It might not get the same kind of attention as Google and Apple, but Microsoft is still one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies operating today. It runs Azure, one of the biggest cloud computing services, and maintains Windows 11 and the whole Office suite of software. It also makes plenty of Surface hardware and has a whole slew of gaming products, including the Xbox Series X. But the company is ever expanding — building new hardware, acquiring new game studios, and making sure that even if Microsoft doesn’t run your phone, it can touch plenty of the apps on it.
Microsoft’s disc-to-digital feature could be essential for next-gen Xbox consoles.
Microsoft could shut at least five studios as part of big Xbox layoffs starting next week.
If you loved Microsoft sticking Copilot in everything, just wait until its marketing department gets ahold of “quantum.“
itsmrfungible666:
Get ready for Microsoft Windows 12 Elite with Copilot Quantum
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
The Trump administration wants a useful quantum computer in two years. Microsoft wants one in three. Independent researchers cry hype.
The free Windows 10 extended support program was only supposed to last until October 13th, 2026, but Microsoft has quietly expanded support until October 12th, 2027. That gives users an extra year to avoid updating to Windows 11, or forking out for a new computer amid the ongoing RAMageddon.
The coalition of publishers alleges OpenAI and Microsoft “scraped, copied, and ingested” their work without permission or compensation to train their AI models. This latest legal battle adds to the string of copyright lawsuits OpenAI is facing from publishers like The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the Microsoft CEO says that people won’t tolerate a small group of companies “doing all of the learning for the world.” Insert the We’re-All-Trying-To-Find-The-Guy-Who-Did-This meme. According to Nadella:
“You can’t say, hey, all white-collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon and we will use all the power to build data centers.”
Like previous Halo titles, unlockable skulls in Halo: Campaign Evolved will allow you crank up explosions, turn down gravity, or celebrate every grunt headshot with confetti and fanfare. You can even mimic the gameplay of the classic Halo: Combat Evolved, or enable remixes of skulls for randomized choas.
On an episode of The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast, Suleyman said that in Anthropic’s Claude Constitution, they “speculate about its consciousness and whether it has those feelings and is aware.” He called it both “dangerous” and a “philosophical failing,” adding, “We want AIs to be controllable, contained, accountable, aligned tools that serve humanity.”
During an interview with The Game Business at Summer Game Fest, Xbox strategy chief Matthew Ball admitted to “underestimating” the RAM crisis, saying that demand for Xbox consoles “exceeds supply.” It’s pushing Xbox to re-evaluate its plans for its next-gen Helix console:
“We are working very hard to rethink everything that we can about Helix, which is a console we are committed to shipping, and we are very cognisant of the ways in which we need to change as a company to make sure it is affordable, to make sure that it’s flexible.”
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman came on Decoder this week to talk about the path to superintelligence and the company’s ever-evolving relationship with OpenAI. When asked whether Microsoft was using Build to flex its independence from OpenAI like a “freshly single divorcée,” Suleyman had this to say:
Definitely not. No, not at all. Look, I mean, obviously that’s a cool headline and a fun phrase. But the reality is that we are in partnership with OpenAI for years and years to come… So naturally, that’s going to continue. And so I think that’s just a natural course of these sorts of partnerships.
I don’t think it’s anything untoward or surprising. I think OpenAI is very understanding and supportive of that. I mean, they’ve obviously been an incredibly fast-growing company, and they understand that we have to pursue our own agenda as well.
Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball acknowledged during a The Game Business Live interview at Summer Game Fest that the wave of cancellations happened over just a few months after the October price hike. Ball also admitted that “the value of the offering has now changed,” since Call of Duty games won’t be available day-one on Game Pass anymore.
[GameSpot]
An even messier return to console wars than we thought: As spotted by ResetEra, Microsoft’s own Xbox Podcast seems to have inadvertently revealed proof that Gears of War: E-Day was coming to PS5 before Xbox locked it down. The podcast episode has been pulled, presumably to fix the goof.
Xbox has just released a new Halo: Campaign Evolved trailer, and the footage was captured on Sony’s PS5 Pro console. The trailer comes a day after Microsoft brought Xbox exclusives back at its Xbox Games Showcase, with Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution both skipping PlayStation.
Mustafa Suleyman on automation, OpenAI, and why it’s ‘dangerous’ to call AI ‘alive.’
We’ve been waiting to hear more about inXile’s new steampunk RPG, and during the Xbox Games Showcase today we finally got a rough release window: 2027. Clockwork Revolution will also be an Xbox console exclusive, just like Gears of War: E-Day.
Hoffman, who joined Microsoft’s board in 2017, won’t stand for reelection at the company’s next shareholder meeting, as reported earlier by Bloomberg.
In an episode of his Possible podcast with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Hoffman says he wants to focus on Manas, the AI drug development startup he co-founded last year.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Microsoft’s commitment to AI is not news. Copilot has been everywhere for... a while now. But at this week’s Build developer conference, the company made clear that it wants — and needs — to be a bigger player in the space. The Verge’s Tom Warren joins David to talk about the new Scout AI assistant, the Solara operating system concept, and whether Microsoft can hang with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Also: how’s the new era of Xbox going?
Watch | Listen | Get ad-free
At Computex, Asus announced the ROG NUC 16 Edition 20 — a mini-PC with Intel’s highest-end mobile chip and a flagship RTX 5090 Laptop GPU. It’s even decked out in gold accents for the Republic of Gamers’ 20th anniversary.
Like other Asus Computex announcements, there’s no pricing. But as Liliputing points out, the standard model with an RTX 5080 costs $3,799.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
‘We have to prove that we can do everything that we need to from the ground up,’ said AI chief Mustafa Suleyman.
