The Verge·Saturday, December 20, 2025

The Verge - Saturday, December 20, 2025

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

Sony’s XM5 headphones and the latest Kindle round out this week’s best deals

If you’re feeling the stress of having procrastinated on your holiday shopping — and you missed out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday — we’ve got you. We’ve found a variety of gadgets on sale that make for great gifts, many of which will ship in time for the holidays. One of the standouts is the current promo on Sony’s noise-canceling WH-1000XM5 headphones, which are on sale with a free pair of wireless earbuds. Other deals you may have missed include steep discounts on Amazon’s latest entry-

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The best last-minute Christmas gifts you can grab for under $50

Holiday shoppers, it's time to finish knocking out that seasonal wish list. At this point, your online purchases may not arrive in time unless you're willing to pay extra for priority shipping - or you happen to get lucky. Still, gifting anything at all is awfully nice of you, regardless of when it arrives. If you're shopping on a budget of $50 or less per item, we've crafted this gift guide specifically for you. Below, we've assembled a delightful set of practical gifts that can improve just ab

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The LCD Steam Deck is done

RIP LCD Steam Deck. The most affordable Steam Deck, the $399 LCD model, is not available in the US. And, according to the Steam Deck site, it won't be coming back. Underneath the listings for the various models is a note that says: We are no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will no longer be available. And, well, it's no longer in stock on the US site. Valve's decision to phase out the Steam Deck LCD is disappointing. That means the most affordable Steam Deck

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Dogpile’s puzzles mix Balatro, Tetris, and a pile of puppies

One day, video game critics and journalists will put together a comprehensive study on the impact Balatro had on the industry - of how so many games that came after tried to capture its essence by adding complex systems to otherwise simple, easily understood games. Until then, I'm gonna play Dogpile. Dogpile is a deckbuilding match-3 roguelike that builds on the style of merge games like Suika Game by adding a Balatro-like twist. The result is a cute, cozy (in both genre and vibe) game that appe

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You can buy your Xbox Ally an official pair of anti-drift joysticks

The new Gulikit joysticks for Xbox Ally handhelds. | Image: Gulikit Even at $1,000, the Xbox Ally X handheld didn't ship with magnetic drift-resistant joysticks, and neither did the $600 model. But for an extra $20 at Amazon, you can change that today - with officially Asus-approved and sanctioned TMR joysticks from Gulikit, the company that's made a name for itself by supplying aftermarket drift-resistant sticks. The company says it worked with Xbox Ally manufacturer Asus to create these sti

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‘Friend slop’ made co-op gaming goofier than ever in 2025

When a friend invited me to play a new game called REPO earlier this year, I thought I was wasting my money - not because the game looked bad, but because it looked like Lethal Company. The surprise-hit 2024 co-op survival horror game has players wander through unnerving ruined structures collecting trash while evading monsters. Lethal Company was popular with my friends (and just about everyone else), but its eerie liminal spaces spooked me too much. My friends swore REPO was different, though,

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Rivian’s AI pivot is about more than chasing Tesla

RJ Scaringe is sitting in Rivian's Palo Alto offices, explaining why the adventure-themed EV company suddenly decided to build its own self-driving cars, when an unexpected guest glides by the window outside: Waymo. A robotaxi from the Alphabet-owned company pulls up outside the office. The passenger, an analyst from Goldman Sachs, briefly takes a selfie before climbing inside. The Rivian founder and CEO chuckles at the scene. "That's amazing," he laughs. "So perfect." The arrival of the Waymo

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The sold-out Nex Playground made my kids laugh and cry

If you told me last year the Nex Playground would outsell Microsoft's Xbox, even for two weeks, I would have laughed my way out of the room. It's a three-inch cube of a game console that's likely less powerful than your phone, one which uses a single camera to track your body. It only plays curated, certified kid-safe games. Though frequently compared to the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect, the Nex Playground is worse than either at tracking motion. Nor is it cheap: $250 upfront plus $89-a-ye

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Want to link from Google’s app store to your app? That’ll be $2–4 per install

Today was the deadline for Google to reveal how it's complying with Judge James Donato's order to crack open Android for third-party app stores, stop illegally tying its Google Play Billing system to its app store, and let developers link to ways to download their apps outside the Play Store in the US. But Google isn't just letting app developers do things however and whenever they'd like. The company's quietly updated its support pages with a January 28th deadline to enroll in specific Google p

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Google is part of Movies Anywhere again

Google is once again part of Movies Anywhere, meaning that movies you've purchased from Google Play and YouTube will now show up as part of your Movies Anywhere collection. Films from Google Play and YouTube became unavailable on Movies Anywhere on October 31st, but now they should sync to your account again. "Support for Google as a digital retailer has been re-enabled," Movies Anywhere says in a support page. "Reconnect your Google account and your movie purchases from Google will be added to

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