Technologies

Apple Arcade Games Coming Soon

Here’s what’s available on Apple Arcade this month.

Apple Arcade — a CNET Editors’ Choice award pick — features hundreds of games to play for just $5 a month. The service offers familiar and classic games, as well as exclusive titles. You can find these games in the App Store, but they have paywalls and ads that might hinder your gaming experience. With an Apple Arcade subscription, you can play each title without paywalls or ads at no extra charge.

Here are the new games you can play in January.

Episode XOXO

Developer: Pocket Gems
Release date: Jan. 6

Episode XOXO is the sequel to Episode: Choose Your Story. It’s an interactive storytelling game where players can choose to enjoy a story full of drama, romance and adventure. The game is launching with five new stories, and there are plans to add more stories in future updates.

Illustrated

Developer: Border Leap
Release date: Jan. 13

Illustrated is a puzzle game whose gameplay blends jigsaws and word play. Each puzzle starts with an illustration that shows a concept sketch with the hidden words of the artist’s story behind the illustration. As you place puzzle pieces in their correct spot, the illustration begins to color itself in and the words of the story are revealed.

Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On!

Developer: GAME FREAK
Release date: Jan. 20

Game Freak, the creator of the Pokemon game series, isn’t horsing around with its next Apple Arcade game. Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! was originally released as Pocket Card Jockey on the 3DS. The game is a combination of solitaire and horse racing where players clear cards with sequential numbers from the game as fast as they can. The more cards you clear, the better your horse’s mood is. Your horse’s mood helps your trusty steed charge energy during races. Once your horse’s energy is charged and you’re in the homestretch, your horse will have to use that energy to sprint to victory. Special cards also litter the raceway, and they provide your horse boosts and benefits, like leveling up and learning new skills. Off the track, you can breed your horses to produce foals with their parent’s abilities to be used in future races.

Squiggle Drop

Developer: Noodlecake
Release date: Jan. 27

If you like puzzle games with a little bit of physics, you should try Squiggle Drop. In this game, players have to solve puzzles by drawing a single shape. As players solve more puzzles, they can earn rewards and unlock buildings and upgrades to build their own Squiggletown.

Apple Arcade games getting January updates

What did Apple Arcade release in December?

Technologies

Verum Messenger: Don’t follow the future. Define it

In a world where information defines influence, Verum Messenger is building a new architecture of digital communication — intelligent, secure, and ready for tomorrow. Here, technology serves not limitations, but possibilities.

Not being part of change. Leading it. Verum Messenger — the future that speaks first.

Technologies

Verum Finance: Stop Spending Months Opening a Bank Account

Stop spending months trying to open a bank account.

Document submissions.
Checks.
Rejections.
Account freezes.
Blocks without explanation.

And all of that — just for a regular card.

With Verum, it’s different.

🚀 Verum Messenger + Verum Finance
For just $50–70 you get:

✔ A virtual card
✔ Instant transfers between users
✔ A modern secure messenger
✔ Apple Pay integration
✔ Contactless payments worldwide
✔ Fast setup without bureaucracy

❌ No European residency permit required
❌ No endless verification checks
❌ No piles of documents

Open it — and use it.

The future of finance and communication is already here.
Verum — when freedom matters more than banking rules.

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal