steampunk first-person RPG. After stumbling across an incredible invention that allows you to travel into the past, you discover the city you call home—the vibrant steam-powered metropolis of Avalon—has been carefully crafted through the alteration of historical events. By traveling back to key moments, your interactions and choices will have a butterfly effect on the deep, narrative-driven world and characters of Avalon, causing them to change and react in...

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Persona has two new games coming to Xbox

Atlus / Xbox

Xbox and Atlus have one helluva partnership going on. Last year Xbox announced that Persona 5 Royal, Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable were coming to Xbox Game Pass. Now, we’re also two more Persona games and a brand new Atlus RPG.

Persona 3 Reload is a remake of the original Persona 3. The Verge’s entertainment editor Andrew Webster wrote a great breakdown of Persona 3, a game that was released on the PlayStation 2 back in 2006 and therefore might not be well-known to wealth of people who came to the series with Persona 5. (It’s me, I’m wealth of people.)

Persona 5 Tactica, is exactly what its name implies, Persona 5 remixed from an RPG to a tactics game. The game feels like another dose of the beloved Persona 5 characters meant...

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Microsoft announces black Xbox Series S with 1TB of storage for $349

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has just announced a new black version of the Xbox Series S with 1TB of built-in storage at the Xbox Games Showcase. Little has changed here since the original Xbox Series S, apart from a black paint job and more storage inside. Microsoft is launching the 1TB black Xbox Series S on September 1st priced at $349, and pre-orders start today.

The carbon black Xbox Series S was announced on stage by Xbox chief Phil Spencer, who also mentioned that the company has also increased its shipments of Xbox Series X to meet demand.

Image: Microsoft

The black Xbox Series S.

The Xbox Series S originally launched at $299 with just 512GB of storage, so this bump to 1TB is very welcome. It comes just days after W...

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Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’s action-packed new trailer also includes a release date

CD Projekt Red (CDPR) shared new details about Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the forthcoming expansion to CDPR’s sci-fi hit, at Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday.

In a new trailer, CDPR showed that the expansion will bring players to Dogtown, a new location in Night City, to rescue the president of the New United States. CDPR revealed a new look at Idris Elba’s new character — and don’t worry, Keanu Reeves is back for the expansion. It’s set to release on September 26th, according to the trailer.

In December, CDPR announced that Idris Elba would be joining the cast of the game for the expansion. He plays a new character named Solomon Reed. The DLC is set in a new area of Night City, and CDPR is describing Phantom Liberty as a...

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Forza Motorsport has a fall release date

Turn 10 Studios / Xbox

Forza Motorsport was teased back in 2020 and again earlier this year, and now, during the Xbox Games Showcase, the racing sim finally has a release date. Forza Motorsport is heading to Xbox and PC on October 10th.

The Forza trailer highlighted the game’s partnership with General Motors. The Cadillac V series R and the Corvette E-Ray — two slick-looking cars — will be a part of the roster of cars that’ll be available when Forza Motorsport releases on October 10th.

Forza Motorsport is the serious counterpart to the more whimsical and colorful Forza Horizon series. Back in April, the developers at Turn 10 Studios featured one of Forza Motorsport’s new accessibility features, blind driving assist, that will help blind and low vision players...

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Microsoft releases a new trailer for Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft revealed a new trailer about Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II at its Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday. The trailer, which was captured on an Xbox Series X, looks and sounds amazing — you really should wear headphones while watching the trailer to get the full experience. Microsoft also shared a release window for the game: 2024.

We’ve been waiting for Hellblade II for quite awhile. The game was first announced in December 2019 with a unsettling trailer with incredible graphics — an impressive feat given that the trailer was captured entirely in-engine. Microsoft shared a gameplay reveal trailer in December 2021, and it also had outstanding visuals, and I can’t wait to play the game for myself to see how the graphics hold...

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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has hot air balloons, skydive aviation, and much more

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is arriving next year with some massive updates to the aircraft you’ll be able to pick and play with. A new trailer show during the Xbox Games Showcase includes hot air balloon trips, skydive aviation, aerial firefighting, and much more.

It looks like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 developer Asobo will give pilots every aircraft they’ve dreamt of. You can fly an air ambulance, be part of a mountain rescue team, or act as search and rescue.

There’s even the ability to pilot helicopters for cargo transport, industrial cargo planes, and remote cargo operations. Asobo also showed off VIP charter services, skydive aviation, air racing, and hot air balloon trips.

The existing version of Microsoft Flight...

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Avowed gets a new trailer and a release window

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft released a new trailer for Avowed, its upcoming first-person RPG from Obsidian.

“First-person combat has been a huge focus for us,” Obsidian studio head Feargus Urquhart said in an Xbox blog post. “We’ve incorporated a host of ways for players to fight the flora and fauna of the Living Lands. You will have swords, shields, pistols, magical spells, and more at your disposal, including the ability to dual wield, creating a vast number of combinations to choose from.” Avowed takes place in the same universe as the Pillars of Eternity games.

The company first announced the game in 2020, but thanks to the trailer, we now at least have a release window for when you’ll be able to play it: 2024. The game will be coming to Xbox Series...

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Here’s a first look at the new Fable

Xbox / Playground Games

The latest Fable game finally has a real trailer, sorta.

The trailer featured a tongue-in-cheek interview with a guy who simply wants to grow his vegetables in a fantastical world before it’s revealed that he’s actually the giant from the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale. He talks of a fantasy world filled with heroes and monsters before he’s interrupted by an adventurer he has to smash. The trailer didn’t really show off any gameplay, but it did note that everything we saw was in-game footage so it looks pretty slick.

It’s been 13 years since Fable III, the last mainline entry in the Fable series, was released on the, pained, sharp inhale of a person recognizing the slow yet ruinous march of time Xbox 360_._

Though the game should...

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Star Wars: Outlaws is a new open-world Star Wars game from Ubisoft

Image: Ubisoft

During the Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday, Microsoft and Ubisoft revealed a cinematic trailer for a new Star Wars game, titled Star Wars: Outlaws. It’s an open-world game that’s set to release in 2024.

“Experience the first-ever open world Star Wars game, set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi,” according to the YouTube trailer’s description. “Explore distinct planets across the galaxy, both iconic and new. Risk it all as Kay Vess, an emerging scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life, along with her companion Nix. Fight, steal, and outwit your way through the galaxy’s crime syndicates as you join the galaxy’s most wanted.”

We won’t have to wait long to see more from the new game:...

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Porsche’s new Mission X concept is a bubbly, all-electric hypercar

The Porsche Mission X electric concept hypercar. | Image: Porsche

Porsche debuted its new Mission X on Thursday — it’s an all-electric concept car it calls a “conceptual reinterpretation” of the hypercar. Like the Porsche 918 Spyder, it’s a squat, compact affair with bubbly fenders, but where the Spyder is somewhat toned down, the Mission X leans into its chunky corner details, instead making it a big part of the design that extends to the roof.

Porsche says the battery, if the car were to go into production, would have a 900-volt system architecture and would charge around twice as fast as the Taycan Turbo S. It says it has a power-to-weight ratio of about one hp per 2.2lbs, and claims it would “be the fastest road-legal vehicle around the Nürburgring Nordschleife” — at the moment, that distinction...

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Xbox Games Showcase 2023 and Starfield Direct: all the news and trailers

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Stay up to date with all the announcements and reveals.

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How to watch Microsoft’s 2023 Xbox and Starfield showcase

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Last month Sony showed off a big slate of upcoming games (and even some surprise hardware), which was followed by a packed Summer Game Fest. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn. On June 11th the company will be holding not one but two events: a showcase focused on Xbox games, and another entirely about its biggest title of the year, Bethesda’s sci-fi RPG Starfield, which launches in September.

Now, it hasn’t been the best year for first-party Xbox games so far, but you can likely expect to see some of the typical names from the showcase. That includes the next Forza Motorsport, Fable, and probably a hauntingly realistic look at Hellblade II. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get a look at the delayed-but-much-anticipated Silksong, or the rumored remake of P...

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Reddit’s users and moderators are pissed at its CEO

Reddits user and moderator community are very peeved at its CEO right now. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The version of Reddit we’ll see over the next few days may be a shell of itself. Hundreds of subreddits have pledged to go dark, with thousands more planning to follow.

The protests are happening over API changes that will force many third-party apps, like Apollo and rif is fun for Reddit, to shut down. Frustration was already brewing in the community as developers began reacting to the changes, but Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s responses in recent days haven’t calmed things down.

In a Reddit AMA on Friday, Huffman was met with seemingly universal anger. There were a lot of f-bombs from commenters. A lot of people called him a coward. If there are positive comments, I didn’t find them.

Before r/Videos went private today, its mods wrote...

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Fitbit’s old-school, OLED-equipped Inspire 3 is down to just $80

The OLED display on the Inspire 3 is better than the monochrome screen on the previous model, even with the mammoth bezels. | Image: Victoria Song / The Verge

In today’s day and age, it often feels like we’re constantly wanting our devices to offer more — more pixels, more sensors, more processing power. However, a back-to-the-basics fitness tracker like the Fitbit Inspire 3 can be a welcome change of pace, especially since it’s on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target right now for $79.95 ($20 off).

The Inspire 3 is pretty bare-bones, but that’s by design. You won’t find built-in GPS or virtual assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant, but rather a color OLED screen and a colorful, comfortable band that’s reminiscent of the kind you’d find on the Fitbits of the late-aughts. Still, the fitness band can last up to 10 days on a single charge and offers a few modern conveniences, including...

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Apple TVs will have native VPN support in tvOS 17

Native VPN support is coming to tvOS 17 | Image: Chris Welch / The Verge

Apple TVs will get native VPN app support in tvOS 17, according to an Apple press release (via 9to5Mac). It’s one of many features that didn’t make it into the keynote at WWDC 2023, but it could be a big deal for some folks. Assuming native VPN apps on Apple’s streaming box work as they do elsewhere, you might not have to wait to get home to catch up on streaming shows when traveling with an Apple TV 4K in tow.

Right now, in tvOS 17, to use a VPN with your Apple TV, you’ll need to do something like install a VPN on your router to do it, and not all routers support this. Native VPN support is one of the rare advantages Google’s Chromecast or Amazon’s Fire TV devices hold over the Apple TV right now.

We’ve reached out to a few VPN services...

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The Vision Pro’s biggest advantage isn’t Apple’s hardware

Image: Apple

Apple’s developers already have the tools they need to create apps for the system.

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How to get free electricity in the UK

Photo by Mike Kemp / In Pictures via Getty Images

Octopus Energy is a shining star during a time of high inflation and a cost of living crisis.

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The best Android phone to buy in 2023

Image: The Verge

Whether you want everything but the kitchen sink or top-tier performance for a midtier price, you’ve got options.

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How to import your passwords to Chrome and the Google Password Manager

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

If you’re unhappy with your current password manager and have decided to make a move, you may be tempted to simply go with the password manager that comes with your browser or operating system. It’s certainly an easy solution and a reasonable one, depending on your point of view. Until recently, third-party password managers were known to be more secure, but Apple and Google have been working to make their built-in password managers more secure, while Microsoft has not only got one as part of its Edge browser but has added one to its authenticator app.

One way, however, that these built-in password managers haven’t stood up to their independent competitors is how tricky it was to get preexisting passwords into their systems. That,...

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Bing’s chatbot now lets you ask questions with your voice on desktop

Image: The Verge

Microsoft is bringing Bing’s voice mode to Edge on desktop. With this latest update, you can now ask Bing’s chatbot questions using your voice — and it will respond in a voice of its own.

Just like the feature on the mobile version of Edge, you can select the microphone button on Bing’s chat box and then ask your question aloud. Microsoft says its chatbot currently supports English, Japanese, French, German, and Mandarin but notes that additional languages are “on the way.”

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s move to bring voice mode to Bing Chat on desktop comes as the company looks to discontinue Cortana on Windows later this year. While Cortana lets users use voice commands to set timers, create reminders, open...

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Tesla is about to pull the plug on its main EV charging rival

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

In the 2000s, there was a media format war between Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD. Sony, which owns a production company, convinced Warner Bros. to drop the rival format. And then Paramount followed suit, putting the last two nails in HD DVD’s coffin.

Fast-forward to today’s electric vehicle charging standards war, and it feels like déjà vu. Last month, Ford announced it’s adopting Tesla’s previously proprietary North American Charging Standard (NACS) port for its future vehicles. And General Motors, the largest automaker in North America, just announced yesterday that it’s following suit. Together, Ford, Tesla, and GM represent nearly three-quarters of the EV market in the US — or 72 percent.

Tesla is starting to look like Sony in...

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Reddit won’t budge on the API changes that are shutting down apps like Apollo

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman just kicked off his promised AMA over the platform’s controversial API changes, but based on the tone of his initial message and some replies, it doesn’t seem like Reddit will be budging on potentially expensive API updates that have caused multiple developers to announce they will be shutting down their apps.

“On 4/18, we shared that we would update access to the API, including premium access for third parties who require additional capabilities and higher usage limits,” Huffman, who goes by u/spez on Reddit, wrote in the initial post for his AMA. “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”

Huffman also r...

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Google Chrome’s password manager adds biometric unlocking on desktop

Image: Google

Google Chrome’s password manager will soon support biometric authentication on PCs and Macs. The feature, which was previously only available on mobile, uses facial recognition or your fingerprint to verify your identity before Chrome automatically fills your passwords.

This is ideal if you share a computer with someone else and don’t want Chrome to autofill your account passwords for anyone but yourself. You’ll still need a PC or Mac that comes with a fingerprint sensor or supports facial recognition to actually take advantage of the feature, though. Google says this feature is “coming soon” on desktop.

Image: Google

Now, you can import a CSV file containing your passwords to Google Chrome’s password manager.

G...

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Wildfire smoke is getting worse for everyone, especially disadvantaged groups

The Washington Memorial stands in hazy smoke on June 8th, 2023, in Washington, DC. | Photo by Alex Wong / Getty Images

Americans are breathing in a lot more wildfire smoke today than they did 10 years ago, new research confirms. And places with more people of color, immigrant communities, and areas where there’s lower educational attainment and more crowded housing have it the worst.

In short, already disadvantaged communities are bearing the brunt of growing health risks from wildfire smoke in the US. That’s something to keep in mind this week after wildfire smoke smashed air pollution records across the US.

More than 87 percent of the US population saw an increase in the number of days of heavy wildfire smoke they experienced between 2011 and 2021, according to a study published this week in the American Journal of Public Health. Zoom in on the last...

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The next Sonos Move has shown up at the FCC ahead of its summer release

The first-gen Sonos Move was released in 2019. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Back in March, I told you that Sonos is working on a second-generation Move speaker due for release this year. And now, as spotted by Janko Roettgers, the upcoming portable speaker has made its way through the FCC. The filing matches up with my earlier report and identifies the next Sonos hardware product as model S44.

The FCC documentation also confirms one key upgrade that I mentioned in March: the Move (Gen 2) will support Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at the same time instead of making you toggle between them like the original speaker did (via a switch on the back). As a result, just like the Roam, Era 100, and Era 300, the next Move will let you play something over Bluetooth and then relay that audio to the rest of your Sonos system.

T...

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Mt. Gox: all the news on Bitcoin’s original biggest bankruptcy scandal

One of the strangest stories in crypto still isn’t over.

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Feds charge two men for the $400 million Bitcoin hack that took down Mt. Gox

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The US federal government has charged two Russian nationals in connection with the series of hacks that brought down the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange in 2014. In a press release on Friday, the Department of Justice says it charged Alexey Bilyuchenko and Aleksandr Verner with conspiring to launder 647,000 Bitcoins stolen from the exchange, which was worth around $400 million at the time.

The government is separately charging Bilyuchenko for working with Alexander Vinnik — who the DOJ indicted in 2017 — for operating BTC-e, a now-defunct crypto exchange that served as “one of the primary ways by which cyber criminals around the world transferred, laundered, and stored the criminal proceeds of their illegal activities.”

At the time of...

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The green bubble problem is about to get even worse

Image: Apple

Apple has spent years slowly making green bubbles feel like a worse kind of message — no typing indicators, tiny photos, no end-to-end encryption — but those constraints have always been limited to conversations in Messages; use any other app on your iPhone, and there’s generally parity with Android. But with iOS 17 later this year, Apple will expand those platform differences to phone calls, adding a big, splashy sign that your friend or family member bought the wrong phone.

The biggest change is thanks to Apple’s new Contact Poster feature for phone calls, one of Apple’s banner improvements for iOS 17. When you set a Contact Poster, you choose a photo of yourself that fills an iPhone’s entire screen along with the font that displays...

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Call of Duty removes streamer’s skin after homophobic comments

Image: Activision

The Nickmercs operator skin has been removed from the Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Warzone shop due to Nickmercs making homophobic comments. Activision Blizzard tweeted about the skin’s removal after a popular Call of Duty updates account remarked on it.

“It appears Activision has removed the Nickmercs bundle from the Warzone and MWII store this evening,” tweeted CharlieIntel. The official Call of Duty twitter account responded, “Due to recent events, we have removed the “Nickmercs Operator” bundle from the Modern Warfare II and Warzone store. We are focused on celebrating PRIDE with our employees and our community.”

“Recent events” references an exchange the Faze Clan streamer had with esports commentator Chris Puckett, who was...

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