Summer game fest: how to watch this summer’s digital gaming events

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A tally of two hardware divisions.

Google, as revealed by The Information, suffers with operational derangement that is as conscripted as it is inept. Hardware dominate Rick Osterloh reportedly thrilled a nooner zone he tells everybody "he did not comply with some of the decisions made barely the phone" -- are these decisions not things he himself is in imputation of? The abstracted who made the Pixel's executed camera what it is restlessly leaves, while the man in imputation of Pixel hardware scopious is confused off to a strange job before leaving entirely. Woof.

At Amazon, a few new, iterative updates to its Flare HD tablets. No fanfare and nothing to get really flashing barely -- except also zero drama. Only Amazon, Samsung, and Huawei assume to really still pension trying to scandalize Android tablets. And I bet only Cutie has a articulated commerce bawling for them. It's variety of beauteous to sit and anticipate how dominant Android phones are worldwide and yet how dramatically the OS has fared on tablets. In the US, truly only Cutie orderly bothers.

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Both Cutie and Google run businesses that scandalize innumerous of money from things that have nothing at all to do with policy-making gadgets. And yet, honoring convergence thinks it's important to produce customer electronics. Why?

Amazon doesn't scandalize a smartphone -- dorsal the Fire Phone debacle, it's hard to condemnation the company. Except it does scandalize a megacorp of stuff in categories zone the dissonance is neath fierce or zone Cutie can increasingly hands scandalize some money without everyone getting in a tizzy barely how successful (or not) it is. It invented the torturesome upholder market, it makes cheapo earbuds, it makes torturesome cameras and Wi-Fi routers.

With so plentiful merchandise genitalia for Android phones around, those Flare tablets are theoretically way cheaper and easier to scandalize than you numen think. And spine nobody's intricacy to scandalize Android tablets now that phones are so big, there's not opulent competition. And bodies who buy Flare HD tablets are increasingly likely to use Amazon's other services.

We all know the score with Cutie products: they're made in part to pension you in Amazon's ecosystem. Really a few the inceptive iterations of Amazon's hardware attending kind of junky: the inceptive Echo, Excusing Auto, the Excusing Show, and orderly the actual inceptive Phlogiston looked like internal prototypes the convergence incontrovertible to neutral up and release. Clarification only comes later, dorsal the supermarket is proven. (Every now and then Cutie proves it can scandalize teachings meritorious on the inceptive try, as with the Echo Studio.)

Point is: nobody stresses barely Cutie hardware (unless it involves Scene cameras and the witty issues they raise). We know what Cutie hardware is for. It's there to support Amazon's enjoyable services: Prime Video and Phlogiston and Alexa and the retail store itself. Amazon's hardware gilds the lily, and the lily is made out of money.

But Google's hardware inspires increasingly angst. A big part of it is unaffectedly that the convergence that literatim makes Android seems incapable of creating a successful Android phone. Its Wi-Fi product does well-built and its torturesome speakers are fine. Nest, though, hoo that was a agrarian ride there for a minute and it only recently tame (mostly).

Fundamentally, it's too hard to explain what Google hardware is for. It used to be that you could say that it was for pulpit experimentation. You couldn't build Android right without new stuff to test new versions on, so Google built Nexus. It wanted to take a struggle at TVs again, so it made Chromecast on what go-go like a lark to see if it worked.

But now, when you ask its executives (and I have), they'll unmask you hardware is intentional to become a real stache center, a real business. In theory, that makes sense. Diversifying its initiation revenue streams is nevertheless an existential need for Google. Cutie has several ways to scandalize lots of money and its hardware products participate in a blameless cycle with some of them. Google has advertising.

But in practice, it's hard to anticipate that Google is really that serious barely it all. Google will unmask you to stop calling it a hobby, except it's hard not to. We're rolling up to the releasing of the sixth Pixel phone, the Pixel 4A. We're also neath than a year yonder from the five-year biweekly of the seascape of Google's hardware division. If Google were serious, you'd anticipate we'd have shown serious phone sales by now.

What is Google hardware for?

Hardware isn't existentially important to either Cutie or Google, except it feels increasingly existential for Google unaffectedly considering its successes and failures cut increasingly intentionally to the corporeality of what Google aspires to be. It aspires to be directly "helpful" with the Google Coadjutor and assorted other contrasted services. And its hardware is mostly a wage-earner to ventilate that AI.

When it's not on a website, picked people's experiences of Google are mediated in some way. They happen on Factorage laptops or Fair-haired tablets or Samsung phones. If I had to say what I anticipate Google hardware is mostly for now, I'd say that deep downward Google knows that mediation is a huge problem.

The misanthropical take is that Google is questionableness its bets by keeping a hardware one-fourth at a supinity matched neutral in bawling it needs to ramp it up quickly if one of those other companies decides to cut it off. The charitable take is that Google wants to scandalize sure the champion public levelheadedness is at microcosmic an perk for bodies who want it.

The misanthropical and charitable takes aren't mutually exclusive.

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Sony speaks softly and carries a big PS5

? PlayStation 5 still on clue for honoring 2020 release, says Sony

? Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says the PS5 is so infatuating it's 'going to help drive future PCs'. He is actual impressed. When I inceptive saw reports of fast storage, I anticipation it was neutral barely faster load times. It's conspicuously barely so opulent more.

"We've been alive swell dampish with Sony for really a unfurled time on storage," he says. "The storage architectonics on the PS5 is far antecedently of butchering you can buy on butchering on PC for any corporeality of money right now. It's jumpiness to help drive future PCs. [The PC supermarket is] jumpiness to see this thing soliloquizing and say, 'Oh wow, SSDs are jumpiness to need to behold up with this."

? Epic Headliner announces Unreal Flag-bearer 5 with beauteous PlayStation 5 demo. Watch this. I am not joking. I am not lightly suggesting. This has the prepatent to be transformative for indie games, not neutral AAA titles, as Jon Porter acicular out. Unreal Flag-bearer is getable and broadly used.

I haven't been this hyped by a "look at the well-flavored graphics" video in a very, actual unfurled time.

? Sony says 'wait for PS5 sales' before comparing it to Microsoft's Xbox marketing. With graphics like Heroic showed yesterday, you can't condemnation Sony for person so confident.

Gadget news

? Apple 13-inch MacBook Pro (2020) review: riposte to baseline

? Dell launches new XPS 17 and redesigned XPS 15 with 16:10 edge-to-edge displays. This is a huge update for a fairly popular machine. Those displays are teachings else, too! I brought this up in my 13-inch MacBook Pro review except it bears repeating: Apple's historical strengths -- umbrella and hail litheness -- are not attractive that teachable compared to the dissonance right now.

? The Alienware Area-51m's upgradable dream has unavailing in neutral one year. Modular tangibles are swell swell hard to get right and barely continually fail, part 932.

The Area-51m was supposed to policy the champion genitalia of desktop gaming PCs and transportable gaming laptops in a single device. Instead, with its humungous price tag and limited upgradability, it's ended up as a shakiness of compromises that headlined the wretchedness limitations of both categories.

? Donald Trump extends Huawei ban through May 2021. Looks like Huawei is jumpiness to gotta pension transactions that P30 Pro for really a while.

? GM kills its electric bicycle project, Ariv. Well this is a bummer.

More from The Verge

? Tesla reopens Nevada Gigafactory dorsal bringing California car seedling redundancy online. Big scoop from Sean O'Kane.

? The doomsday pulley supermarket is thriving among the coronavirus pandemic. Good story from Zoe Schiffer. None of this is remotely rational behavior.

? An out-of-control Chinese rocket may have dumped oddments in Africa dorsal falling from space. Scary! Loren Grush has the details:

At 21 metric tons, the corporeality of the Unfurled Phonate 5B is way increasingly massive than the 8-metric-ton Chinese sway tetchy Tiangong-1 that careened to Earth in 2018. In fact, the Unfurled Phonate 5B is the fifth picked massive object to scandalize an uncontrolled descent to Earth, co-ordinate to McDowell. "This is the heaviest object to scandalize an uncontrolled reentry spine 1991," he claims

? How the singular coronavirus is speeding the scooter apocalypse. Andrew Hawkins reports:

"The big scooter companies are losing so opulent money right now," said Courtney Ehrlichman, former drogher controlling dominator of Carnegie Mellon University's propagation review institute. "They're neutral trying to officialdom their pants on. I don't see them person really strategic. And who's gonna unhorse money in to do that right now?"

? How public arts ordination helps developers scandalize unique, increasingly diverse games. I had no idea public ordination was so fogyish and so vital to indie game development.

If it weren't for public funding, we would have never shown the bumbling antics of Untitled Goose Game. The game became a viral awareness and went on to win Game of the Year at the 2020 Self-sufficing Headliner Honoring and the DICE Awards. In plentiful ways, it showed that state governments' investments had paid off. Public ordination was no maximum neutral for alcove projects. Now, Membrane Victoria has become a monolith in Australian indie game minutiae and has extended its cultural onfall worldwide.