Since that reveal was made, there have been unconfirmed reports on the true extent of how these layoffs might have affected Microsoft's gaming groups. Microsoft has already confirmed that a major game in development at Blizzard Entertainment for several years was canceled as a result of these layoffs.

Windows Central's Jez Corden has posted unconfirmed, but likely reliable, reports on his X (formerly Twitter account). One post from Corden claims that Microsoft has "shut down departments dedicated to bringing Xbox games to physical retail." He later posted that doesn't mean Microsoft will never release physical games anymore, stating that the company could outsource those efforts.

Another post from Corden claims, "A huge amount of community managers have also lost their jobs across the company." He also stated that Microsoft decided to lay off "the entire internal customer support team(s)" for Activision Blizzard King games "save a few," with the rest being outsourced as well.

Call of Duty fan site Charlie Intel also revealed some deep cuts at various Activision Blizzard studios. Its X post today claims, "Every Call of Duty team saw a reduction in staff." Deeper cuts were reportedly made at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's main developer, Sledgehammer Games, which totaled 30 percent of its team members. That was also the same percentage reported at Toys for Bob, while High Moon Studios reportedly lost 10 percent of its workers.

It remains to be seen how all of these job cuts will affect the development of future Call of Duty games.

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Interestingly enough, Nvidia had perhaps inadvertently under-specced its own 4070 SUPER on the specification sheet, and this was the case at the launch presentation too. Later on, the company quietly rectified its mistake as it confirmed the card actually packed 33% more L2 cache at 48MB vs 32MB it had originally advertised.

While the 4070 SUPER was available first, the Ti arrived second, and the 4080 SUPER is set to land by the end of the month.

Like the 4070 SUPER, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER too seems to have run into some hiccups, though this time, it's not a positive one. However, the issue only seems to affect MSI's Ventus 3X three-fan model, with the card underperforming compared to what the models from the likes of Asus or Gigabyte, among others, are doing. Curiously, other MSI models are seemingly unaffected by this issue.

The table below shows the relative performances of the Gigabyte Gaming OC (left) and the MSI Ventus 3X (right) at three different resolutions. This seems to be happening despite using the optimized GeForce driver version:

MSI has also confirmed the issue as it published a statement today:

After a deep investigation, our R&D department discovered that our new GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER 16G VENTUS 3X graphics card does not deliver its full potential. MSI sincerely acknowledges and apologizes for any inconvenience. With a paramount focus on enhancing user experience, we are unwaveringly committed to ensuring optimal graphics card performance and overall satisfaction for our esteemed customers.

MSI has asked users to update the vBIOS (video BIOS) on their Ventus 3X cards:

To enjoy your new product at its maximum speed, we kindly invite you to update the new BIOS (95.03.45.40.F0) that is freshly fine-tuned by our team.

 

This update will boost your graphics card performance, aiming to meet and exceed the expected benchmarks.

The problem may not be resolved just yet as YouTuber Tech YES City did not see any significant difference between the three different vBIOS versions they tested:

Regardless, MSI seems to be working hard to find a solution. It has also added in its statement that the other seemingly unaffected models of the 4070 Ti SUPER, namely, the Ventus 2X and the Gaming X, will also receive a similar treatment.

You can find more details about the vBIOS updates on this page on MSI's website.

Via: TechPowerUp (link1, link2) | Tech YES City (YouTube)

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According to The Verge, Matt Booty, Microsoft's game content and studios president, confirmed the cancelation of the game in an internal memo. There's no indication why the game was canceled, but Booty did state that some of the Blizzard team members who were working on the title will be moved over to "several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.”

When it officially announced the game two years ago, Blizzard was actively hiring for the project. Here's how it described the game:

We are going on a journey to a whole new universe, home to a brand-new survival game for PC and console. A place full of heroes we have yet to meet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibility, waiting to be explored.

The announcement was accompanied by a couple of pieces of concept artwork, including one where it appears a couple of modern-day people, complete with a bicycle, enter into some woods that seemingly lead into a fantasy-style land.

Blizzard's president Mike Ybarra will also depart as part of this restructuring and Microsoft will name a new president of Blizzard next week. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Ybarra stated:

Leading Blizzard through an incredible time and being part of the team, shaping it for the future ahead, was an absolute honor. Having already spent 20+ years at Microsoft and with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard behind us, it’s time for me to (once again) become Blizzard’s biggest fan from the outside.

One of Blizzard's co-founders, Allen Adham, who was serving as its chief design officer, will also be leaving the studio.

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Microsoft's decision to cut 1,900 positions from its gaming division, which has about 22,000 members, comes one year after the latest big round of layoffs. In January 2023, Microsoft announced plans to reduce its workforce by 10,000 employees. It also coincides with the recent Xbox management shift and Microsoft reaching an all-time high market cap of $3 trillion.

Here is the internal memo Phil Spencer shared with Microsoft Gaming employees about the latest layoffs (via The Verge😞

It’s been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King teams joined Microsoft. As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we’ve set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.

 

As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. The Gaming Leadership Team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible. The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they’ve accomplished here. We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws. Those whose roles will be impacted will be notified, and we ask that you please treat your departing colleagues with the respect and compassion that is consistent with our values.

 

Looking ahead, we’ll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I’m as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together.

 

Phil

Mike Ybarra, a Microsoft veteran with over 20 years of experience working in Microsoft, is also leaving Activision Blizzard after moving from the software giant to ABK in November 2019. Microsoft will name a new Activision Blizzard president in the upcoming days.

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Just a few days ago, Apple started taking pre-orders for its latest hardware product, the Vision Pro mixed reality headset. While that device has certainly received a lot of press and attention already, it didn't come close to the huge launch of what is likely Apple's single most important hardware product in its history.

That happened 40 years ago today, on January 24, 1984, with the release of the Apple Macintosh. It was considered a revolution in PC design at the time, as it integrated a PC with a monitor and Apple's graphical user interface.

The hardware specs of the Macintosh were, of course, well below the PCs, or even smartphones, that are available today. If you are curious, EveryMac has all the hardware details. The first Macintosh included an 8MHz 68000 processor, 128K of RAM that could be updated up to 512K via an authorized Apple reseller, 64K of ROM, a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, and a monochrome 9-inch 512 x 342 monitor. It even had a built-in handle for people to hold and transport the 16.5-pound PC.

The Macintosh was also sold with its own keyboard and a mouse and it included an extra port in the back for any external disk drives you wanted to connect. It also had two additional serial ports in the back to connect other peripherals to the PC like a printer, a modem, and more.

At the time graphical user interfaces for PCs were a rarity (Microsoft's first Windows OS would not go on sale until over a year later in November 1985). The release of Apple's new PC helped to popularize operating systems with GUIs and the use of a mouse to interact with the interface.

Apple first announced the Macintosh a few months before the actual launch. One of the things the company did to promote the PC was to release detailed brochures that showed how people could use the PC for art creation, word processing, gaming, and more. You can check out one of these early brochures over at DigiBarn.

The brochure also had quotes and pictures from other PC executives praising the Macintosh. Yes, it included Microsoft co-founder and then-CEO Bill Gates offering his thumbs up for Apple's PC, and he even wore a shirt with the Macintosh logo.

We cannot talk about the launch of the Macintosh without a mention of the famous "1984" TV commercial. Apple commissioned the 1-minute video to promote the PC to run during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.

The ad, directed by Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, showed a dystopian future society similar to the one depicted in George Orwell's novel 1984. A rebellious woman throws a sledgehammer into a giant screen showing a "Big Brother" type of figure. The implication is that the Apple Macintosh will help to not make that kind of oppressive future come to pass.

The commercial helped not only to promote the launch of the Macintosh two days later, but it cemented the Super Bowl as a major TV event for companies to show off their products with big-budget commercials that continue to this day.

One thing that sometimes gets forgotten about the Macintosh launch is its price tag. Like the Vision Pro, it was a very expensive product at $2,495. Taking inflation into account, that means the Macintosh would be priced at over $7,000 in today's dollars.

However, Apple still managed to sell about 70,000 units of the first Macintosh by May 1984. That was a pretty impressive number at the time for a PC with such a high price tag.

Today, Apple still sells PCs that are considered to be more expensive than those that run on Microsoft's Windows. It also still sells all-in-one PCs with the iMac. While it has expanded its product lineup to include the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, and now the Vision Pro, all of those devices would not have been possible without the success of the original Macintosh 40 years ago.

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This achievement caps Microsoft's turnaround over the past decade, led by CEO Satya Nadella's cloud-first vision. Since Nadella took over in 2014, Microsoft has expanded its infrastructure and productivity tools like Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 to tap into strong demand from businesses migrating to the cloud.

The company has also grown its presence in hot areas like AI, gaming and augmented reality. Microsoft's intelligent cloud division, fueled by the success of Azure, has posted revenue growth of over 20% for multiple quarters running.

Microsoft's rise coincides with its partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Since the chatbot's release in November 2022, Microsoft's stock has skyrocketed by over 60%, significantly outperforming the S&P 500 and even Apple's own gains during the same period (via Forbes).

On the other hand, according to the figures for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2024, Microsoft's total revenue was $56.5 billion, up 13 percent compared to the $50.1 billion in revenue recorded in the same period last year. The software giant added that its net income for the last quarter was $22.3 billion, an increase of 26 percent compared to its $17.6 billion net income a year ago.

In its Xbox division, gaming revenues were up 9 percent, and Xbox content and services revenues were up by 13 percent. However, Xbox hardware revenues were down by 7 percent. Microsoft will report its earnings next Thursday.

In other trillion-dollar club news, Meta also rejoined the group on Wednesday. The company's shares jumped more than 3%, valuing the company at $1.006 trillion. This suggests a potential revival for the social media giant, which has faced several challenges in recent years.

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What you need to know

• Bing's market share in search remains stagnant despite Microsoft's heavy investment in AI.
• Its market share stood at 3.4% at the end of last year, with Google asserting its dominance in the category with a whopping 91.6%.
• Microsoft could potentially be in a position to make up for this after Google was listed as a gatekeeper by the European Commission under the DMA, which forced it to allow users to use Bing or Microsoft as their default search engine or browser respectively.

It's almost one year since Microsoft unveiled its fully-fledged AI-powered assistant, Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) which is widely available across Microsoft Edge, Windows 11, Bing, and Microsoft 365. Part of these efforts are geared toward gaining traction in the search market share, which is currently dominated by Google.

And now, Microsoft's efforts have seemingly been rendered futile, at least according to a survey by Statcounter, which indicates that Bing's market share has only grown by less than 1% since debuting Microsoft Copilot. 

A graph showcasing widely popular search engines and their global search market share. (Image credit: Statcounter)

As spotted by Bloomberg, Bing closed off 2023 with just 3.4% of the global search market, while Google continues to dominate the category with a whopping 91.6% of the market share. Other search engines like Yandex and Yahoo came in closely after Bing with 1.6% and 1.1% of the global search market respectively.

A similar report from the research firm from last year also pointed out that Bing's market share remained pretty much the same (stagnant) for the better part of last year. However, its user base grew significantly shortly after Microsoft Copilot's launch, ultimately pushing it from 95.7 million in February to 101.7 million in March. 

Unfortunately, the increased traffic was short-lived, as the hype for AI advances seemingly dwindled amongst users. 

Ai might not save Bing's sinking ship

(Image credit: Windows Central | Bing Image Creator)

Despite Microsoft's heavy investment in generative AI and its ever-evolving relationship with ChatGPT maker, OpenAI, Google continues to assert its dominance in search. 

While making an appearance in Google's antitrust trial last year, Microsoft's CEO indicated that Google doesn't play fair with Bing, further pointing out that Apple's deal with Google to use its search engine across its wide array of devices has negatively impacted Bing. The CEO also said that he was willing to part with up to $15 billion annually to secure a similar deal with Apple, citing that it would be a game-changer for Bing.

Recent reports highlighting that chatbots like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT are only getting dumber, coupled with the exorbitant cost implication required to keep these chatbots don't help Microsoft to state its case.

Opportunities for Microsoft to exploit

(Image credit: Windows Central / Copilot)

However, Microsoft could potentially make up for these shortcomings by taking advantage of the European Commission listing Google as a gatekeeper under the DMA. The company was given six months to comply with the DMA rules, including ensuring its services are interoperable.

Google has already started making changes to its services in compliance with the DMA. One of the most notable changes made is that users will now be able to easily set Microsoft Bing and Edge as their default search engine and browser, respectively. This could potentially allow Microsoft Bing to compete with Google on an even playing field.

As it happens, it seems Microsoft Edge and Bing might be off the European Commission's hook after investigations revealed that the services weren't dominant enough to warrant regulation and scrutiny by the watchdog.

That said, Google continues to make advances in the AI landscape with its own ChatGPT-like iteration, Google Bard, coupled with other nifty AI-powered features. It will be interesting to see how things pan out in the long run for Microsoft with these potentially beneficial opportunities.

Do you think Microsoft Bing will overtake Google in the search market share race? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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The surprise success of Palworld has also been followed by server issues and the discovery of some bugs that need to be addressed. PocketPair has stated a number of times it is working to solve these issues, and in a new post on the game's X account, the developer says fixing those bugs will continue to be its major priority at the moment.

Some of the critical issues that PocketPair is dealing with include the following:

• Sometimes, the world date may experience rollbacks.
• The loading screen may persist when trying to load into worlds.

The developer is also working on a couple of improvements to Palworld, including

• Key configuration improvements
• Improvements to base Pal AI and pathing.

PocketPair has revealed a roadmap of new content and features it plans to put into Palworld after addressing the most important issues and adding key improvements. The roadmap includes:

• PvP
• Raid Bosses (End-Game Content)
• Pal Arena (PvP for Pals)
• Steam-Xbox Crossplay
• Various Xbox Feature Improvements
• Server Transfers and Migrations
• Improvements to the Building System
• New islands, Pals, Bosses, and Technologies

Obviously, there's no specific timeframe for when any of these new features and improvements will be put into the game. However, with the scale of Palworld's early success, we suspect PocketPair will be hiring more team members to put these content updates into place sooner rather than later.

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These SLMs aim to provide conversational and generative capabilities similar to large language models (LLM) like OpenAI's GPT but with significantly reduced hardware needs. This would allow Microsoft's AI products and services to have lower associated costs and carbon footprint compared to alternatives developed externally.

The GenAI team, expected to be incorporated into Microsoft's Azure cloud unit, will focus on creating smaller language models. To support the GenAI team, Microsoft has also relocated several top developers from its research group. Microsoft corporate vice president Misha Bilenko will spearhead the team's efforts.

The GenAI team aims to create AI that matches or exceeds the functionality of models sourced from companies like OpenAI while optimizing for smaller sizes.

To date, Microsoft has incorporated a number of AI capabilities from OpenAI into its offerings. For example, Bing uses GPT-4 for Copilot, and Bing Image Creator uses Dall-E for image generation. In recent weeks, the company also unveiled Copilot Pro—a subscription service targeting individual consumers to give them more advanced AI capabilities.

The report comes after OpenAI's recent launch of the GPT Store, where users can create, share, and sell customized AI models based on OpenAI's language models. Similarly, Microsoft announced its own plans to offer custom AI chatbots tailored to specific needs and topics for Copilot.

However, relying on externally developed AI comes with some fees and a lack of control over the technology itself. Microsoft's pursuit of developing smaller and more affordable AI technology could potentially open up new avenues for the company to offer its own solutions, reducing dependence on third-party providers.

In case you missed it, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are said to want to investigate the OpenAI and Microsoft relationship. Last week, we reported that both agencies are eager to investigate the deal, notably Microsoft's involvement and its impact on competition in the AI industry.

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In addition to cutting jobs at the core of the business, Ebay will be scaling back the contracts it has among its “alternate workforce” over the coming months.

Ebay, like many other tech firms, invested heavily in expansion over the last several years, but due to inflation and the resulting interest rate hikes, credit has become more expensive and customers are cutting spending. Under these new conditions, companies like Ebay need to make cuts.

Ebay CEO Jamie Iannone said:

“Despite facing external pressures, like the challenging macroeconomic environment, we know we can be better with the factors we control. While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business.

 

To address this, we're implementing organizational changes that align and consolidate certain teams to improve the end-to-end experience, and better meet the needs of our customers around the world.”

The company has asked U.S. employees to work from home on January 24th so that the conversations can be done with some space and privacy. It said that leaders will deliver the news via Zoom directly and employees’ VP or eLT member will send and email once the notifications in their groups have been completed.

For those affected, the company said it will enter a consultation process where required but the firm gave no more details other than this.

At the end of 2022, Neowin reported on ZipRecruiter data which said that 79% of recently sacked tech employees were able to find new work relatively quickly albeit not in the same sector. With many more cuts happening since then, it’s unclear whether sacked workers will be able to find new jobs as easily.

Source: Ebay

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Bloomberg reports, via unnamed sources, that the EU is looking like it will exempt Microsoft's Bing search engine, its Edge web browser, and its advertising services, from being held into account by the DMA. The sources stated that these services simply are not major forces in their respective tech categories to be regulated by the new EU tech rules.

That doesn't give Microsoft a full hall pass on this matter. As we have reported before, Microsoft is making changes to its Windows 10 and 11 operating systems so they are safe from getting hit by DMA enforcement. That includes showing notable operating system components in the System Components, the ability to remove any app from the OS, and more interoperability points.

In addition one of Microsoft's other services, the business-themed social network Linkedin, is also expected to make certain changes for the EU's DMA, according to Bloomberg.

Last week, Google announced it would add new search and browser choice screens for Android phones in Europe as part of its own efforts to be in line with the DMA. The company will also make certain changes to its Search services in Europe, which include getting rid of Google Flights information.

Bloomberg also reported that Apple's iMessage app may be labeled as being exempt from the DMA law, again due to its lower footprint in Europe compared to other messaging services. However, its looking likely that Apple may be forced to make changes to its iOS and iPad App Stores in Europe. That may include support for sideloading apps on Apple devices, but again just in the EU.

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You're welcome.

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You're welcome.

What you need to know

• A week after Microsoft unveiled its new paid subscription for Microsoft Copilot, several users raised concerns on social media, citing performance issues and slow load times.
• Microsoft's Windows lead, Mikhail Parakhin, ruled out the possibility of the issue being Server-related and pointed fingers at Microsoft's Edge's Efficiency Mode.
• Another user indicated that the issue persisted despite not having Efficiency Mode enabled and that restarting the browser seemingly fixed the issue.
• The Copilot Pro subscription promises faster performance and an enhanced user experience, alongside priority access to the GPT-4 Turbo model, even during peak times.

Microsoft unveiled a new subscription for its AI-powered assistant, Copilot Pro, one week ago. For $20 per month, Microsoft promises a more enhanced AI image creation tool, faster performance coupled with 100 daily boosts, and more. Copilot Pro allows users to create custom GPT bots for specific use cases.

It's worth noting that Copilot Pro subscribers get priority access to the GPT-4 Turbo model, even during peak times, for faster performance and an enhanced user experience. Moreover, you can toggle between different models for an optimized user experience.  

RELATED: What's the difference between Microsoft Copilot (free) and Microsoft Copilot free?

However, it seems the service is/was experiencing some performance issues, as highlighted by NotKoreanXD on X (formerly Twitter). "Copilot Pro is very slow right now am not sure why like maybe less than 1 token per second it was lightning fast in the morning now it's not on specifically the GPT 4 creative mode turbo," the user stated while highlighting their frustration on concern to Microsoft's Windows lead, Mikhail Parakhin, as spotted by MSPowerUser.

Parakhin later responded, having potentially narrowed down the issue to Microsoft Edge's Efficiency Mode and ruled out the possibility that the issue could be server-related. Efficiency Mode in Edge is in place to help users extend the battery life on their devices by saving computer resources like RAM and CPU.

Mark Kretschmann, a Software Engineer, joined the discussion, citing that "Client-side performance issues" were common for Copilot across Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. He added that restarting the browser usually does the trick. 

The Engineer also pointed out that despite not having Efficiency Mode enabled on Microsoft Edge, he still encountered performance issues. He pointed to memory or resource leaks as potential causes for the degraded performance of Copilot Pro.

While carrying out our analysis and investigation, we noticed slow response rates to queries.

This reminds me of the Image Creator from Designer mess

(Image credit: Windows Central)

Last year, during Microsoft's Surface and AI event, the company shipped OpenAI's DALL-E 3 technology to Image Creator from Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator) to enhance its capabilities. It was a well-received move, consequently shooting its user base to an all-time high.

This, in turn, slowed down the image generation process, with users having to wait up to an hour. However, Microsoft was quick to mitigate the issue by incorporating more GPUs. This leads me to think that the Copilot Pro performance issues could be Sever-related. Besides, I thought the subscription gives users priority during peak times.

Have you signed up for Copilot Pro? If so, have you encountered any performance issues so far? Let us know in the comments. 

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This announcement comes from CD Projekt's joint CEO, Adam Badowski, who took the helm alongside Michal Nowakowski last year. According to the CEO (via Reuters), Polaris will continue the story of The Witcher universe, which has already seen over 75 million copies sold across previous games.

While a release date for the first "Polaris" game remains under wraps, analysts predict it won't grace our screens until 2026 or 2027. This means a relatively quiet period for major releases from CD Projekt soon.

In case you are wondering, CD Projekt will be without a major new game release in the meantime. This comes after the troubled 2020 launch of Cyberpunk 2077, which faced numerous delays and bugs at launch. Since then, the developer has focused on transforming its development processes. It recently released the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update alongside the Phantom Liberty expansion.

The sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, called "Project Orion," is also in the early conceptual stages, according to Badowski. CD Projekt aims to have around 80 people assigned to Orion by the end of 2024. Interestingly, the CEO hinted at the possibility of implementing multiplayer elements in future titles, though specifics remain shrouded in secrecy.

He also addressed concerns about rising wage pressures, assuring that it's stabilized and hiring within its Polish offices will be rather low. Meanwhile, the company's North American studio will continue to expand.

In case you missed it, the studio went through a round of layoffs in July 2023. CDPR has announced that approximately 9% of its staff has been laid off. The move comes shortly after the studio laid off 29 employees in May.

Source: Reuters

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At last year’s Meteor Lake chip launch in New York, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger hinted at the company's future direction, noting the company is on track to integrate five new nodes in four years, culminating in 2025. This includes the Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A, and Intel 18A processes, used in a range of server processors.

However, going forward Intel hinted that its traditional release schedule may be discarded in favor of shipping products when ready in order to allow the company to catch up with rivals.

Intel says this will help its aim to offer customers more options by selling multiple generations of chips simultaneously, while serving the demand for customized products.

Chiplets with everything

The tech giant is focused on integrating emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and chiplets (which the company can put in a single package). Intel's chiplet technologies could erase the distinction between server and client products, allowing the company to assemble chips based on customer needs. This could enable Intel to rapidly produce custom chips for specific industries.

“As you go to chiplets, you’re not doing as large a die, and you have smaller die. In fact, when we go to 18A, a finish of our five nodes in four years, we’re almost concurrently tapping out the client and server parts. That’s something we’ve never done before,” Gelsinger said, according to HPCwire.

“We look at the Core Ultra packaging — we’re innovating on Foveros packaging [a wafer-level 3D stacking solution that delivers greater performance in a smaller footprint] but we’re going to be using that on the next generation server part in this chiplet architecture, there are so many ways to blur the lines between many of our designs,” Gelsinger concluded.

Intel stands out as the only fully integrated chip company, offering chips or manufacturing services to firms designing their own processors. This dual strategy could ensure Intel's survival, because while rivals Nvidia, ARM, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple vie for market share, the company gets to manufacture their products.

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Table of contents:

1. Windows 11 news
2. Windows Insider Program and Preview builds
3. Updates are available
4. A review to check
5. Gaming news
6. A blast from Microsoft's past
7. Random fact about Microsoft

Windows 11

Here we talk about everything happening around Microsoft's latest operating system in the Stable channel and preview builds: new features, removed features, controversies, bugs, interesting findings, and more. And of course, you may find a word or two about older but still supported versions.

This week's Windows 11 section opens with an interesting rumor about Microsoft increasing the RAM baseline for its upcoming big Windows release. Trendforce claims Microsoft "has set the baseline for DRAM on AI PCs at 16GB." There is no information on what exactly that means. Some speculate that 16GB will be a minimum requirement for Windows "12" machines, while others suggest that it is just a recommendation for PCs with advanced AI capabilities powered by the next-gen hardware from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm.

Although we are only a few months away from the launch of Microsoft's next-generation Windows, we still do not know what it looks like nor what features it will bring. The lack of any official announcements tickles enthusiasts' minds, inspiring them to generate neat-looking concepts. Here is one from AR 4789. Their latest creation imagines Windows 12 based on early mockups we saw in late 2022.

Microsoft has updated its official documentation to clarify that Mac users with Apple Silicon-powered computers can officially run Windows 11 using the Parallels Desktop app. The latter has been officially authorized for Windows 11 on Apple M3 Macs, giving you access to most of the operating system's features. The only exception is capabilities that require nested virtualization (a VM inside a VM), such as Windows Busystem for Android, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Sandbox, and VBS.

A new report emerged this week about an actively exploited Microsoft Defender vulnerability that allows bad actors to bypass Windows SmartScreen and steal data on Windows computers. Fortunately, Microsoft patched the security hole a few months ago, so your system is safe if you maintain good software hygiene and do not mess with Windows Update settings beyond what Microsoft allows. As a reminder, turning off Windows updates is never a good idea!

And speaking of vulnerabilities, here is an odd story Microsoft revealed this week. This month, Microsoft discovered that a Russian intelligence group got access to emails from its top executives using vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. Hackers breached in November 2023, but Microsoft could only spot the problem on January 12, 2024.

Finally, Microsoft confirmed that it is working on fixing the 0x80070643 - ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE message that happens on systems with too small WinRE partitions.

Windows Insider Program

Windows Insiders got a few new builds to try this week:

Updates are available

This section covers software, firmware, and other notable updates (released and coming soon) delivering new features, security fixes, improvements, patches, and more from Microsoft and third parties.

Let us start with something that will no longer receive updates. The Surface Pro 5 and its LTE variant are no longer supported. On January 14, 2024, the tablet reached its end of life, which means no more firmware and driver updates.

This week, Microsoft unveiled a bunch of Copilot-related announcements. The company is finally ready to launch a subscription service to give users more features for a premium. Copilot Pro is now available for $20 per month, offering customers access to GPT-4 Turbo, Office integration, improved image generation, and more. A future update will also bring the ability to create custom GPTs using simple prompts.

In addition, Microsoft expanded commercial access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 and officially unveiled Copilot apps for iOS and Android.

Microsoft Edge will soon offer you more Copilot integrations. Recent Canary updates received a few extra tools for the built-in screenshot tool, allowing you to capture something on your screen and send that picture to Copilot, extract text using optical character recognition, and more. Check out this article to learn how to try those features (Microsoft is rolling them out gradually).

In addition to that, Microsoft released a weekly update for Edge Dev, giving users a large number of browser crash fixes.

There is an update for the Microsoft Rewards program. The company quietly rolled back some of the recent changes, restoring the previous amounts of points you can earn by completing tasks on the program's home page.

Other notable updates released this week include the following:

• New Windows 11-based virtual machines from Microsoft are out. Version 2401, still powered by Windows 11 version 22H2, is now available for download.
• The Surface Pro 9 with Intel processors received the January 2024 firmware update with camera fixes and Windows Hello improvements.
• Rufus 4.4 is out with fixes for Dev Drives, GRUB 2.12 support, better card reader compatibility, and more.
• App install notifications are now available for all Windows 11 users in the Stable Channel. Microsoft released Microsoft Store version 22312 with the ability to receive notifications when the app has finished downloading a program or game.
• Following the recent Incognito-related lawsuit, Google updated the warning you see when entering the Incognito mode in Google Chrome. The revised version now explicitly says that Incognito does not stop the company from tracking your data.
• OneNote for Windows is getting a new gesture to help you select handwritten text and inking. It is now available in preview for Microsoft 365 Insiders.
• Word Online received more detailed link previews, giving you the ability to check more information about a specific link before clicking it. As for the standalone Word app for Windows, it now features a dedicated Accessibility Assistant that can analyze your document and suggest changes to make your document easier to read.

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• Microsoft renamed another Bing-related product. This time, Bing Image Creator changed to Image Creator from Designer.

And here are the new drivers released this week:

• NVIDIA 546.65 WHQL with support for RTX 4070 SUPER and a few fixes.

Here are the latest additions to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, where the company keeps track of upcoming features for its productivity apps. This week's recap covers a new email sync button for Outlook, a new co-organizer feature for Teams, and a bunch of updates for Microsoft Stream and Forums.

A review to check

Here is the hardware and/or software we reviewed this week.

A new mini PC showed up for a review. The Geekom Mini Air12 is a light and quiet computer for your average PC tasks. Its energy-efficient 6W TDP processor from Intel paired with DDR5 memory will ensure you have enough processing power without sucking too much electricity out of the nearby socket. And the best part is that the computer is only $249. Of course, nothing is perfect, so check out Steven's Geekom Mini Air12 review to learn more.

On the gaming side

Learn about upcoming game releases, Xbox rumors, new hardware, software updates, freebies, deals, discounts and more.

Xbox Developer_Direct

Microsoft held a special gaming event on January 18, where it unveiled a few games coming soon to PC and Xbox Series X|S. Look out for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from Bethesda Softworks and MachineGames later this year. It will be set between the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movies, giving you an opportunity to resolve an archaeological mystery in Egypt, the Himalayas, and more.

Besides a proper AAA title, Bethesda announced a new mobile game for Android and iOS. The Elder Scrolls: Castles will utilize the same successful formula created by Fallout: Shelter in 2015, giving you a chance to build and maintain a castle in the infamous universe.

Hellblade II finally has a release date (Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, to be precise). The game is coming May 21 to Xbox and PC. Obsidian's Avowed is scheduled for this fall (consoles and PCs), and Ara: History Untold, a strategy game developed by Oxide Games and published by Microsoft, lands on PC Game Pass somewhere in the same timeframe.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is delayed again. This time, GSC Game World moved the release date from the first quarter of 2024 to September 5, 2024. In addition to the new release window (this one should be final at last), developers published a brief new trailer showcasing the game's protagonist enjoying the company of fellow stalkers next to a campfire.

Forza Motorsport, Microsoft's ill-fated racing simulator, received a new content update. Update 4 delivers Daytona International Speedway, a bunch of new cars, and fixes.

Starfield will soon get a massive update, which is now available in Beta for PC users. Bethesda claims the release brings over a hundred fixes and adjustments with a focus on quality-of-life improvements and quest patches.

Microsoft announced a new wave of games coming to Xbox and PC Game Pass. The latest additions include Persona 3 Reload, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, Brotato, and more. Some of the announced games are already available for play.

NVIDIA GeForce NOW, another gaming subscription, also received a bunch of new games, some of which are available for PC Game Pass subscribers. The latest additions include Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, FAR: Changing Tides, Going Under, New Cycle, Exporimal, and more.

Deals and freebies

The Epic Games Store is giving away a minimalistic platformer called LOVE, which looks like something straight from the early days of Atari. You can grab LOVE for free until the next Thursday, when the store is expected to announce another giveaway. Also, check out our Weekend PC Game Deals series, where you will find plenty of discounts from different stores across the internet.

Other gaming news and updates from this week include the following:

• Microsoft finally released a fix for missing Baldur's Gate 3 saves on Xbox Series X|S.
• Mojang released a new free Minecraft DLC in collaboration with BBC. The Planet Earth III expansion lets you play for various animals in different settings and experience what it is like to hunt or be hunted.
• Rare announced Season 11 for Sea of Thieves with fast travel and overhauled voyages. It launches on supported platforms on January 23.
• Ubisoft has prepared a few changes for its Ubisoft+ subscription. It now features a single Premium tier for day-one access to new games and a cheaper variant that allows playing some older titles.

A blast from Microsoft's past

John Callaham's weekly "Look back" series provides throwbacks into the past, detailing the company's products, partnerships, mishaps, and successes from years ago.

This week's blast from Microsoft's past is about a PC MMO called Mythica, which was announced by Microsoft twenty-one years ago, and how it failed to see the light of the day after Microsoft got hit with a lawsuit from Mythic Entertainment. After Developer_Direct 2024, it is interesting to look back at the early days of Microsoft in the gaming market and how the company experimented with various ideas.

Random fact about Microsoft

And here is a randomly selected piece of trivia about the company, Windows, and other Microsoft-made things.

In October 2023, Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows CE, reached its end of life. Most users know Windows CE as an operating system for handheld PCs from the late 90s era, such as the HP 300LX or Casio Cassiopeia A-10. But did you know that the platform also powered portable media players long before the original iPod? Windows CE was a lightweight operating system, a good pick for media players with small cases and not-so-powerful hardware. One example of Windows CE-powered media players is the iRiver PMC from 1999.

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Palworld continues to gain more and more players. The open-world survival game with cute and collectible "Pals" from developer Pocket Pair has become the first surprise video game hit for both PC and Xbox platforms.

The developer revealed on Friday that the game had sold over 2 million copies in its first 24 hours. Late on Saturday, Pocket Pair announced on its X (formerly Twitter) account that Palworld has now sold over three million copies in its first 40 hours since it launched as an Early Access game.

Furthermore, the game has now reached, as of this writing, over 1 million concurrent players on Valve's Steam platform. It's currently the most played game on Steam, beating out Valve's own free-to-play shooter Counter-Strike 2. SteamDB.info shows that Palworld is now the sixth most played game on Steam of all time, in terms of concurrent numbers.

It also looks like the game's initial issues with its servers being overwhelmed by the surge of players trying to sign in have greatly improved. This was likely due to Pocket Pair asking Epic Games to update their backend so it could accommodate the large number of players.

As we have reported before, Palworld is also available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles in a Game Preview version. Xbox and PC Game Pass players can also check out Palworld at no additional cost. There's no word yet on how many Xbox players have tried out the game.

Since the game is an Early Access title, you can expect to see more features and improvements in the months ahead. So far, Pocket Pair has not announced a roadmap for Palworld updates.

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TVs get bigger and brighter every year, as many of the sets shown off at CES 2024demonstrated. The consumer tech showcase was dominated by massive, blinding screens meant to blast out as much light and colour as possible.

The most intriguing of this year’s new TVs, though, are the ones that render the television itself almost invisible.

Two companies are leading the charge. Samsung has debuted its transparent MicroLED screen, which makes an image appear on what otherwise looks like a clear piece of glass. LG has also come out with its own transparent TV, though its device looks more like an empty fish tank than a proper television set, with images that look like very nice holograms dancing around inside. LG’s set also has a black backdrop that rolls up behind the image to give it more of the contrast of a typical TV.

LG's design for a transparent TV.

 Photograph: LG

Other recent designs offer less of a wow factor, but still work to make the TV less prominent in your home. The Samsung Frame TV, first released in 2017, has a matte-finish screen that can be loaded with images of fine art, making it look like a framed painting when not in use. This year at CES, Hisense released its own version of this concept called the CanvasTV. Manufacturers have also been toying with screens that roll up; LG made a splash with its extremely pricey rollable television at CES in 2021. Projector technology has gotten good enough for most people to consider a nice 4K projector a true TV replacement. And a well-designed projector—like the LG CineBeam Qube or the Xgimi Horizon Max—fits into a room better than a big glass fish tank ever could.

“It’s all in the effort to try to remove the black hole from the wall that we've all been used to forever,” says Paul Gagnon, a consumer electronics industry expert and adviser at Circana who has focused on TVs for over 15 years.

The transparent screen technology shown by Samsung and LG has been used in commercial spaces for years, Gagnon says, but its high cost and energy requirements have kept it out of the consumer market until now.

“I don’t think most TVs are going to end up looking like this,” Gagnon says. “The majority of consumers are just looking for an affordable, high-quality screen that lets them watch the shows that they want to watch.”

Samsung's see-through screens at CES 2024.

 Photograph: Samsung

Still, companies are racing to make those screens disappear, or at least better blend in with the decor of a room. When a TV is off, it’s just a great big dark slab taking up space. For years, people have found creative ways to hide their screens. Just search “hiding TV” on TikTok and you’ll find a host of hacks showing you how to conceal your TV set.

Max Humphrey, an interior designer in Portland, Oregon, says he’s worked with clients to design rooms that would hide TVs by placing the screen behind rolling doors or other cabinet fixtures. Most of the time, his clients wound up just leaving those doors open, because people just tend to watch more TV than we think we do. Now, he’s moved away from that mindset in favor of incorporating the screens into the environment.

“I don't try to hide the TVs anymore, but I do really consider them and what their surroundings are and how they're going to draw attention away from the other things that are supposed to be happening in the room,” he says. “It's great that the TV manufacturers are thinking about this too. It's not just my problem anymore.”

He says he’s excited about transparent screens but isn’t yet clear on how to incorporate them into people’s homes. “I'm not designing James Bond villain lofts, which is sort of what this seems meant for.”

“It does seem like it's almost going to draw more attention in the near term than less attention, because it's not like you can't see it,” he says. “There's just a glass screen sitting on a table.”

Humphrey says a screen that blends in might be more appealing in a secondary room, like a kitchen or bedroom. But it will be a few years still before these less conspicuous screens are inexpensive enough for people to justify sticking them in a side room.

“It's going to take some time for the technology to catch up to where you can be spending $2,500 on your main TV and $1,000 on your secondary TV,” Humphrey says. “Right now, that’s not the case.”

The Digital Hearth

One possible future of the TV is that we move away from big screens forever in favor of personal media consumption on our phones or tablets. Companies like Apple and Meta are hoping their mixed-reality headsets will entice people away from their TVs. Apple’s Vision Pro headset, which went on sale Friday, will debut with a Disney+ app stuffed with 2D and 3D content you can watch on the privacy of your own virtual screen.

Gagnon says it’s unlikely the traditional TV will go away. Personalized content feeds are fun, but they don’t offer the same social experience that sitting around a TV does. As long as people want that communal feeling, TVs are going to keep taking up space in people’s homes.

“We are a long way away from getting rid of the screen as a device that just sits in our homes and we use for TV,” Gagnon says. “I would be sad if we ever lost that digital hearth. That's been the centerpiece of most families’ home entertainment for half a century now. It would be sad to see that go.”

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The game was called Mythica, and it was first announced by Microsoft in April 2003. At the time, MMO games were still in their infancy. There was EA's Ultima Online game, and Sony Online had Everquest, both of which launched before the year 2000. Microsoft had also published a fantasy MMO game in 1999, Asheron's Call, which was developed by Turbine, now known as WB Games Boston (Perhaps we will write about that game some other time).

Microsoft had some success with Asheron's Call, and wanted to make its own MMO game in-house, with its own game engine, to compete with EA and Sony Online's efforts. In the initial announcement, Microsoft stated that Mythica would be based on Norse myths and characters, "from the grassy fields and eternal spring of Asgard to the fiery heart of Muspellheim."

The press release added:

Using godlike powers, players can dispel droves of menacing monsters with a single blow or battle massive, monstrous beasts such as the Midgard Serpent.

Perhaps the most interesting gameplay feature about Mythica was that Microsoft wanted to give players a chance to have their own adventures they could play by themselves or with a small group. Here's how the press release described it.

“Mythica’s” Private Realms Technology envelopes players in story lines and environments that react to their actions in private areas of the world. Here players become the central characters in a heroic tale where actions have lasting consequences in their own persistent game world.

The idea of offering players the option to sign into a Private Realm server in an MMO game sounds a whole lot like the recently added private servers option in Sea of Thieves, from Microsoft-owned developer Rare.

Microsoft first showed off Mythica to the general public in May 2003 at that year's E3 show in Los Angeles. There are some pretty low-res trailers showing gameplay footage of the title from the show, along with the pretty big Mythica E3 booth, complete with a female Viking Mythica E3 booth babe.

The game was due for release sometime in 2004, and even in December 2003, Microsoft was still promoting the game with a Gamespot interview with its lead designer Joel Manners. When asked about the status of Mythica, Manners seemed to indicate it was still full steam ahead for its eventual completion.

The design team is] in full content production right now, while the development team is focusing in on [making the game] feature-complete. Our next steps are going into private and then public beta, so we want to make sure that we are ready for that!

Just a couple of weeks after that interview was posted, on December 23, 2003, Microsoft got hit with a lawsuit from game developer Mythic Entertainment. The developer, who had launched its own MMO, Dark Age of Camelot, in 2001, claimed Microsoft's use of the name Mythica for its MMO violated Mythic Entertainment's trademarks. At the time, Mythic's CEO Mark Jacobs stated:

We had hoped not to have to resolve this in court, and it is truly unfortunate that Microsoft declined to respect Mythic's rights . . . But our name and mark are among our most valuable assets. We have no choice but to defend them, regardless of the size and power of our adversary. We would expect Microsoft to react no differently if someone launched an operating system called Microsofta, just as Microsoft did when confronted with an operating system called Lindows.

Less than two months later, on February 12, 2004, Microsoft confirmed it was canceling Mythica. In an interview with GameSpy, Microsoft product manager Chris Lye offered up some reasons for the decision:

The massively multiplayer genre is a hugely crowded and competitive space. We didn't want to spread ourselves out over multiple MMORPG projects. We analyzed all the projects in the works and decided Mythica was the one to go. This wasn't about Mythica specifically. There were a lot of good things about the game. But, we had to make hard decisions about where we placed our assets.

The entire Mythica team of 40 developers was let go from Microsoft Game Studios, although they were given a chance to be rehired for other game projects at the company. Lye said the Mythic Entertainment lawsuit was not a factor in Mythica's cancelation.

A few months later, in May 2004, Microsoft settled with Mythic Entertainment. The Washington Post reported on the settlement, stating:

Microsoft agreed not to use the name Mythica or certain derivations in the future, and it transferred rights associated with Mythica to Mythic for "undisclosed consideration," according to a statement by Mythic.

In the end, it was for the best Microsoft canceled Mythica. In November 2004, most likely around the time the game was due to be launched, Blizzard officially released its own MMO game World of Warcraft. It instantly became a massive hit and it is more than possible that Mythica would have been seen as an also-ran game compared to Blizzard's MMO. Ironically, Microsoft now owns Blizzard and World of Warcraft.

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