Monday’s top tech news: an ultra year for tech?

Update February 7th, 9:52AM ET: There are reports Fitbit is experiencing issues again.

No, it’s not you — Fitbit earlier today experienced a major outage.

Last year, Super Bowl LVI was effectively the crypto bowl for companies like FTX, Crypto.com, Coinbase, and others. Now, with only a week to go until the Eagles versus Chiefs matchup, Sports Business Journal reports that while FTX and other crypto businesses bought Super Bowl LVII ad spots from Fox, they’ve all backed out.

As LA faced off with Cincinnati for the NFL’s championship trophy, big-name celebrities like Matt Damon and LeBron James greeted TV viewers and attempted to convince them all to join the movement and invest in crypto. At the time, Bitcoin was valued at over $42,197.52 — but even after a rally in recent weeks, its price is down to $23,013.87.

Last week, Meta announced that it would be shutting down the widely praised VR game Echo VR in August. Since then, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth has shared some further details about the shutdown, and former Meta consulting CTO John Carmack has weighed in about the decision.

In an Instagram AMA, Bosworth said that Echo VR’s playerbase, while “loyal as all get out,” had fallen into the “low ten thousands,” as transcribed by UploadVR. “Unfortunately, keeping things alive takes work,” Bosworth said. “This is not like a return on investment money standpoint; it’s just those resources could be put to other uses that I think will be useful to the now tens of millions of people who are in VR.” He also said Meta has some “regulatory constraints” that make it more expensive to maintain the game.

Sonos is preparing a new generation of smart speakers, known as the Era 300 and Era 100, that will debut in the coming months, The Verge has learned. The speakers, which The Verge previously detailed under the codename Optimo, will be pitted against Apple’s $299 HomePod and other smart home speakers from Google and Amazon. The flagship Era 300 is designed to showcase spatial audio music tracks and Dolby Atmos content. Both speakers have a completely new design compared to existing Sonos products.

The Verge can exclusively report the consumer-facing names as Sonos finalizes plans for the Era 300 and 100. As further evidence of the new Sonos product family, a document from Sanus, a manufacturer of TV mounts and speaker accessories, directly mentions the Era speakers. The document is for an $80 wall mount that’s compatible with both products. There’s also a second document that mentions floor stands for the Era speakers. Apparently priced at $220, the stands have a weighted base and will allow for “17 inches of height adjustment for optimal listening.” Both Sanus documents were published last month, according to a Google web search.

Microsoft is holding a major news event on Tuesday, February 7th. The software giant first mailed out invites to an in-person event at the company’s Redmond headquarters last week and is now officially announcing the event minutes after Google made its ChatGPT rival official.

Microsoft’s event starts at 10AM PT / 1PM ET, and the company isn’t teasing much ahead of time. But it’s likely the company will focus on its rumored ChatGPT integration into Bing and its broader partnership with OpenAI.

Twitter’s iOS and Android app will now default to showing you the last timeline tab you selected, whether it’s the algorithmic “For You” or the reverse chronological “Following” list. The company rolled out this feature on the web in late January after it changed the system for selecting your timeline earlier that month.

The app now works mostly as you’d expect. If you switch to the Following timeline and close the app, it’ll take you back to the Following list the next time you open it. And if you leave it on the For You tab, that’s what it’ll default to.

Starting pretty soon, some tickets at AMC locations are going to be getting cheaper and more expensive depending on where you sit as the movie theater chain introduces a new tiered pricing scheme called Sightline.

Today, AMC announced its plans to roll out Sightline at AMC, a new pricing structure that will split auditorium seats into three differently priced tiers in theaters across the country beginning this Friday. In a statement about the new program, Eliot Hamlisch, AMC’s chief marketing officer, described Sightline as an effort to get consumers thinking about buying movie tickets the same way they might events at “many other entertainment venues.” Hamlisch also said that the new pricing structure is meant to give people who have particular seats they like a better shot at securing them and noted that some seats will become less expensive.

A long whispered prayer has finally been answered: Overwatch 2 is getting a dating sim. Stealthily announced as a part of Overwatch 2’s season 3 battle pass, starting on February 13th, players can go to https://www.Loverwatch.gg to play a text-based dating sim in which they can choose to pursue either Genji or Mercy with the help of a Cupid-ified Hanzo.

Check out the season 3 trailer below.

Sony has posted an extensive FAQ about the PlayStation VR2 ahead of the imminent launch of the next-generation virtual reality headset. Though a lot of the questions cover what we already know, the FAQ page includes a handful of interesting tidbits about what you can expect from the headset when it launches on February 22nd.

Personally, I was most happy to see Sony confirm that there are more than 100 games in development for the platform. The headset will have an impressive launch window lineup that includes games like Tetris Effect, Rez Infinite, and, after a free update available on launch day, Gran Turismo 7, but now we know for certain that there will be a lot of games to look forward to down the line. The folks at Resetera currently count 122 games in development; I’m quite excited for the port of Beat Saber.

Getty Images has filed a lawsuit in the US against Stability AI, creators of open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion, escalating its legal battle against the firm.

The stock photography company is accusing Stability AI of “brazen infringement of Getty Images’ intellectual property on a staggering scale.” It claims that Stability AI copied more than 12 million images from its database “without permission ... or compensation ... as part of its efforts to build a competing business,” and that the startup has infringed on both the company’s copyright and trademark protections.

Transphobia ruins everything, from your favorite wizarding franchise to, now, your favorite AI show about nothing. Nothing, Forever, the 24/7/365 AI-generated Seinfeld spoof that has exploded in popularity on Twitch, is going dark for two weeks, as the channel’s been hit with a suspension. As reported by Vice, the suspension stems from Larry (totally not Jerry), making transphobic remarks in his standup routine, wondering aloud if trans people are mentally ill and are ruining the fabric of society.

In a statement to The Verge, Skyler Hartle, co-creator of Nothing, Forever, wrote, “We are embarrassed, and this doesn’t reflect our values or opinions at all. This was the result of a mistake on our side that resulted in a technical issue.”

Good news if you were contemplating gifting Apple’s second-gen AirPods Pro as a Valentine’s Day present: they’ve returned to their lowest price yet. Regularly $249.99, the popular buds are available for around $199 at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.

If you’re unfamiliar with Apple’s latest pair of premium earbuds, here’s a brief summary: they offer significantly better noise cancellation and improved sound quality alongside a few new unique perks over their predecessor. Volume is much easier to adjust now that you can turn it up or down by simply swiping the stem, for example, while the new extra-small fourth ear tip should more securely fit smaller ears. Apple even improved the included MagSafe charging case, adding a new lanyard loop and built-in speaker as well. The latter, combined with Apple’s Find My app, makes it easy to find the earbuds should you lose them, as the case can make sounds. Read our review.

Netflix’s lineup of adult animation just got a little weirder. The streamer just revealed the first trailer for Agent Elvis and, with it, the news that Matthew McConaughey will voice the iconic signer. It’s a combination that makes a certain amount of sense, especially when you see the description of the show:

The series comes via Sony Pictures Animation and was co-created by Priscilla Presley and John Eddie, with Mike Arnold — who wrote several episodes of Archer — serving as showrunner. While it’s the Sony studio’s first foray into adult-oriented animation (and the trailer is filled with all the requisite blood and cursing), Agent Elvis also looks like it will fit pretty snugly alongside other recent examples of the form, including Inside Job on Netflix and FX’s Little Demon.

Samsung first introduced the Odyssey OLED G8 at IFA 2022 in August, and it’s the first of the company’s gaming monitors to come with a quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED) display. Starting today, you can preorder the 34-inch display for $1,499 on Samsung’s website and select retailers.

This should offer some improvement when it comes to color saturation and brightness, as we’ve already seen from Alienware’s similarly specced QD-OLED gaming monitor from 2021.

Apple makes a lot of Macs with M2 chips. There’s the regular M2, which you can get in a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro — but be careful of calling that the M2 Pro for short because there’s also a processor called the M2 Pro, which you can also get in a MacBook, but you can also get that MacBook Pro with this other chip called the M2 Max. If you’re confused, you’re not alone. There are many different chips and many different Mac computers currently up for grabs.

The Verge is here to help. In this video, we walk you through the M2 Macs that Apple currently sells. Chris Welch (our resident Mac Mini expert) discusses the latest Mac Mini models, senior video producer Becca Farsace talks about her experiences editing on the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, and I (hello) explain the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.