The Verge’s 2023 in review

20.12.2023 - 16:37 / theverge.com / Andrew Webster

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By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

Time moves strangely nowadays. It can be tough to remember what happened last week, let alone 12 months ago. That’s part of what makes looking back so interesting. It can be hard to keep track of everything that went down in 2023, never mind when it actually occurred. Tears of the Kingdom feels like ages ago — and yet, the game only came out in March.

This collection of articles is meant to explore what 2023 was by doing two things. First, dig through the last 12 months and find the most important stories across all of our coverage areas — spanning technology and culture — and put them into context, while offering a glimpse at what’s ahead. It’s also meant to be a guide of sorts, looking at our favorite releases across the biggest gaming platforms and streaming services, and showcasing the best things to watch and play.

So sit back and enjoy a little reminiscing — you might be surprised at just how much happened this year.

TODAY, 1:30 PM UTC

Allison Johnson

Smartphones — the gadgets I spend most of my waking hours thinking about, testing, and tinkering with — are generally considered a mature product category. This means that, in any of the previous, oh, five years, you’d struggle to find a big defining moment for the industry. Likewise, there was no “iPhone” moment in 2023, and I’ll bet you 20 bucks we won’t see one in 2024, either.

But that’s not to say that it wasn’t an interesting year for mobile tech; far from it. We didn’t have a singular, spectacular innovation: just a bunch of smaller ones that, altogether, could make a big difference in the long run. 

TODAY, 1:00 PM UTC

Verge Staff

Dec 19

Dan Seifert

What a year, huh?

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s time to look back on the year that was. It was a great year for entertainment and a not-so-great year for the people who actually made that entertainment. It was the year Twitter died, and the year Matter mostly failed to launch. Gadgets got gadgety-er, photos got what-is-a-photo-ier, and generative AI was suddenly everywhere.

Dec 19

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

On Thanksgiving weekend, my husband and I finished a big bathroom remodel project we’d worked on for months. The final step was to replace our old toggle light switches with modern, paddle-style ones. As I sat on the bathroom floor with the four <a