Your SSD or HDD is probably the most important component of your PC, but over time they can fail. They’re very easy to replace if they do fail, but if they fail unexpectedly, they can create a big headache. Your system won’t boot after a drive fails because that’s where the operating system is installed, and you’ll likely lose access to all of your important documents.

There are several telltale signs that your disk is failing; they include:

• Clicking or grinding noises
• Frequent system crashes or sudden blue screens during operation
• Slow boot times and slow file access
• Corrupted or missing files and folders you cannot open
• Sudden temperature spikes that make your device overheat
• Frequent error messages when the system reads or writes data
• Applications freezing or crashing when you access large files

You can avoid losing your data by routinely performing health checks. If you do a check and the drive says that it is failing, then you have time to back up your important data before any data loss occurs.

Windows 11 allows you to check the state of your HDD or SSD using built-in tools. Here’s how you can go about finding the status of your drive:

1. Open Settings (Press Win + i)
2. Go to System > Storage
3. Scroll down and click on Advanced storage settings
4. Click on Disks & volumes
5. Under each disk it will give the status, such as Healthy
6. Select your main drive from the list and click the Properties button next to it
7. Look at the Drive Health section; it will show you: Estimated remaining life, Available spare, and Current Temperature

It is a good idea to check the health every few months so that you don’t get caught out. However, don’t rely on it 100%; keep backing up regardless in case it misses a drive failure.

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Posted Monday 13 July 2026 at 7:58 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

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7 Days is a weekly roundup of picks of what's been happening in the world of technology - written with a dash of humor, a hint of exasperation, and an endless supply of (black) coffee.

This week's highlights include the EU going after Meta over addictive social media features, Cinnamon is getting full support for Wayland, Google Search broke all of its records during a World Cup match. Let's get started.

You can check out the recent issues of the 7 Days weekly roundup.

Biggest restructuring in Xbox history

There has been a seismic shift at Xbox after Asha Sharma took over as the CEO of the gaming division. Sharma previously talked about a "reset," which means Microsoft is undergoing the "most significant restructure in XBOX history," affecting 3,200 members.

While the changes will continue through the 2027 fiscal year, about 1,600 Xbox staff are being let go now. Five teams from first-party studios are being spun off as independent companies or sold off, including Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Double Fine, and Arkane.

Doom-fame studio id Software was a part of the drama. Despite rumors of a collapse, the studio posted on social media that the team remains large enough to support game and engine development despite the layoffs.

A report from the fintech firm OnDeck still listed Microsoft as the world's second-most valuable brand after Apple, with a value of $424.8 billion. Meanwhile, Sharma has been selected as a member of a new US Federal Reserve task force that will advise the government on productivity and jobs.

Workaround for uBlock Origin

While Google Chrome decided to say goodbye to uBlock Origin, Brave has other plans. Thanks to a recent update, it has found a workaround to keep supporting MV2 extensions (and uBlock Origin). Brave has made under-the-hood changes to automatically detect and replace known Web Store MV2 extensions with Brave-hosted equivalents.

War against Meta

One thing Meta finds itself in hot water over is the perception that many of its social media features are intentionally addictive. In its latest, the company could face a huge fine from the European Commission over the addictive design it allegedly uses on Instagram and Facebook. Meta will have to implement several changes in its platforms, including disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default.

Live TV on Netflix

Netflix emerged as a platform for people who wanted a break from cable years ago. Now, the streaming giant wants to expand its catalog by adding live channels that will appear as tiles alongside on-demand content. It was reported that Netflix executives worry about dropping watch times, which may prompt people to cancel their subscription. The company is also planning to bundle other streaming services to offer a one-stop shop experience.

Our Features

Our coffee-powered team published a platter of editorials, opinion posts, and guides. Check them out:

• How to quickly launch multiple apps with a single action in Windows 11
• How to remove background from screenshots in Windows with just a few clicks
• Hands-on with the upcoming taskbar changes in Windows 11
• How to set custom folder icons in Windows 11 File Explorer

This week in software news

Catch up on some of the latest software news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Proceed with caution: The new Steam Machine got the official drivers to run Windows 11. However, Valve cautioned that it cannot provide "Windows on Steam Hardware" support, so you should be prepared to handle issues if things go south.

Small but useful: You can now pin up to 20 items on top of your library in the Spotify app, up from the previous limit of four. The small change is available across all platforms and is one of the highly requested features.

Vivaldi 8.1: The latest Vivaldi update has arrived with many bug fixes focusing on auto-hide UI features and complex tab management. Moreover, its browser engine has been upgraded to Chrome 150 to maintain web compatibility and security standards.

Files 4.2 is here: The popular file manager for Windows 11 has a long list of new features that enhance navigation, multitasking, dual-pane workflows, tab management, and other quality-of-life improvements.

One-click migration: Tuta rolled out a new automated tool to migrate all your emails to Tuta Mail in a single click, along with new Calendar features and standalone Android and iOS apps for Tuta Drive.

DLSS performance boost: NVIDIA released the Game Ready Driver 610.74, which improves the DLSS performance for DOOM: Dark Ages/Revelations and AC Black Flag Resynced. Tencent Meeting should also work better after the update, and its flickering issue is fixed.

New on WHQL: Intel released the new 32.0.101.8861 non-WHQL driver with official support for some high-profile games releasing soon on PC, including Halo: Campaign Evolved and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced.

This week in hardware news

Catch up on some of the latest hardware news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Lightning faaaast: Samsung outperformed Micron with its new PM1763 enterprise SSD, which promises speeds of up to 28.4 GB/s on the 16TB variant, making it the fastest of its kind. The company claims the PM1763 can transfer a massive 40 GB LLM in as little as 1.4 seconds.

Samsung is unpacking: The South Korean giant has sent out invites for its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event on July 22. Alongside several AI updates, the event is expected to have devices with “innovative form factors.”

New from Nothing: The company unveiled the Phone (4b) with a refreshed design, a Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, a 120Hz AMOLED display, and a 50 MP camera. Starting July 17, it will be available in black/white/blue colors in an 8GB/128GB configuration.

What's new for Switch 2: In light of the EU regulations, Nintendo shared what's changing for the portable gaming console. Switch 2 with a replaceable battery will weigh 10 grams more but won't have any functional differences. The same applies to the new Joy-Cons in different regions.

NVIDIA's middle ground: The company is reportedly developing an "SE" variant of the RTX 5090 to sit between the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080. Featuring 14,080 CUDA cores, the new GPU will have lower performance and VRAM than the 5090.

A small setback: NVIDIA has been the unofficial flagbearer of the AI race. But its next-gen AI rack system, Kyber NVL144, has been pushed back to 2028 (12-month setback) due to manufacturing difficulties with its key circuit board. Kyber NVL144 turns the chips into a single unit so they can work together.

GeForce NOW got new muscles: Good news for Canadian subscribers is that the RTX 5080-powered servers NVIDIA was expanding rapidly earlier this year are now rolling out in Toronto. GeForce NOW has got big games, including Black Flag.

This week in Google News

Catch up on some of the latest Google news updates that arrived throughout the week:

What will power AI? Google has pumped money into the Germany-based Proxima Fusion, which is developing a net-energy fusion demonstrator called Alpha. Seen as a futuristic source to power AI, the prototype is expected to see the light of day sometime in the early 2030s.

Improving healthcare: Google handed over the Open Health Stack (OHS) project to the Linux Foundation to make digital healthcare tools more accessible and collaborative, giving developers a common set of tools for building digital health applications. It was launched back in 2023 in collaboration with WHO.

Google broke records: The search giant recorded its highest ever usage for Google Search during the FIFA World Cup after Argentina scored the winning goal in a match against Egypt. As the tournament intensifies, we might see Google unlock even higher footfall.

Making AI faster: Most of our AI lives in the cloud, but Google wants to make it more local. Its new LiteRT.js library enables machine learning models to run locally in the browser rather than on the server. Google's new runtime delivers 3x greater speeds over existing solutions on current hardware.

This week in Apple News

Catch up on some of the latest Apple news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Bigger battery on Pro: iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max could arrive with bigger batteries than on last year's Pro models, according to a Chinese leaker. For the US market, the alleged battery capacities are 4288 mAh (iPhone 18 Pro) and 4252 mAh (iPhone 18 Pro Max), respectively. However, the cost behind the perk is that the devices will be heavier and thicker.

Serious about CXMT: Building on previous updates, it was reported that Apple is pursuing CXMT as its DRAM chip partner more seriously than before, and has begun testing. It's said that atleast China will be the market where devices with CXMT chips will be sold.

Not so soon: Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected this year, but it may not be available to grab right after launch. With an expected price tag between $2,300 and $2,500, iPhone Fold's delivery wait times could be four to six weeks, or even longer.

One more beta: Apple's latest lineup of software updates reached Beta 3 this week. iOS 27/iPadOS 27 Beta 3 brought more Apple Intelligence features across the system, fixed some known issues, and added some new ones.

Do you want iPhone Air? New information from the rumor mill suggests the next-gen iPhone Air will get a 3,500 mAh battery to fix one of the biggest drawbacks. The device is also expected to get the 2nm A20 chip.

They stole our secrets: Apple dragged OpenAI, its subsidiary io, and two former Apple employees to court, accusing them of stealing confidential information and trade secrets to support OpenAI's consumer hardware.

This week in Meta news

Catch up on some of the latest Meta, WhatsApp, and Instagram updates that arrived throughout the week:

WhatsApp Birthday Reminder app: If you also get grilled for forgetting your friends' birthdays, WhatsApp's new feature might come to the rescue. WhatsApp is working on a feature to notify people when it's a contact's birthday, reliving Facebook's early days, when writing on someone's wall was a tradition.

New AI powerhouse: Meta is building its first data center in Canada, with 1GW of capacity to power its AI services. While there are major concerns, the data center will aim to be as water-efficient as possible to reduce usage, and the company is working to become water-positive by 2030.

New models from Meta: Muse Image is the first image model from Meta's Superintelligence Labs that understands complex prompts and visual references. MSL also released the upgraded Muse Spark 1.1 multimodal reasoning model to challenge its rivals from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Controversial move: One thing that stirred controversy is that Muse Image can generate AI images based on publicly available Instagram images simply by tagging another user. However, Meta added a button that lets you opt out of exposing your images to Muse Image.

This week in AI news

Catch up on the latest artificial intelligence news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Claude won't follow commands: AI users flooded the web with reports of Claude Sonnet 5 "misbehaving" and failing to follow instructions. One user commented that it won't even do the actual work, and instead accuses them of trying to commit fraud. In other news, Anthropic extended promotional access for Claude Fable 5 until July 12 as OpenAI was preparing for the GPT-5.6 launch.

New from OpenAI: The AI giant went past the initial preview and turned on global access for the new GPT-5.6 series: Sol, Terra, and Luna models. A new "max reasoning effort" setting works with the flagship model Sol to improve reasoning performance. Microsoft announced day-one integration for the series into Microsoft 365 Copilot and selected them as preferred models.

ChatGPT Work and new app: The latest models also power a new agentic experience called ChatGPT Work, which is designed to handle work across apps, files, and workflows. It also launched a unified ChatGPT desktop app for Windows/Mac users that integrates Codex and includes a built-in browser.

The voice of ChatGPT: A major upgrade for ChatGPT Voice could make the Advanced Voice Mode feel outdated. It enables ChatGPT to speak, hear, and listen at the same time, instead of taking turns like a traditional voice assistant.

This week in Linux news

Catch up on the latest updates from the world of Linux and open-source:

Good news for Mint lovers: Its development team announced that not just a screensaver but Wayland will be fully supported in the next version of Cinnamon, expected to ship around Christmas this year. There will be several desktop enhancements, security fixes, and NVIDIA improvements.

Checking out: Ubuntu 25.10 "Questing Quokka" lived its life to the fullest before reaching EOL on July 9. Yes, non-LTS releases only get nine months of support. In other words, your machine won't get any security updates, and you'll need to upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Good news for Linux 7.2: The upcoming Linux version should arrive on time, as the recently released Linux 7.2 RC2 looks normal. For comparison, it's smaller than the RC2 for Linux 7.1. Recent RCs have been bulky due to extensive AI use, and Torvalds asked developers to hold their horses on AI.

Boost for WSL: A new code submission from Microsoft to the Mesa graphics library drastically improves AV1 video processing on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). With just 900 lines of code, the patch enables Linux apps in WSL to request accelerated AV1 encoding.

This week in Microsoft News

In one of the hottest stories, several IT admins were fed up and frustrated with Microsoft products and apps. Microsoft finally fixed one of the biggest headaches of reinstalling Windows and confirmed default organization backup for Windows 11 26H2.

You can check out Ivan's freshly baked Microsoft Weekly roundup to catch up on all the interesting stories this week.

This week in science news

Catch up on some of the latest science and out-of-this-world updates that arrived throughout the week:

Time without start: Uppsala University researchers developed a new method to measure elapsed time without needing a starting point by observing how helium atoms change after short light pulses.

Mushrooms Become RAM: Common edible mushrooms can store digital memory, just like computer chips. This interesting biological discovery could eventually help us build greener, smarter electronic devices.

No guessing game: Researchers found a clear limit to how much screen detail the human eye can actually see. This means super high-resolution displays often waste extra pixels you will never even notice.

Darkest fabric: Scientists created the darkest fabric ever by mimicking bird feathers, which trap almost all light while remaining very flexible and breathable, making it ideal for new technology and everyday clothes.

New Green Fridges: There is a cool way to freeze things using charged ions instead of harmful gases. This clever trick could finally make our home fridges and air conditioners safe and green.

Are aliens real? A study from last year suggests that life randomly forming on early Earth was incredibly unlikely due to complex biological rules. It even suggests advanced aliens might have purposely seeded our planet instead.

What else in gaming?

The latest issue of Pulasthi's Weekend PC Game Deals curates several exciting games on sale this week. Epic Games put up Nova Lands and Tattoo Tycoon to keep as part of its giveaway refresh, and Xbox Free Play Days added MLB The Show 26, The Alters, and STUFFED.

That said, here are some more stories from the gaming world:

• Ubisoft's Black Flag remake sells two million copies on day one, sets franchise records
• Microsoft reportedly hands Fallout to Obsidian as part of Xbox reset
• Sitting finally comes to Minecraft as a feature, no more tricks or mods

From the review corner

This week, Steven got his hands on the Lexar PLAY X 1TB 2230 SSD, which is primarily intended for storage expansion on handhelds and consoles. Scoring 9.5, the SSD delivers awesome PCIe 4x4 speeds, includes a 2280 bracket, and is built for gaming rigs. However, there are a few cons, including its price tag, and it could have shipped with a graphene heatsink.

UGREEN NASync

We got two review units from UGREEN: NASync DXP4800 GT and DXP2800 GT. These come with great build quality, very affordable 4+2-bay/2+2-bay, great power efficiency, and software improvements. On the downside, they still feature DDR4 memory, hard-to-access internals, a non-removable eMMC bootloader, and NVMe limited to PCIe 3.0 x2.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced

The new title making the rounds is Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, marking the return of the decade-old game. Pulasthi wrote in his detailed review that the game features an unmatched sense of open-world freedom, satisfying ship sailing and combat, and gorgeous worlds and islands. However, it has annoying slow-motion finishers and spammy melee combat.

More price drops!

We got you covered with some hot tech deals all week. For some reason, if you missed out on a great discount, here is a summary of some recent deals that are still alive:

• TCL iFFALCON MiniLED Smart TVs: $400+ (Amazon US)

• Logitech G PRO X Superlight 2 SE - $99.99 (29% off on Amazon)

• G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 3600 CL16 and CL18 (up to 18% off on Amazon)

• Skullcandy Crusher Wireless headphones - $89.99 (22% off on Amazon)

• TP-Link Deco 7 Pro BE63 (up to 3 packs) (up to 30% off on Amazon)

• Belkin 2-in-1 Qi2 Wireless Charging Dock - $79.99 (33% off on Amazon)

• TP-Link Tri-Band BE9300 WiFi 7 Router - $149.99 on Amazon US (40% off)

• Turtle Beach Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded - $149.99 (29% off on Amazon)

   

To view all of our recent deals, click here.

So, these were some of the biggest tech news and other updates from this week. There will be more issues of our 7 Days series in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned. You can also support Neowin by registering for a free member account or subscribing to extra member benefits, along with an ad-free tier option.

Have a great weekend!

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Posted Monday 13 July 2026 at 7:55 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

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JayzTwoCents (4.33m subscribers)

July 13, 2026

Video length: 32:30

Todays news centers around the slow collapse of XBOX and Microsoft Gaming... so what does this mean for the future of XBOX and PC gaming?!

00:00 Crazy AI Profit, XBOX Reset, 50 Super Series, And More

01:03 Samsung's Crazy AI Profits

04:49 Datacenter Noise & Water Pollution

12:05 First-ever UN Global Dialogue on AI

14:30 Beijing Pushing For Less Foreign AI Use

16:28 The XBOX Reset

25:53 50 Series Super Rumors Again

26:51 AMD Next-Gen APU

27:17 Intel Desktop APU

28:21 Official Steam Machine Windows Drivers

30:00 Linux on Atari Jaguar

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Posted Monday 13 July 2026 at 7:52 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

This week's news recap is here, with Microsoft shaking up the gaming world with the biggest round of layoffs in Xbox history. We also talk about the upcoming changes across the Windows ecosystem, security, AI's increasing role in Microsoft's internal mechanisms, and more.

Quick links:

1. Windows 10 and 11
2. Windows Insider Program
3. Updates are available
4. Reviews are in
5. Gaming news

Windows 11 and Windows 10

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 versions.

Microsoft is constantly encouraging its customers to use AI wherever and whenever possible. But the company itself is also implementing more AI systems internally, especially in security systems and vulnerability detection. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri detailed how Microsoft is implementing a new AI agentic scanning harness, MDASH, into its own development pipeline to catch bugs faster and surface only high-confidence findings to engineers.

Speaking of security, Kaspersky found a phishing campaign that abused Microsoft's device login flow. Attackers convinced victims to copy a real Microsoft one-time code and paste it into Microsoft's own sign-in page. Using this process, threat actors were able to gain access to victim’s accounts.

The company also published a plain explainer of its update types, Patch Tuesday, optional preview updates, and out-of-band releases, for anyone confused by the terminology. Additionally, Microsoft also proposed a new update strategy to admins and users, which should help deliver safer Windows updates.

Microsoft also finally fixed a bug that broke core Windows 11 UI components, including the Start menu, Search, Settings, Taskbar, and File Explorer, on certain provisioned PCs. The bug had been present since July 2025, and the fix comes as part of the June 23 C-release update (KB5095093), rolling out gradually ahead of full availability next Patch Tuesday.

Windows Insider Program

Here is what Microsoft released for Windows Insiders this week:

Builds for the Experimental channels brought in a few notable additions. Windows Insiders in these channels can now adjust the position and size of the taskbar. On top of that, there's the new Cloud Rebuild feature that allows you to reinstall Windows along with all your existing drivers, so you don't have to chase them manually.

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.

Microsoft confirmed that Windows 11 26H2 will enable the Windows Backup for Organizations app by default. The app will also be renamed to "Windows settings backup and restore." For anyone unfamiliar, this is an official Microsoft application designed to help organizations and enterprises backup and upgrade their systems.

Microsoft is also considering redesigning PowerToys' Awake utility, with a streamlined flyout for its sleep-prevention modes and support for custom durations instead of just presets.

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• Microsoft is expanding Copilot into Forms and Word for iPad, adding contextual chat and collaborative editing

• Microsoft paused the rollout of Teams' revamped minimized meeting experience without giving a reason

• TypeScript 7.0 is out, 10x faster than 6.0 on key workflows, though the new API waits for 7.1

• Popular Windows 11 file manager Files gets a long list of new features and improvements

   

Here are the latest drivers and firmware updates released this week:

• NVIDIA Game Ready Driver 610.74 improves DLSS in three titles but doesn't fix any reported gaming bugs.

• The non-WHQL Intel graphics driver 32.0.101.8861 is bringing better support for some of the high-profile titles coming soon to PC.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

Steven Parker was busy doing reviews this week. Steven started the week by reviewing Honor Watch 6, a budget-friendly smartwatch with decent features and amazing battery life. Check out the full review here.

And if you need to expand the storage space of your gaming console or a workstation, and we all do at some point, check out Steven's Lexar Play SSD review. It's a blazing fast SSD that shines when you put games on it, and comes in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB variants.

On the gaming side

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

Microsoft shook up the gaming community when it announced the biggest restructure in Xbox history, affecting 3,200 staff. About 1,600 are being let go today, with the rest rolling out through FY2027.

id Software, developer of the popular Doom franchise, was said to be hit hard, with roughly half its Texas team let go. However, amidst the spreading rumors, the studio released an official statement, in which it said that the team has remained large enough to support game and engine development despite the layoffs.

This week also brings the highly anticipated Resynced version of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Ubisoft has breathed new life into one of the most popular games of the AC franchise, much to the players’ delight, as the game sold over two million copies in just a few days. Our Pulashti did a detailed review of the game, so check it out to learn more about the reborn Black Flag.

Deals and freebies

• MLB The Show 26, The Alters, and more join Xbox Free Play Days for the weekend
• Weekend PC Game Deals: GTA, Borderlands, Kingdom Come, Stray and more

• Nova Lands and Tattoo Tycoon are free on the Epic Games Store this week

   

Other gaming news includes the following:

• Xbox Game Pass July lineup has Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Planet Crafter, and more

• Sitting finally comes to Minecraft as a feature, no more tricks or mods

• Valve released Proton 11.0-1 for Steam

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Posted Sunday 12 July 2026 at 7:43 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

id Software, the studio responsible for many beloved Xbox franchises like DOOM, Wolfenstein, Quake, and more, has seen a huge chunk of its staff laid off by Microsoft as part of the company's restructuring of the Xbox brand, resulting in over 3,200 people losing their jobs.

In the wake of this announcement, John Carmack, one of the founders of id Software (along with John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack), who also helped create the DOOM, Wolfenstein, and Quake franchises, has responded to it on social media with his thoughts on the situation.

Most responses to Xbox's mass layoffs, which were filled with anger and frustration, like former id Software animator Skai Chow's scathing message of "I hope our pain was worth it" or fear of the future, like Bethesda fearing that it will negatively impact the development of The Elder Scrolls 6, or even spell the end for Fallout 76 without help from an external studio.

Back in 2024, Jony Ive created a new startup called io to explore hardware designs for the AI world and also began working with OpenAI. Later in 2024, OpenAI's startup fund made an investment in io and subsequently increased its stake to own about 23% of the hardware startup. In May 2025, OpenAI acquired Ive's io in a $6.5 billion all-stock deal. At the time of the acquisition, io had around 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists, and product development specialists.

Today, Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and two former employees in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing them of stealing confidential information and trade secrets to support OpenAI’s consumer hardware. The two former Apple employees named in the lawsuit are Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan.

Apple claims Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer who joined OpenAI in January 2026, retained an Apple-issued laptop and later exploited an authentication bug to access the company’s internal systems. According to the complaint, Liu downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files, including information about unreleased products, technical specifications, engineering presentations, and proprietary project data.

Apple also targets Tang Yew Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple and previously served as vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch. Notably, Tan is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer. Apple claims that Tan used confidential information while recruiting Apple employees and instructed some candidates to bring physical components, CAD files, design materials, and prototypes to OpenAI interviews. The company stated in its lawsuit that OpenAI used these interviews to obtain details about Apple’s component selection, engineering processes, suppliers, and manufacturing methods.

Apple further alleges that OpenAI used its confidential information when approaching manufacturing partners, including asking one partner to perform a proprietary metal-finishing technique. When Apple tried to connect with OpenAI in February to raise concerns and request an investigation into this alleged IP and trade secret theft, it received no response.

OpenAI provided the following statement in response to Apple's lawsuit:

We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.

Apple is now asking the court to prevent OpenAI from using or disclosing its trade secrets, require the return of Apple property, and award compensatory damages.

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Posted Sunday 12 July 2026 at 7:37 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

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Gamers Nexus (2.63m subscribers)

Video length: 29:55

In hardware news this week, we recap the DRAM Antitrust Lawsuit, new inroads for ID verification laws, the US reportedly wanting a 5% cut of OpenAI, and Sony dropping discs for the PlayStation.

00:00 - Recap for the Week

01:06 - Steam Machine Update and GN Store Update

06:42 - OpenAI Offers 5 Percent Stake to US Government

09:02 - Memory Makers Face New Lawsuit

13:20 - Half an Elon Dollars of Fabs

15:31 - Lenovo Says Cheap RAM to Never Return

16:49 - AMD 5800X3D Re-Release Scalped

20:18 - More ID Verification Laws

24:56 - GTA VI Gets Greedier

26:34 - PlayStation Drops Disc Support

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Posted Saturday 11 July 2026 at 2:04 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

Of all the layoffs that came down on Xbox Game Studios developers this week as part of Microsoft and Xbox's 3,200 "reset" cuts and four studio divestments, the ones that hit the DOOM developer id Software were the most shocking to many given the popularity and success of its modern trilogy of games.

It's been reported that well over half of id was axed from Xbox, with 136 developers — 96 at its Texas headquarters and an additional 40 remote workers — let go from the studio. The cuts impacted nearly every department within the developer, including the teams building, maintaining, and improving its id Tech game engine used for a variety of ZeniMax projects.

Individual DOOM devs have shared reactions to the layoffs, though id Software itself hadn't yet shared a response until today. Now it has, with the studio posting a statement to the community on social media to assuage fears about its future under Microsoft and Xbox.

"Thank you for all the support this week. While our studio was impacted, those changes were spread across teams. We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for," reads id's letter. "The team today is about the same size we were when making DOOM (2016). We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward."

"We are focused on supporting each other and team members impacted. We're going to keep building the great games and tech that have defined us for the past 35 years, and we're looking forward to seeing you at QuakeCon this August," it added.

For quite a while, Nvidia was expected to be working on an RTX 5000 SUPER series as a step up from the vanilla 50 series that is currently headlined by the RTX 5090. There were even rumored specs that leaked, though evidently, none of that has materialized.

However, it finally looks like Nvidia may make a move and launch a new card, according to a new report. Surprisingly, perhaps, this is not related to the SUPER series at all, and instead, Team Green could be bringing a new RTX 5090 "SE" model instead. The news comes from Russian outlet GameGPU, which claims that this will be a highly chopped-down variant of the 5090.

How much, you ask? According to the report, there may only be 14,080 CUDA cores or a total of 110 SMs (streaming multiprocessors). In comparison, the RTX 5090 has 21,760 CUDA cores or 170 SMs, respectively. Aside from the core configuration, the memory subsystem is also said to go down from a 512-bit width to a 384-bit interface. Thus, the memory capacity will see a reduction down to 24GB on the SE versus 32GB on the full 5090.

Here is how the alleged RTX 5090 SE will compare spec-wise to the 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti:

Thus, in terms of performance, the RTX 5090 SE could be right in the middle of the 5090 and the 5080. If the report is indeed true, we will have to see how Nvidia prices this thing, especially in these current times where hardware prices are very high.

Source: GameGPU

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Posted Saturday 11 July 2026 at 8:06 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

Warhammer 40,000: IV continues to show more extended demonstrations of its real-time strategic gameplay with a new 15-minute video.

The last video focused on the Space Marine and Ork factions, but this time, we'll take a look at the Necron faction and the Adeptus Mechanicus faction facing off in a 1v1 skirmish mode game.

Here's how it went down.

The second gameplay demonstration kicks off with a look at the Adeptus Mechanicus (Admech for short), a faction of tech-worshipping cyborg cultists who are making their debut in the Dawn of War series in this game.

What makes this faction unique is that the buildings they use to produce combat units can be linked together with a Noosphere Network. The more buildings that are linked together within an Admech player's network, the cheaper the cost of creating combat units will be, and the stronger the turrets they make will be.

In addition, the Admech faction features a wide variety of combat units, from fast Skitarii Rangers who can run around the map to steal Control Points while sniping enemies to heavily armored tanks and walking mechs that bring the hammer down on even the most heavily armored enemy units.

We learned a couple of months ago that PCIe 8.0 could land in two years time, around 2028. As such, up to eight times faster NVMe SSDs are expected, capable of reaching speeds of up to 128 GB/s unidirectionally. That is still some distance (time) away and currently, the most readily available drives for consumers are running on the PCIe Gen5 interface, which can deliver up to 16 GB/s.

However, enterprise devices have begun moving on to PCIe Gen6, with the promise of doubling the throughput compared to PCIe 5.0. Back in August of 2024, Micron launched the industry's first PCIe Gen6 drive, which claimed read and write bandwidths of up to and over 26 GB/s.

Fast forward nearly two years, Micron, this February, began shipping its 9650 NVMe SSD, and in the two years, the company managed to further refine its technology such that the upgraded drive can now deliver up to 28 GB/s of bandwidth.

Following that, Samsung today has managed to just leapfrog Micron as it has released its new PM1763 enterprise SSD, the successor to PM1753. The latter was based on the PCIe 5.0 interface, and as such, the new PM1763 drive promises more than double the speeds of up to 28.4 GB/s. To be specific, the South Korean giant claims sequential read and write speeds of "up to 28,400 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) and 21,900MB/s, respectively" on the 16TB variant. The 4TB and 8TB will be likely be slightly slower.

The company has announced that it has begun "mass production" of the PM1763, but sadly, this is not for the common masses, like you and me. Instead, it is for data centers and enterprise workstations with a focus on heavy AI and HPC (high-performance computing) needs.

As you may already be familiar with, AI is the big hype nowadays among all the major big tech companies, which requires a lot of hardware, including RAM, GPU, and storage, and this is consequently leading to a massive shortage of consumer goods with little or no way to replenish the extreme supply-side issues.

Micron even completely killed off its Crucial consumer-facing brand just to focus on the extremely high-profit enterprise and data center market.

Samsung says that the PM1763's performance allows transfer of a massive 40 GB LLM in as little as 1.4 seconds, and it is also said to be 1.8 times more efficient than the PM1753, so companies should be getting lower power usage alongside better performance. In cases where the workload demands it, the tech giant says it can sustain peak performance as it is optimized for liquid-cooled server environments via direct-to-chip (D2C) cooling technology.

Finally, in terms of security, the drive supports post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms to protect against future quantum computing threats, as well as TEE Device Interface Security Protocol (TDISP), which can guard against vulnerabilities in virtual environments.

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Posted Thursday 9 July 2026 at 7:49 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

Workers have been affected throughout Xbox teams and its first-party game development studios, with some affected more severely than others. Since news of the cuts came on Monday morning, it's become clear that staffers under the ZeniMax and Bethesda umbrella and at DOOM dev id Software have been hit particularly hard, with the latter losing half of its entire workforce.

Reportedly, another studio that's been battered by Xbox's efforts to "reset" is Obsidian Entertainment, the RPG developer best known for creating the beloved Fallout: New Vegas as well as the Grounded series, Pentiment, Avowed, and The Outer Worlds 2 for Xbox after it was acquired by Microsoft in late 2018. Though it's not shutting down as rumors suggested, it hasn't come through the mass layoffs unscathed.

According to sources in contact with Kotaku, roughly 60-70 employees were laid off from Obsidian — a number that constitutes 25% of the developer's headcount. Affected roles are stated to include "producers, artists, designers, programmers, QA testers, writers, and others," including many senior staff members and the only recruiter at the studio.

It's been said that most of these discharges were a part of the 1,600 immediate cuts that Microsoft made on Monday, with "a few" coming later this year as the firm lays an additional 1,600 Xbox workers off in the next 12 months.

Earlier this week, Microsoft initiated a large wave of 4,800 layoffs that hit the firm's Xbox and gaming divisions particularly hard, with four studio divestitures and 3,200 cuts — 1,600 immediate, and 1,600 more coming in the next 12 months — striking in what's been called a "reset" for the Xbox business.

Though the redundancies have affected teams across all of Xbox, they've impacted certain game studios such as ZeniMax and Bethesda and Obsidian Entertainment quite disproportionately. Another developer that's experienced a severe reduction in force is id Software, the team that creates and oversees the modern DOOM games.

Initially, it was reported that half of the entire studio was laid off as part of Microsoft and Xbox's restructuring — a major and devastating loss of talent that shocked the community and upset developers at id, given the popularity of its games and the potential of the always-evolving id Tech game engine.

According to a new report, however, the total number of layoffs at the Texas-based developer is even larger. At first, it was believed that 96 roles were removed at id. Now, though, Game Developer writes that a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) notice — obtained by the outlet from the Texas Workforce Commission upon request — has revealed that 40 remote workers at the studio have been let go as well.

Steam’s compatibility layer for playing Windows games on Linux has just received an update. Proton 11.0-1 brings support for five newly playable games and 13 games that are not playable on the stable release but previously worked on the Proton Experimental version.

For those wondering what charity this is that Valve is doing for Linux users, well, it isn’t charity; it’s business. Valve’s own SteamOS is based on Linux, so getting games working in Proton means it can sell more games to its users. People on Linux just also happen to benefit.

Here are the games that previously worked in Proton Experimental:

• Universe Generator: The Golden Sword
• DCS World Steam Edition
• Resident Evil (1996)
• Resident Evil 2 (1998)
• Dino Crisis
• Dino Crisis 2
• From Dust
• Blaite
• Don't Die Dateless, Dummy!
• METAL GEAR SURVIVE
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Metal Fatigue
• SHOGUN: Total War

Meanwhile, these games are newly playable:

• Unknown Faces
• Gothic 1 Classic
• X-Plane 12
• Breath of Fire IV
• Deadly Premonition

In addition to the new games, there are also a ton of fixes for various games that are already supported. You can check out the full log below:

• Fixed video playback in She Sees Red.
• Fixed rendering of certain symbols with Ukranian language option in Chambers.
• Fixed voice chat in Phasmophobia lobby for desktop players.
• Improved rendering of Rockstar Launcher popups.
• Fixed Sea of Solitude showing black screen on Proton.
• Fixed many EA games being unplayable after a recent EA Desktop update.
• Added support for SteamWorks SDK 1.64.
• Fixed Steam Overlay not working correctly with many EA games.
• Improved emoji support in Idle Trillionaire.
• Fixed intro video playback in Crimson Desert.
• Fixed Rei and the Floating City not being playable with gamescope.
• Fixed mouse movement behavior in Call of Duty 2.
• Fixed rendering issue in launcher of DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH.
• Fixed a crash in HELLDIVERS 2 happening in high enemy-count missions.
• Fixed random hangs in Killer Inn.
• Fixed Killer Inn not launching on Steam Decks and other machines with /tmp sizes lower than 10GB.
• Fixed Killer Inn not being able to connect to Square Enix account.
• Fixed graphical glitches in Duck Game that happen with newer Wine Mono versions.
• Fixed REDLauncher (e.g. as seen with Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3) taking a long time to exit.
• Fixed Hollow Knight wrongly registering Steam Deck's Steam button as a left trigger after a game update.
• Fixed controller hotplug not working for 8BitDo Ultimate 2C and other controllers that expose multiple HID devices.
• Fixed Xalia intermittently failing to start when game is launched.
• Improved timezone detection.
• Fixed video playback in 我打不过漂亮的她们.
• Fixed lag spikes caused by Steam overlay being opened for prolonged time.
• Fixed VR controller tracking in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
• Improved VR support so that No Man's Sky VR mode is playable again.
• Fixed black blocks in dialog windows created by ARC Raiders and The Finals.
• Fixed glitchy video playback in Satisfactory.
• Fixed Rec Room not being playable after a recent game update.
• Fixed THE KING OF FIGHTERS XIII GLOBAL MATCH freezing when playing videos from the gallery.
• Fixed intro video not looping in Blazblue Centralfiction.
• Made more games using MonoGame playable.
• Improved support for Kodi media player.
• Added System Voice support for multiple languages in Phasmophobia.
• Fixed KDE window maximization support.
• Fixed Brighter Shores window resizing support.
• Improved Space Engineers dual monitor support
• Fixed scaling issue with Arma Reforger when changing window modes.
• Fixed Dungeon Siege tools showing up at character's feet.
• Improved focus loss behavior with RoBoRumble.
• Fixed rendering issue in Hellsinker launcher.
• Fixed stutter from keyboard input in Titanfall 2.
• Fixed audio playback when playing intro videos in BIRDCAGE.
• Fixed hang after METAL GEAR SOLID 2: Sons of Liberty - Master Collection Version end credits.
• Fixed Disintegration getting stuck on the first loading screen.
• Fixed CHRONO TRIGGER flickering in windowed mode with certain resolutions when using Gamescope.
• RAGE no longer has focus issues when Alt-Tabbing on KDE Wayland.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition (2009) no longer has problems minimizing after Alt-Tabbing.
• Resident Evil 2 should no longer have issues when changing resolutions on GNOME.
• Call of Duty: WWII should no longer fail to render properly in fullscreen native resolution on setups with dual monitors.
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition no longer has issues with keyboard registration after refocusing the game.
• Fixed Far Cry 4 randomly hanging during launch.
• Updated Xalia to 0.4.9:
  • Fixed lockups happening when interacting with the EA App.
  • Added controller support for the MC Visual C++ 2010 redistributable installer.
  • Improved gamepad binding support for Graze Counter.
  • Added controller support for launchers of the following games: Red Faction®: Armageddon™, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II, Hellsinker., Disney Bolt, STAR WARS™ Starfighter™, Rocket Knight, Puddle, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, Metal Slug XX, Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition, Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY, LocoCycle, Ys SEVEN, Resident Evil (1996), Resident Evil 2 (1998), Resident Evil 3 Nemesis (1999), Dino Crisis, Dino Crisis 2.
  • Fixed Xalia wrongly selecting option from unfocused tabs in Rayman: Raving Rabbids.
  • Added controller support for DirectX Runtime Components installer when launching BioShock for the first time.
• Rebased on top of Wine 11.0.
• Added FEX-2605 for ARM64EC builds.
• Updated vkd3d to vkd3d-1.19-139-g30b93dcea8b0.
• Updated dxvk to v2.7.1-467-g83e503b4ae6d from Proton 11 support branch.
• Updated dxvk-nvapi to v0.9.1.
• Updated Wine Mono to 11.0.0.
• Updated vkd3d-proton to proton-20260410

To use the new version on Steam, right-click a game you want to play, select Properties, then go to the Compatibility section. After that, you can select the Proton version you’d like to use.

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Posted Wednesday 8 July 2026 at 4:39 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

After assuring that its highly-anticipated Steam Machine will be a "good deal" back in November 2025, Valve finally unveiled the official specs and pricing of its latest hardware this June. Regardless of what you feel about that or whether the company has met your expectations, Valve has now released official Windows 11 drivers for the Steam Machine.

The Steam Machine, if you are not aware, is the latest addition to Valve's Steam Hardware lineup, which comprises the Steam Deck OLED, Steam Controller, Steam Frame VR headset, and the new Steam Machine.

Back in 2022, Valve dropped the Steam Deck, and soon after, Windows driver support followed. However, there were some major caveats. For example, at that time, there was no proper TPM support on it, which essentially meant Windows 11 was out of the question, and as such, initially, the Steam Deck officially supported Windows 10 only. Things were better with the Steam Deck OLED that launched later, though Valve still did not offer technical support for Windows, despite providing drivers.

Things have remained the same with the Steam Machine too, as Valve notes that it is "unfortunately unable to offer 'Windows on Steam Hardware' support." And since dual-booting Windows 11/10 with SteamOS is not ready yet, users will have to wipe SteamOS completely. After this, if things go wrong, though, you will have to work on it yourself to resolve them. Thankfully, Valve does provide an official advisory on SteamOS troubleshooting and recovery.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you will have to be connected to the internet via Ethernet during the installation when entering the product key, as Wi-Fi won't work at this point.

In total, the company has provided four driver packages, one each for the GPU, the Wi-Fi adapter, the Bluetooth adapter, and finally, the SD card reader, alongside a simple instruction against each:

• Graphics driver - run Setup.exe to install.

• Wi-Fi driver - right click qcwlan64.inf and select install.

• Bluetooth driver - right click BtFilter.inf and select install.

• SD Card reader driver - run Setup.exe to install.

   

You can download the respective drivers by visiting the page linked below on Valve's official site.

Source: Valve (spotted by VideoCardz)

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Posted Wednesday 8 July 2026 at 2:19 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

In announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs across the Xbox division yesterday, CEO Asha Sharma focused on discussing cuts to the Xbox platform team and redundant layers of middle management. Now, though, word is filtering out about significant staffing cuts at remaining Microsoft-owned game developers including id Software and Bethesda.

Apogee and 3D Realms founder Scott Miller—who helped publish some of id’s earliest games—wrote on social media yesterday of “insider reports” that a majority of id had been laid off, “including most (if not all) coders.” And last night, veteran programmer Michael Maynard—whose credits at id Software date back to 2011’s Rage—wrote on LinkedIn that he was among the “roughly 50%” of the id team that was let go Monday.

Game Developer cites “multiple anonymous sources” in confirming those reports, saying the redundancies amount to about 90 employees at the Doom studio. The first DLC pack for last year’s Doom: The Dark Ages launched earlier today.

Id co-founder John Romero wrote in a social media thread about his sorrow over the layoffs, saying that the people behind the current incarnation of the company “have done a great job” maintaining its legacy. “Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today’s industry,” he wrote. “The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people.” Romero also urged Microsoft to preserve the code and documents associated with the current version of id, as Romero says he has for the incarnation he helped lead until 1996.

“Just really sad that this is how id Software, the pioneer/innovator of FPS action games is relegated to just another ‘reorganization’ of assets,” Maynard wrote in his LinkedIn post.

As much as half of the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online has been let go, according to a Kotaku report.

Credit: Zenimax Online

Meanwhile, IGN obtained an email from Bethesda President Jill Braff to staffers expressing “sincere gratitude” to “a number of our colleagues” who were impacted by the layoffs. IGN says employees at Bethesda Studios were “hit particularly hard” by the layoffs, while remaining staffers are “facing an uncertain future” as Microsoft said it is planning to lay off 1,600 more employees throughout this fiscal year (in addition to 1,600 let go yesterday).

The changes in strategy and headcount mean that Bethesda “need(s) to change course,” Braff wrote in her email, transforming into a company “that focuses on our strongest franchises.” That could be bad news for newer franchises like Starfield and for The Elder Scrolls Online, with the latter game losing as much as half of its developers, according to a Kotaku report.

“We must strengthen our business, return to sustainable growth, and ensure we can continue investing in our franchises and our players,” Braff continued in her message to employees. “I know that doesn’t make a day like today any easier.”

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Posted Wednesday 8 July 2026 at 7:31 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

Last month, Xbox executives laid out some “hard truths” about Microsoft’s struggling gaming division that they said would require a difficult “Xbox reset.” This morning, Microsoft revealed the brutal shape of that “reset,” announcing plans for 3,200 layoffs and the divestment of five smaller studios that the company has spent years acquiring and shepherding.

Half of those 3,200 layoffs are effective today, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wrote, while the other half will come by the end of Microsoft’s 2027 fiscal year (which runs through June 30, 2027). CNBC cites “a person familiar with the matter” in reporting that these cuts amount to roughly 20 percent of the Xbox division.

When combined with 1,600 newly announced layoffs across the rest of Microsoft, the company as a whole is letting go of just over 2 percent of its workforce. But The Seattle Times reports that Microsoft’s total headcount has remained relatively stable thanks to other hiring.

The newest Xbox cuts follow a string of Microsoft gaming layoffs in recent years, including 1,900 jobs cut in the wake of the Activision Blizzard acquisition and 650 jobs cut later in 2024. In July of 2025, another round of layoffs led to the cancellation of a number of in-development gaming projects at Xbox such as Perfect Dark and Everwild. In today’s announcement, though, Sharma said that “none of our first party publicly announced games or projects are being cancelled as part of these reductions.”

Sharma characterized these Xbox staffing reductions as a way to “simplify” a division that has become bloated with complicating layers of middle management. Some decisions in the gaming division currently pass through “14 layers” of decision-makers, Sharma said, before promising that the new Xbox will be a “flatter organization” with “no more than 5, and where possible, 3” layers of management involved in any decision.

Today’s announced layoffs also seem focused on reining in a large Xbox platform team, which Sharma said has grown “40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined.” That could have an outsized impact on the development of Project Helix, the recently announced hybrid console that will also play generic PC games.

Hit the road, small studios

Amid these layoffs, Microsoft is also executing a massive reversal of its studio acquisition spree that dates back to 2018. Compulsion Games (We Happy Few) and Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts) will “return to management” and operate independently with full control of their intellectual property, Sharma writes. Ninja Theory (Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice) and Undead Labs (State of Decay), meanwhile, have been purchased by other unnamed companies, while France’s Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Prey) is reviewing “potential strategic options” to operate outside of Xbox.

Sharma bluntly admitted that these smaller studio acquisitions have been a financial mistake for Microsoft, resulting in a loss of “64 cents for every dollar we invested” in a “typical year.” In recent years, Sharma writes that Xbox has “learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio” and that “it is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio.”

The era that brought games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice to Xbox is over.

Credit: Arkane Studios

At the same time, some of the larger game studios Microsoft has acquired are still apparently considered very desirable parts of its portfolio. Mojang (Minecraft) and King (Candy Crush) will now report directly to Sharma, reflecting their outsize share of Microsoft’s monthly player base and the “critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation” they bring to the gaming division, Sharma writes. And across Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda, and Xbox Game Studios, Sharma writes that Microsoft will be “shifting investment to focus on higher priority projects.”

The shift in Microsoft’s gaming priorities from small indie acquisitions to massive conglomerates has been apparent in recent years, with Microsoft shutting down Arkane Austin (Redfall) and Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) shortly after finalizing its $69 billion investment in Activision Blizzard King in 2023. But today’s round of studio divestments seems to put a hard stop on the era where Microsoft was willing to put money toward pulling interesting indie developers into the Xbox fold.

In this new era, Microsoft will be refocused on taking big swings with the “industry-defining franchises” that it said last month had suffered from a lack of adequate funding in recent years. That’s good news for fans of Call of Duty, Fallout, and Halo, but less good news for fans of the offbeat experiments that have until now filled out Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.

It’s a hard pivot that Sharma admits is necessary because of bad Xbox investments in recent years, including a focus on Game Pass subscriptions and multi-platform games that “have created meaningful value,” but “did not grow at the pace we expected.” Those relative failures led to an Xbox division that essentially threw good money after bad and “added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome,” Sharma wrote.

At the same time, those moves weakened Microsoft’s core gaming business, Sharma writes, resulting in a division “operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.” But the people responsible for those strategic failures are not the ones who will be bearing the brunt of the division-wide changes announced today.

“I know this is painful,” Sharma writes. “These changes will directly affect people who have poured their creativity into building Xbox. Many joined us through acquisitions, while others were recruited here, or sought us out because they loved this industry and loved Xbox. Today’s decisions do not reflect their talent or dedication.”

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Posted Tuesday 7 July 2026 at 8:33 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

Nvidia might have seen massive success as the backbone of the AI revolution, but today there is some bad news for the company. The firm’s Kyber NVL144, a next-generation AI rack system, has been pushed back to 2028 due to difficulties the company is experiencing manufacturing its key circuit board.

The Kyber NVL144 is a server cabinet that will come with 144 Nvidia Rubin Ultra chips (due in 2027). The Kyber NVL144 turns the chips into a single unit so they can work together, giving AI companies the power they need to train and run the most advanced models. With the 12-month setback, however, it could give AMD and Google the opportunity to leap ahead.

The report of delays comes from SemiAnalysis, which said: “Kyber NVL144 rack architecture has been delayed to 2028 as the PCB midplane remains challenging from a manufacturability standpoint.” SemiAnalysis added that NVL576 is also likely delayed or at least limited to small volumes.

It has also been reported that Nvidia’s backup plan, to connect two of Nvidia’s current racks together for similar power, has also been scrapped due to the awkward and costly design. This leaves Nvidia in a very precarious position that its competitors could try to use to their advantage.

Apparently, Nvidia’s current Rubin systems are in full production and will begin shipping them in the fall to eight of its cloud partners, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Interestingly, SemiAnalysis also said that Nvidia’s data-center compute revenue will run 20% above the Wall Street consensus in the second half of its fiscal year 2027, so it’s not all bad news.

Source: SemiAnalysis (X)

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Posted Monday 6 July 2026 at 6:16 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix

7 Days is a weekly roundup of picks of what's been happening in the world of technology - written with a dash of humor, a hint of exasperation, and an endless supply of (black) coffee.

This week's highlights include several new AI updates from Anthropic, new free games on the Epic Games Store, and OpenClaw going mobile. Let's get started.

You can check out the recent issues of the 7 Days weekly roundup.

Reason behind memory shortage

The global memory shortage is causing a massive storm in the tech industry, forcing even the biggest giants to raise prices of their devices. While the AI industry is largely blamed, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said that the price pressure from certain customers over the past few years has also contributed significantly to the shortage.

This negatively impacted memory manufacturers' revenues, which were losing money and couldn't afford to invest in new production capacity. “Certain customers drove pricing significantly down in our industry. In 2023, our prices came down to one-third of what they were,” Mehrotra told CNBC, adding that the shortage could last into 2027.

Goodbye PS disc games

Sony announced a major update for PlayStation gamers this week. The company is pulling the plug on physical game disc production, pushing PS consoles towards a digital-only future after three decades. This is scheduled for January 2028, giving publishers and developers time to prepare.

Sony is also closing its classic console platform stores for PlayStation 3 and Vita, starting with select markets in 2026, followed by a global shutdown in July 2027. While Microsoft has yet to ditch physical media for Xbox consoles, it's reportedly experimenting with a feature that will let disc owners digitize their games while keeping their trading value.

Google fined $4.7 billion

The search giant lost a long-running antitrust case over Android after Europe's top court dismissed its final appeal. It must pay the multi-billion-dollar penalty and "has no further right to appeal," the court said.

The drama dates back to 2018, when the European Commission slapped Google with a record-breaking penalty over using illegal tactics to maintain its search monopoly and forcing OEMs to preload Google Search and Chrome on Android devices to get access to the Play Store.

Our Features

Our coffee-powered team published a platter of editorials, opinion posts, and guides. Check them out:

• I hate that Sony is ditching physical discs for the PlayStation
• How to roll back Chrome and restore MV2 extensions following the v150 update
• Apple Rewind: iPhone 18 Pro video leaked, things you missed at WWDC, and Neo is a blessing
• Social media bans for kids don't protect adults against harms, here's what you can do

This week in software news

Catch up on some of the latest apps and software news updates that arrived throughout the week:

New Intel drivers: With its new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers (v24.50.0), Intel joined Microsoft in its commitment to improving Windows by boosting its performance and overall user experience. The new drivers brought improved 6GHz performance and better overall stability.

Rufus fixes major issues: Rufus 4.15 final release rolled out this week, bringing fixes for two major issues. It fixed the silent installation issues where the progress would get stuck and patched the Windows User Experience (WUE) persistence bug, where various settings failed to stay saved.

JetBrains Air: It's a new AI-first IDE from JetBrains currently available on Windows x64 and ARM, with plans for macOS and Linux. JetBrains Air builds on top of the defunct experimental editor Fleet, and fills the gap between running agents in terminal and working in a full IDE.

AMD fixes install issues: With its latest driver Version 26.6.4, AMD fixed install issues for Windows 10 users and FSR 4.1 crashes on RX 7000 GPUs, including games like Forza Horizon 6.

OpenClaw goes mobile: The open-source AI agent is now available as a mobile app for Android and iOS. You can pair smartphones with a self-hosted AI agent for chat, voice, approvals, and automation.

Tidal wave is coming: The music streaming platform will raise its subscription fee to $12.99/mo, putting the "artist-first" platform on par with Spotify. Speaking of which, Tidal announced it would stop monetizing AI slop and label AI tracks under a new policy to protect artists.

VirtualBox 7.2.12: The new release is a general maintenance update that fixed a nasty bug on Arch Linux, where starting a VM in version 7.2.10 could trigger a full kernel freeze on the host. The update also addressed issues with Fedora's YASM assembler and brought DX11 performance improvements for Windows.

Vascular Swap is going away: The feature that tracks the overall stress your blood vessels experience throughout the night is being pulled from Galaxy Watch in the US. A blood pressure trend feature will replace it on the Samsung Health 7.0 and the One UI 9 Watch update.

It's no TV Time: The popular entertainment utility TV Time is shutting its doors forever after 15 years of service, citing unsustainable operating costs and low demand for its paid version. Going away on July 15, TV Time helped organize, track, and discuss what to watch.

FBI seizes NetNut: The federal agency worked with Google to seize the domain of a residential proxy service called NetNut after it was abused by the Popa botnet.

This week in hardware news

Catch up on some of the latest software news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Dbrand takes a U-turn: The case maker canceled its ambitious Companion Cube enclosure for the Valve Steam Machine, which had become the second-fastest-selling product in its history. Valve objected to the protected IP design after Dbrand took a "backwards approach" by designing the product first without getting a license.

Samsung for education: The South Korean giant introduced new interactive displays for schools and AI classroom tools at ISTELive 2026. The new offerings are designed to make shared classroom displays easier for teachers to use while giving IT admins more control.

How much for the next Galaxy Fold?: Leaked information suggests that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 series could reach up to €3,000 ($3,432 approx.) for its top-tier Ultra variant in the EU due to the price hike. It's not surprising to see Samsung's foldables getting hit by the global chip shortage.

This week in Google News

Catch up on some of the latest Google news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Are you a robot? Google is experimenting with a new reCAPTCHA method that asks you to wave at your camera to prove you're human and bypass the annoying puzzles. However, early adopters found it as easy as falling off a log, and the feature can be fooled with a simple stock image.

Google owes $1.5 billion: In another case, a Swedish court ordered Google to pay $1.5 billion (14.3 billion kronor) to Klarna for prioritizing its own comparison shopping tool over PriceRunner. However, it was reported that Klarna lost about $8.3 billion in total.

Holding back Meta: Google is reportedly limiting Meta's use of Gemini AI models as it's struggling to maintain supply. This shortfall even disrupted and delayed some of Meta's internal projects, and employees were told to use AI tokens more efficiently.

Nano Banana 2 Lite: It's a new image generation model for speed, low-cost, and high-volume workflows, which can generate text-to-image outputs in about four seconds and costs just $0.034 per 1K-resolution image.

macOS got a spark: Google's always-on AI assistant Gemini Spark arrived on macOS with a $100/mo subscription. It brings background AI automation, remote task execution, and app integrations to Mac users.

New Kiwi voice: Google Maps got a new AI-powered voice for New Zealand users that improves the pronunciation of Māori place names across navigation. It's available for those who have set English (New Zealand) as their default language.

Workspace updates: The "Take notes for me" generative AI feature inside Google Meet is now available to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Google Slides can now create entire multi-slide presentations with Gemini using just a single prompt.

This week in Apple News

Catch up on some of the latest Apple news updates that arrived throughout the week:

iPhone 18 Pro video leaked: Apple suffered one of the largest data breaches in its history after a partner was hacked. As discussed on the latest Apple Rewind, a drop test video of the unreleased iPhone 18 Pro, a supplier list, and key phone component details were leaked by the hackers.

Still a dream: We have been hearing a lot about a camera-equipped AirPods Pro in the making. However, the AirPods that can "see around you" have been put on the back burner, according to a leaker.

Fixes for iPhone: While users are busy trying the beta version of iOS 27, Apple released iOS 26.5.2 for iPhone, with security fixes focused on WebKit and related web technologies.

This week in browser news

Catch up on some of the latest news about Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and other browsers:

Google Chrome failed users: The browser let a malicious Perplexity extension slip through the gaps, into the Chrome Web Store. The malware secretly records what you're typing, and it's recommended to double-check that you have the official Perplexity extension.

Edge loves Google: You can now sign in to your Edge browser with a Google account, starting with Edge 150. Available on macOS and Windows, the new integration lets you import your browser data without manual labor.

Protect your clipboard: Opera launched a new built-in tool called Paste Protect that blocks malicious actors from accessing your PC's clipboard. You don't need to configure or turn on anything manually.

This week in Meta news

Catch up on some of the latest Meta, WhatsApp, and Instagram updates that arrived throughout the week:

Reusing old hardware: Meta resorted to repurposing DDR4 RAM in its servers instead of buying new hardware, due to the global memory shortage. Its custom chip, called Vistara, allows the reuse of memory chips from retired servers for new servers that rely on DDR5.

Reserve your username: For those who don't want to share phone numbers, WhatsApp is getting usernames after almost two decades of existence. You can reserve a unique WhatsApp username ahead of the global rollout later this year. However, if you use the same username across platforms, it becomes easier for people to spam you. You can lock your username with a secret pin that the other person needs to enter before starting a conversation.

Another social app: Meta is working on its bazillionth social media app. This time, it's a social media app for vibe-coded mini games, called Pocket. You can create mini games using AI prompts and simple tools.

This week in AI news

Catch up on the latest artificial intelligence news updates that arrived throughout the week:

New stuff from Anthropic: Claude Scientist is a new, dedicated desktop app for scientists, offering them a unified workspace for their work. Its mid-range lineup got upgraded with Claude Sonnet 5, which claims to close much of the gap with Opus 4.8. Meanwhile, Claude Fable 5 was also restored globally after the US government lifted export controls on Mythos and Fable models.

Take some stake: Amid rising scrutiny over AI companies, OpenAI reportedly offered a 5% stake to the Trump administration to ease tensions with Washington. CEO Sam Altman argued that giving the government a piece of the cake is a way to share the benefits of AI.

Amazon jumping ship: The e-commerce giant is considering using OpenAI models and its own Nova family after Anthropic bumped the cost of using Claude inside Amazon Services. However, the cost-cutting move is not seen as a sign of a damaged partnership between Amazon and Anthropic.

Alibaba vs Anthropic: It was reported that the Chinese tech firm banned Claude Code so that its employees can't use it for work. It's concerned that the tool can help identify China-linked users, and the ban comes after Anthropic accused Alibaba of extracting Claude's capabilities without permission.

Godot bans AI-generated code: The open-source engine that powers hits like Brotato is banning AI-generated pull requests because the sheer volume of such submissions has become too much for human reviewers.

Proton Lumo 2.0: Proton thinks its AI assistant can give you privacy while answering your questions. Lumo 2.0 ships with a "new architecture" while adding reasoning modes, image generation, live web search, memory, and Custom Lumos.

This week in Linux news

Catch up on the latest updates from the world of Linux and open-source:

Linux 7.2 is going smoothly: The first release candidate for Linux 7.2 came out, and Linus Torvalds said it has been a good release with no big disruptions and that it looks “reasonably normal.” It's a good sign that we may not need an eighth RC.

Fedora 45 could be more secure: A change proposal under consideration could make it more secure than its predecessor. Fedora 45 could use Shadow Stack in x86_64 programs to help prevent return-oriented programming attacks, making systems more secure.

Big milestone for ReactOS: The popular free software unlocked a new achievement by implementing its first NT6 system call, bringing Windows Vista (and later) compatibility a bit closer. The system call added is NtGetCurrentProcessorNumberEx, which returns the processor number of the logical processor on which the caller is running.

This week in Microsoft News

We have a separate weekly roundup for all the news and updates related to the Redmond giant and Windows, called Microsoft Weekly. The latest issue covers Windows 11 hitting 70% on Steam, the new Xbox strategy, Frontier Company, job cuts, and more.

This week in science news

Catch up on some of the latest science and out-of-this-world updates that arrived throughout the week:

Are we living in a simulation? A new study concludes that the universe cannot be a computer simulation. Researchers demonstrated that a complete description of physical reality requires a non-algorithmic understanding that goes beyond purely computational limits.

What else in gaming?

The latest issue of Pulasthi's Weekend PC Game Deals curates several exciting games on sale this week. Epic Games' weekly promotion refreshed with new games; you can claim copies of River City Girls 2 and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

Microsoft's latest promotion brought high-profile titles, including Black Ops 7 and Diablo IV, to Xbox Free Play Days. NVIDIA GeForce NOW got 12 more games for the month of July, and Prime members got Symphony of War, Lonestar, and 10 more games.

That said, here are some more stories from the gaming world:

• Latest Microsoft Flight Simulator update enhances U.S. National Parks
• Minecraft on Bedrock finally gets Closed Captions, a decade after Java Edition
• Microsoft is "taking a fresh look" at Xbox investments as major cuts loom
• Payday 2 engine upgrade adds 64-bit and DX11 support, drastically shrinks install size

From the review corner

Steven was on a review spree this week, starting with the Sihoo Doro C300 Pro V2 ergonomic office chair, which he likes to call the Ikea of chairs. The flagship model got a 7/10 rating for its fully ergonomic design, great price, and visual appearance. However, points were deducted because it comes in two boxes, requires extensive assembly, the armrests constantly shift position, and the footrest is only rated up to 15 kg (33lbs).

HONOR Magic V6

It's a foldable smartphone from HONOR that comes with a larger battery, a larger exterior screen, and a thinner body. HONOR Magic V6 got brownie points for its build quality, a great case with a stand in the box, 80W wired fast charging, and 66W wireless charging. While the device is available at a discount, it has a higher RRP, a quirky MagicOS 10, and is underclocked by default.

OUKITEL WP500 Ultra

If you're looking for a rugged smartphone, check out the review of OUKITEL WP500 Ultra, which started shipping on June 29. Scoring 7/10, the device is ruggedly built, looks cool, and offers a 120Hz display and 5G connectivity. However, it's a bit heavy at 414 grams, has a poor night vision camera, has ad bloat on the lock screen, and is pricey without discounts.

HONOR Watch 6

Keeping your smartwatch charged all the time is a real pain, and HONOR Watch 6 tries to address that by promising up to 35 days of battery life, complemented by a crisp, vibrant display, a great price, and a less chunky design than the Watch 5 Ultra. On the other hand, its bedtime mode doesn't sync to the phone, the wallet option varies by region, and you can't interact with notifications.

So, these were some of the biggest tech news and other updates from this week. There will be more issues of our 7 Days series in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned. You can also support Neowin by registering for a free member account or subscribing to extra member benefits, along with an ad-free tier option.

Have a great weekend!

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Posted Monday 6 July 2026 at 7:27 am AEST (my time).

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JayzTwoCents (4.33m subscribers)

June 6, 2026

Video length: 35m 22s

Back in the early 2000's RAM companies were investigated for Price Fixing and ultimately had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and some execs even went to Prison... And its all about to happen again!

00:00 In This Episode...

01:14 RAM Cartel Lawsuit

08:03 Sony Kills Physical Games

15:49 Protect Our Games Act Update

16:36 Sony Kills Physical Games, Cont'd

22:16 PC Shipments Down 7%

24:18 Intel CPU Price Hike

25:36 New Game Studio With Bold Open-Source Claim

28:31 ESA Says Private Servers = Piracy

29:33 dbrand Unsurprisingly Shoots Self In Foot

33:55 What Do You Want To See Next?

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Posted Monday 6 July 2026 at 7:24 am AEST (my time).

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Paul's Hardware (1.55m subscribers)

July 5, 2026

Video length: 11m 57s

0:00 Welcome to Paul’s Tech News - July 5, 2026

1:55 RTX 3060 12GB launches (again) for same $330 MSRP as 2021

4:44 Memory Makers Sued - Is the RAM Crisis Almost Over, or Just Beginning?

TECH BRIEFS

7:47 Intel Might Restart Supply Of 10th, 12th, 13th, And 14th Gen CPUs

9:00 Intel quietly raises price for Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Ultra 5 250K Plus

10:00 AMD EXPO ULL RAM $1,099 despite promises of 'effectively the same price'

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Posted Sunday 5 July 2026 at 5:44 pm AEST (my time).

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Happy 4th of July to all our readers from the US! This week Windows Insiders didn't receive a new build, as Microsoft was more focused on fixing underlying issues, and delivering new updates to its products and apps.

This week's news recap is here.

Quick links:

1. Windows 10 and 11
2. Updates are available
3. Reviews are in
4. Gaming news

Windows 11 and Windows 10

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 versions.

According to Valve’s June 2026 Steam survey, Windows 11 has finally crossed 70% of the platform’s user base, up 0.68 points from May. At the same time, Windows 10 slides further to 23.56%. Still, Windows as a whole is dominant with 94.10% of Steam users.

Last week was riddled with news about issues on Windows 11, their fixes, and more issues. Microsoft shipped KB5102558 and KB5095615 updates, a pair of Setup and Recovery dynamic updates, and quietly fixed a bug where the CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file was eating tens of gigabytes of storage. At the same time, the company explained why GIFs stopped loading in Windows 11's emoji panel; Google retired the Tenor API, so Microsoft switched to GIPHY.

Developers would be happy to know that WSL Containers finally moved into public preview, so Windows users can now run Linux containers natively without Docker Desktop. There’s also the redesigned, modular Start menu, which is now rolling out to enterprises, and Microsoft has published the full set of Group Policy and CSP settings admins can use to control it.

On the business side, Microsoft launched Frontier Company, a $2.5 billion push to help enterprises adopt and deploy AI at scale. But at the same time, the company reportedly prepares to cut under 2.5% of its workforce, which is roughly 5,500 jobs, mostly in sales, consulting, and Xbox gaming.

And if you're into leaks and speculation, a new leak that suggests Microsoft may have worked on an Edge-powered, AI-first operating system hit the community by storm.

Last week also marked the first week in a long time when we didn’t get a build for any of the Windows Insider channels. Guess the 4th of July arrived earlier at Microsoft this year.

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.

When it comes to Microsoft’s own products, Edge and Teams received the most significant updates. Edge for Business now uses an on-device AI model that watches your screen and blocks scareware in real time, and new DLP policies restrict copy-paste and downloads for contractors. Edge 150 also hit stable, and finally added the ability for users to sign in with their Google accounts.

Teams is replacing CAPTCHA with smarter bot detection, as meeting organizers now can approve or reject including bots in calls. It's also rolling out Facilitator, an AI agent that spots knowledge gaps mid-meeting and keeps track of the agenda. So, you won’t have to remember all the details from calls, as the agent will track these down for you. Although it never hurts to double-check.

Finally, legacy SharePoint services are being retired, as SharePoint Designer 2013 and InfoPath 2013 both lose support July 14. Users are encouraged to switch to Power Automate and Microsoft Forms.

Microsoft also published a roundup of the latest features in Excel, Teams, and Copilot. You can check more details below:

• Here are all the new features added to Microsoft 365 Copilot in June 2026
• Here are all the new features Microsoft added to Excel in June 2026
• Here are all the new features Microsoft added to Teams in June 2026

Here are other updates and releases you may find interesting:

• JetBrains' new AI-first 'IDE' JetBrains Air is now on Windows

• Rufus fixes bugged Windows 11 system requirements bypass options and install issues

• Copilot in Excel is getting improved web search this month

• Outlook contacts will start appearing in Phone, Messages, Siri, and other apps on iOS

   

Here are the latest drivers and firmware updates released this week:

• Intel Wi-Fi Driver 24.50.0 & Intel Bluetooth Driver 24.50.0: Intel released new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers to enhance performance and stability of its hardware on Windows PCs.
• AMD Radeon driver 26.6.4 fixes a known bug with certain games crashing when using FSR 4.1.

Reviews are in

Here is the hardware and software we reviewed this week

Steven Parker tested an interesting bunch of products this week. If you need a new ergonomic chair, take a look at Steven's detailed review of the Sihoo Doro C300 Pro V2 ergonomic office chair.

Steven also finished his lengthy review of the new Honor Magic v6 foldable phone. It's a foldable that delivers great specs and performance for its price, and can trade a few blows with more expensive competitors. And if you're more of an outdoor type who doesn't dig foldables, check out this Oukitel WP500 Ultra rugged phone, which is built for extreme conditions.

And finally, if you need a DIY NAS board these days, check out the review of the the ZimaBoard 2 1664 Starter Kit. It's an affordable Nas board built around Intel's low-power N150 chip, with support for SATA or SSD storage.

On the gaming side

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

To celebrate the the country's 250th birthday, Microsoft Flight Simulator's latest World Update overhauls the terrain and scenery of 31 U.S. National Parks. Minecraft Bedrock Edition also finally has closed captions, a decade after Java Edition got the feature, and Payday 2 now supports DX11.

On the business side, Microsoft is reportedly taking "a fresh look" at Xbox investments as layoffs loom, and IO Interactive confirmed Microsoft pulled funding from its long-in-development fantasy game.

In the wake of Sony's controversial decision ot move away from physical discs, Microsoft is also reportedly testing a Disc to Digital feature that would let Xbox owners convert disc collections into digital entitlements.

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Posted Sunday 5 July 2026 at 8:28 am AEST (my time).

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CD Projekt Red has announced on X that Cyberpunk 2077, its open-world dystopian sci-fi RPG, has hit a new sales milestone of selling over 40 million copies worldwide, whether individually or as part of its Ultimate Edition bundle.

There is a brand-new World Update rolling out to both of the modern iterations of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Landing just a few weeks after the most recent update, this one is targeting the National Parks of the United States. It also lands celebrating the nation's 250th birthday.

Partnering with Bing Places, Vexcel, Gaya, and Asobo, the Flight Simulator development team has managed to improve the terrain, landmarks, and scenery of these locations using photogrammetry, TIN (triangulated irregular network) surface texturing, and digital elevation modeling (DEM).

"The United States of America is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, including breathtaking mountains, serene coastlines, austere deserts, and lush forests," says the development team. "The nation protects these beautiful natural wonders in world-renowned national parks and national forests like Death Valley National Park, Olympic National Park, Acadia National Park, and Mount Hood National Forest."

There are 31 new areas of interest being overhauled in this update, while sights like visitor centers, lodges, lookouts, resorts, and natural wonders are also being enhanced for visits by pilots. Three new guided tours and nine discovery flights are included in the free package too.

Microsoft Flight Simulator World Update 22: United States National is now available in Microsoft Flight Simulator as well as Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 as an optional download from the in-game marketplace for free.

It can be accessed across Steam and the Microsoft Store for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5, as well as Xbox and PC Game Pass subscriptions. Meanwhile, Xbox One, mobile, and PC players can also jump into the new content using Xbox Cloud Gaming if they have a Game Pass Ultimate membership. Keep in mind that the game must be updated to the latest version to download this free update from the marketplace.

This is the fifth major update to hit the Flight Sim titles in 2026. So far this year, the development team has brought in improvements for California, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and three Midwest cities in the United States.

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Posted Friday 3 July 2026 at 1:12 pm AEST (my time).

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TV Time, the popular entertainment utility that helps you organize, track, and discuss stuff you're watching, is shutting down about two weeks from now, on July 15, 2026.

According to an in-app message the company posted, the platform has become "no longer sustainable" because high operating costs plague the free model, and not everyone wants to pay for it. The notification thanked the loyal fans who spent years sharing their love for television and cinema on the platform.

After many incredible years, we've made the difficult decision to discontinue TV Time. The service will end after July 15, 2026.

 

While we loved supporting TV Time, it was no longer sustainable to continue operating the service as a free app and there was not enough demand for a paid app.

 

Thank you for being part of this amazing community.

 

Happy watching, forever

TV Time has been around since 2011, under the name TVShow Time, and in that time, it has grown to accumulate more than 25 million registered users. In 2016, Whip Media acquired the platform, and the company rebranded the service as TV Time a year later.

Some of the features TV Time has gained in its 15-year-history include movie tracking in 2019, and a Spotify "Wrapped"-inspired "REWIND" feature that summarizes user watch statistics at the end of every year. The app also has custom shareable lists and home screen widgets to show upcoming episodes.

While TV Time blamed financial sustainability for the closure, TechCrunch argues that a shift toward AI at Whip Media (TV Time's parent company) probably drove the decision. Last year, the company unveiled its new platform called "Helix," an AI tool that automates back-office tasks like managing digital files, predicting show ratings, and tracking royalty payouts for streaming companies. Blue Torch Capital acquired Whip Media in early 2025 and immediately pushed for this new focus on AI, leaving the consumer app behind.

TV Time is currently allowing users to export their entire watch history via a GDPR self-service tool before all personal data is deleted on the 15th.

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Posted Friday 3 July 2026 at 1:11 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

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