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.
The two biggest games of the year launch in November, offering some reprieve from a terrible year.
The two biggest games of the year launch in November, offering some reprieve from a terrible year.
Ubisoft and “at least two other gaming companies” have made bids for Arkane, which Xbox is working to divest as part of its “reset,” Bloomberg reports. Xbox has “also weighed selling the studio to its management.”
Ahead of the game’s release on Wednesday, 404 Media reports the influx of vibe-coded AI slop add-ons pushed one developer to make their Github repositories private after finding AI ripoffs of their code. The CEO of the popular Warcraft Logs site also said it’s struggling to keep up with surging requests to use its API.
The series will return to Netflix with six new episodes following a more than three-year-long wait. Blue Eye Samurai’s second season picks up where things left off, with Mizu’s vengeful search for her father bringing her to London.
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For the Ocarina of Time remake, Nintendo developers said in a new interview that they wanted to “preserve the experience of spamming the Roll Attack to forward roll your way across Hyrule Field.” I have very fond memories of rolling around the world in the original.
In the remake, you can still spam Roll Attack, but you can also dash.
As part of the annual Godzilla Day celebrations, Lego has announced a towering brick-built Godzilla model featuring an adjustable tail, a posable head, arms, and fingers, and an attachable tongue that can be swapped for a heat ray blast. It will set you back a hefty $449.99 when it becomes available on November 27th.
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Sega Fave — Sega’s arcade-focused subsidiary — says an unauthorized third party accessed its systems, forcing it to suspend the online services it provides across games like Taiko no Tatsujin and Initial D: The Arcade, as reported by Kotaku. The machines will remain offline while Sega Fave investigates the incident.
The indie game hosting platform didn’t specifiy what was purged, but it has clear creator guidelines around acceptable AI usage. The cleanup comes after itch.io reported that daily game submissions have doubled in two months. Meanwhile, almost half of all games released on Steam in October disclosed AI-generated content.
3D-converted movies could be in for another big push, as Deadline reports the arrangement between Meta and Lionsgate will start with The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
After their theatrical run, the plan is for the movies to become available on Meta’s $1,300 VR headsets, along with games and other content.
As AI becomes able to do more work, that will create opportunities for everyone to think seriously about what creation really means. Copy-pasted designs have existed before, but they don’t last. When an individual designs something, they create with intention. All a computer does is help with that work. I think that no matter how much it evolves, there will still be things we can do.
Along with fellow Belleville Three members Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, he created the Detroit techno sound, releasing music under aliases including Cybotron and Model 500.
Atkins was found unresponsive in his hotel room Saturday ahead of a planned performance in Mexico City, and May said, “He never mentioned how sick he was, for years. He just went out and did his job the best way he could. Respect his legacy. Respect the effort. Respect the work. Respect the accomplishments.” Saunderson wrote, “Juan was the originator of Techno, a true visionary who opened the door for so many of us, myself included.”
This profile of friend-to-the-stars Charles Porch (formerly of Meta) details how OpenAI is working to seed AI within the entertainment industry.
Porch describes, for example, how having Real Housewives stars at personal events could pay off in the future: “If an AI model comes up on the show, it might be Chat because we have this nice drumbeat. This is what I’ve been trying to explain to folks: It’s not about deals; it’s about relationships.”
[Intelligencer]
NBCU Media Group chairman Matt Strauss on sports, streaming, and keeping you watching.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches later this week, and in the lead-up Nintendo has put out the first half of a lengthy developer Q&A, covering everything from what changed gameplay-wise, to the new visual style, which was inspired by puppet shows. As art director Aya Shida explains:
Neither puppet shows nor practical effects films reproduce reality exactly as it is. Even so, both create a convincing sense that the characters truly exist within their respective fantasy worlds. We also felt that there was some overlap between these forms of expression and the distinctive nostalgia evoked by the original game.
This graph shared by game hosting platform Itch.io doesn’t flag when AI was specifically used in game development, but at a time when so many studios are struggling, its hard to think of another reason why daily game submissions would have doubled in two months.
To close out spooky season, I shared some of my favorite creepy clips from YouTube. I tried to avoid series that spanned multiple videos or had the backing of bigger corporate sponsors, like Adult Swim’s infomercials. But let’s toss all qualifiers out the window: What YouTube clip or clips have unsettled you the most?
Overnight, a new surprise episode of the It prequel series dropped. No Pennywise in this one, though. “A Story of Derry” takes place hundreds of years ago and focuses on building out the lore, including introducing Maturin, the giant cosmic turtle that hasn’t made the cut in the feature films yet.
Between his music, acting, podcast, activism, and businesses, Vic Mensa wears a lot of hats.
The music streaming platform is reportedly aiming to release the feature, which would allow users to prompt AI-generated remixes and covers of participating songs, in the first quarter of 2027. This is expected to be a paid add-on for Premium subscribers, with Spotify considering charging an additional $4 to $5 a month.
[Financial Times]
That’s the logline for Death Stranding anime Isolations, which just dropped its first short teaser. Produced by Hideo Kojima, the series releases on Disney Plus and Hulu some time in 2027. It’s separate from the live-action Death Stranding film from A24, which is set to start filming next year.
If you own Pokémon Legends: Z-A, you’ll soon be able to get a Poké Ball Pattern Vivillon for the first time in a decade. This form of Vivillon has only ever been available via special event distributions, and the last one was in 2016. (The first, in 2014, was only in Paris.) The exact dates of the distribution are still TBA, but it’s on its way, so don’t miss it!
That’s the subject line of a real press release I just got in my email. Glover will “direct, write, executive produce, and star in the series,” according to the announcement. Stephen Glover, his brother, will also be a writer and executive producer. No word on when the series might actually be out.
That’s according to developer Maddy Thorson, who also said that TowerFall had been removed as well.
Earlier this month, Big Walk developers House House said that the game skipped Xbox to support the BDS movement.
Full production of restoring vaulted content is expected to begin in February, and from there, “we expect full production will be about 12mos. to fully complete the porting process,“ according to a blog post.
Bungie is also teasing updates to come about a Destiny 2 “celebration,” a project Bungie is calling Destiny “Legacy,” and something “Redacted.” The next major communications beat for Destiny is planned for February.
It’s packed with details and worth reading in full. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff about the game’s systems and seemingly incredible level of detail, but I was most intrigued by a tidbit about how quitting crime is a “a fundamental theme” of the game’s story:
“These games, maybe some people think, ‘Oh, they’re power fantasies’,” Nelson says. “Sure. But what if these characters want something else?”
The Duskbloods — an ambitious, Switch 2-exclusive vampire-themed multiplayer game from FromSoftware — is no longer coming out this year. The studio says this will allow “time for final adjustments to game rules and balancing.” In the meantime, you could always read my profile on the studio from this summer.
A new GTA VI clip in the latest episode of South Park shows Jason grabbing a bag of dog poop off one of Leonida’s beaches and whacking an NPC in the face with it. You can try it yourself when GTA VI comes out on November 19th.
The studio’s two-minute Driving Lesson appears to be an actual recording of a mother giving her child their first driving lesson. The animation has a real tactile feel, almost like a photocopy, rendered in muted reds and blues. It’s easily the most un-Pixar-like thing Pixar has ever made. Even the aspect ratio is weird!
The world has plenty of guitar amps, but amps designed for synths are much rarer. Moog’s new Model 210 ($999) and Model 112 ($799) are full-range, flat-response (FRFR) cabs designed especially for synths, keyboards, drum machines, and other electronic music instruments. There are no tubes here, but they do have a fully analog signal path.
While we all await a return to Hyrule next week, Nintendo held its latest indie game showcase, which included everything from Game Boy-style adventures to a co-op raccoon simulator. We also finally got a release date for one of my most-anticipated games: My Arms Are Longer Now. You can catch up on the full event here.
