Tom Warren | The Verge

Microsoft slashes Xbox Cloud Gaming to just 15 hours a month for Ultimate subscribers

2026-09-03T13:01:39-04:00

Microsoft is announcing some major changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming today, less than a year after opening up cloud gaming to its Xbox Game Pass Premium and Essential tiers. While all Game Pass plans have included unlimited cloud gaming over the past year, from November this will be limited to just 15 hours on Ultimate, 10 hours for Premium subscribers, and a measly 5 hours for Game Pass Essential.

“We recognize that introducing limits is a meaningful change, particularly for players who regularly spend more time gaming through the cloud,” says the Xbox team in a blog post announcing the changes. “We expect this upcoming change to impact four percent of Game Pass subscribers.”

If you want to use more than the 15 hours included with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you’ll need to purchase additional cloud playtime through the Xbox store starting in November. Microsoft isn’t revealing exact pricing and details today, but Xbox cloud players will be able to purchase bundles of hours that can roll over if unused in a particular month.

Microsoft says it’s making these changes “because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people
use it and play for longer.“ While that’s undeniably true, Microsoft previously restricted Xbox Cloud Gaming access to its Game Pass Ultimate tier and then opened up access to all tiers of Game Pass nearly a year ago. Unlimited cloud gaming was one of the big additions for Game Pass Premium and Essential tiers, and now that everyone has gotten used to the new feature, they’re being asked to pay for more hours.

Xbox players use cloud gaming in a variety of different ways, including people trying out games before they download them, Xbox One owners using it to access Xbox Series X games, or gamers simply accessing Xbox games away from home on mobile devices.

These strict monthly limits could force some Xbox One owners to upgrade their consoles instead of relying on the cloud for certain games. Players who have regularly used Xbox Cloud Gaming to try out games might also think twice about doing that regularly, especially when the hourly restrictions could make that a lot more difficult on the Game Pass Essential tier.

As part of these sweeping changes, Microsoft is also opening up Xbox Cloud Gaming access to people without a Game Pass subscription. “Players will be able to purchase cloud playtime hours through the Xbox Store and stream eligible games they own on supported devices,” says the Xbox team. “This will provide another option for people who want occasional access to cloud gaming or do not want a recurring Game Pass subscription.”

I don’t think these limits are going to go down well with Xbox Game Pass subscribers, much like the original price hikes. Microsoft was forced to drop the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate six months later, but cut new Call of Duty titles from the service in a bid to balance its costs. These latest Xbox Cloud Gaming changes seem like yet another attempt to prevent more Game Pass price increases.

Microsoft opens up Xbox Cloud Gaming with new pay-as-you-go option

2026-09-03T07:08:41-04:00

Microsoft says it will let anyone access Xbox Cloud Gaming in November, without the need to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. The change to a pay-as-you-go model is part of some sweeping changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming today, and is designed for people who don’t use cloud access enough to warrant a monthly subscription.

“Players will be able to purchase cloud playtime hours through the Xbox Store and stream eligible games they own on supported devices,” says the Xbox team. “This will provide another option for people who want occasional access to cloud gaming or do not want a recurring Game Pass subscription.”

This pay-as-you-go model comes alongside some major limits on cloud gaming for Game Pass subscribers. Microsoft is imposing monthly hour limits, with Ultimate subscribers limited to just 15 hours each month. This could force many Game Pass subscribers to pay for hourly bundles, or use cloud gaming less.

The pay-as-you-go option seems to be targeted more at gamers who don’t own an Xbox, or those who primarily play from a phone. Microsoft is also testing free, ad-supported cloud gaming for Xbox Insiders, which could also help open cloud gaming access to more people without an Xbox.

Microsoft has been trying to attract more players to its Xbox ecosystem through cloud and mobile for years now. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has even set an ambitious and nearly impossible goal to make Xbox “one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day.”

Microsoft previously tried to launch an Xbox mobile store, with the aim of allowing people to purchase an Xbox game and then immediately stream it to their device. The company started rolling out the ability to purchase games and DLC inside its Xbox mobile app last year, but it had to remove the remote play option to adhere to Apple’s App Store policies. You still can’t buy an Xbox game in the Xbox mobile app on iOS and then stream it inside that same app. Apple’s policies force people to manually navigate to the Xbox Cloud Gaming mobile website on a browser to get access to cloud gaming.

Microsoft blamed the delay to its Xbox mobile store on Apple last year, and also said in 2024 that it had built an Xbox game store for Android that it couldn’t launch due to Google’s store policies. Microsoft has continued to battle legally to try and open up Apple and Google’s stores, and Xbox chief Asha Sharma said earlier this year that the “idea” of an Xbox mobile store “is not dead.”

Nvidia’s new RTX Spark laptops launch in October with two different configs

2026-09-03T07:13:02-04:00

All the rumors leading up to Nvidia’s announcement of its Arm-based RTX Spark chips over the summer mentioned two specific chips: the N1X and N1. While the N1 won’t be arriving this year, Nvidia says its N1X chip is arriving in RTX Spark laptops in two different configurations in October.

You’ll be able to buy an RTX Spark N1X laptop with a configuration that I would call the mini PC chip. The top of the line N1X chip comes with a 6144-core Blackwell RTX GPU, paired with a 20-core Grace CPU and between 24GB and 128GB of unified memory. This particular chip will ship in both high-end laptops and miniature PCs like Microsoft’s Surface RTX Spark Dev Box.

N1X configurations available in October. | Image: Nvidia" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />

The more cut down N1X, or what I’d call the laptop chip, has a 5120-core Blackwell RTX GPU, combined with an 18-core Grace CPU and between 24GB and 32GB of unified memory. I’d expect most RTX Spark N1x laptops are going to use this chip, with devices launching from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, or MSI in October.

We’re still waiting for Nvidia to share more on what the N1X is capable of for laptop gaming, but the company is vaguely promising 100fps 1440p gaming with ray-tracing and DLSS enabled for now. RTX Spark laptops are only a month away, so we’re also waiting to hear about exact availability and pricing from PC makers. With a RAMageddon crisis still looming large, I’m expecting to see N1X laptops priced at the very premium end of the market.

Microsoft discloses Azure revenue as part of major financial reporting changes

2026-09-03T04:59:09-04:00

Microsoft is changing how it reports its finances to investors by splitting its businesses into two segments and disclosing quarterly revenue for its Azure cloud business for the first time. The changes are meant to reflect the ongoing impact of AI on Microsoft and how the company now operates.

The software giant has previously reported revenue from three segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. This is now simplifying to two: Agents and Infra, and Devices and Consumer.

Devices and Consumer will include search and advertising revenues from LinkedIn and search advertising, as well as revenue from the Xbox division and Windows OEM and devices. Agents and Infra is essentially the rest of Microsoft, including Azure, Microsoft 365 Cloud, Microsoft 365 commercial and consumer, server products, industry solutions, and the enterprise and partner services that Microsoft now calls frontier and support services.

“There’s no question AI represents a profound shift in both technology and business,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “It is changing what we build and how we operate, and it is blurring the boundaries between our products and reshaping our business models.”

The biggest change to this reporting structure will see Microsoft finally disclose how its Azure business is running on a quarterly basis. Microsoft has been providing year-over-year growth rates for its Azure business, reporting its Azure revenue for the first time last year. Azure revenue will no longer include GitHub cloud and other developer cloud services, nor Security Copilot and Healthcare and Life Sciences cloud revenues.

“Under this reporting structure, Azure becomes more purely our consumption-based platform and infrastructure business,” says Nadella. “Within each of these segments, you will have full transparency of quarterly revenue across each of our key businesses, including Azure, M365 Cloud, industry solutions, and ads.”

Microsoft will start using these new financial reporting changes during its first quarter fiscal 2027 earnings in late October.

Microsoft is enabling a Windows 11 security feature that can hurt gaming performance

2026-09-02T06:01:04-04:00

Microsoft is getting ready to roll out its memory integrity security feature of Windows 11 to more devices next month. The kernel-level protection feature is designed to stop malicious code or drivers running on a Windows 11 machine, but Microsoft previously warned it can also impact PC gaming performance.

“Windows quality updates will begin enabling memory integrity protection on eligible devices,” says Peter Waxman, group program manager at Microsoft. “If not already enabled, these updates will also enable Virtualization-based Security (VBS), helping make additional security capabilities available and reflecting our commitment to making Windows secure by design and secure by default.”

While memory integrity only allows trusted kernel-mode code and drivers to run on a Windows 11 system, it also impacts PC game performance on certain hardware. There’s less of an impact if you have a more modern CPU, but you might notice more of a frame-rate drop in select games on older processors. Microsoft won’t automatically enable memory integrity again next month if you’ve already previously disabled the feature.

If you want to check whether memory integrity is enabled on your Windows 11 PC, you can type “Core Isolation” into Windows search and then open the result and toggle memory integrity on or off in the Windows security app. If you decide to disable this security feature in favor of more PC gaming performance, Microsoft’s recommendation is to re-enable memory integrity after you’ve finished playing a game.

Mozilla launches ad blocking for Firefox on iOS

2026-09-01T12:47:16-04:00

Mozilla is officially launching ad blocking for Firefox on iOS today, after testing the feature over the past few weeks. The new built-in option will block most third-party ads and trackers before they load on an iPhone, reducing bandwidth use and decluttering mobile websites.

Mozilla is using Apple’s WebKit Content Blocker technology and the EasyList filter to block ads in Firefox on iOS, so you won’t need to download and install a separate extension to get it working. The ad blocking is controlled in the settings of Firefox on iOS, and Mozilla is keeping it disabled by default so you have to enable it from settings > browsing > ad blocker. You can also toggle it on or off during a browsing session from the site menu option.

Not every ad will be blocked, though. Mozilla says ads served directly by a website or ads shown in search results will still appear. Unsurprisingly, sponsored shortcuts and other sponsored content shown by Firefox when you open a new tab won’t be blocked, either.

While this is the first time Firefox has gained ad blocking support on iOS, there are plenty of rival browsers that already offer similar support. Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and others also have built-in ad blockers on iOS.

Xbox announces disc-to-digital feature that digitizes your physical games

2026-08-26T10:31:10-04:00

Microsoft is officially announcing a new Xbox feature that will allow Xbox owners to digitize their existing physical game collections. The disc-to-digital feature, which The Verge exclusively revealed last month, is part of work that Microsoft is doing for game preservation and in preparation for the next generation of Xbox consoles.

“Most Xbox One and Xbox Series X disc-based games support this new feature,” explains Jason Ronald, VP of next generation at Xbox. “Players can claim a digital entitlement by inserting a supported disc into an Xbox One or Xbox Series X console and launching the game.” This digital entitlement is tied to the specific disc, and it will move from account to account if you swap the physical game with a friend or log in to a different Xbox profile and try to play a disc-based game.

Microsoft will start testing this new Xbox disc-to-digital feature with Xbox Insider testers on August 31st, followed by a broader rollout to Xbox One and Xbox Series X consoles in the coming months. Once you have a digital version of an Xbox disc game, if supported you’ll also be able to access the game on PC through Xbox Play Anywhere, or stream it to multiple devices with Xbox Cloud Gaming.

A leaked memo from earlier this month revealed that publishers would have control over the Xbox disc-to-digital, so not every game will be supported initially. “We’re starting with thousands of titles, and we’ll continue to add more over time,” says Ronald. “While not every title will be available at launch, this is an important step toward a future where players can have greater confidence that the games they buy remain with them for years to come.”

The Xbox disc-to-digital feature arrives just weeks after Sony announced it’s killing all physical PlayStation game discs. New PlayStation games released after January 2028 will be digital-only, but it’s not yet clear if Microsoft will announce a similar end of production for Xbox discs. Either way, Sony hasn’t announced a similar feature for converting an existing physical library into a digital one.

Microsoft is also bringing Xbox and Xbox 360 games to PC, in a move that could allow the next Xbox console to play every Xbox game ever made.

Microsoft is bringing Xbox 360 games to PC

2026-08-03T17:51:07-04:00

Building on its recently announced plans to bring original Xbox games to PC, Microsoft is also planning to let developers bring their Xbox 360 games to PC as well, according to a leaked document, seen by The Verge, that was sent to developers recently. Xbox 360 games will be able to run on the next-gen Project Helix console, “Xbox PCs,” and handheld devices, the document says.

Microsoft has already said that Helix will play PC games, so making these older Xbox titles available on PC helps build a broader Xbox library that can travel between devices, similar to what’s already possible with Steam. Creating all these digital licenses also helps set up for a future of consoles without disc drives; Sony has already declared game discs dead, and Microsoft may follow.

With 360 games, developers can opt into making them backward compatible, and they will have control over things like a game’s price and if it’s available on Game Pass. The feature is expected to have a “gradual” rollout between 2027 and 2028 “across next-gen devices.” The “full launch” of original Xbox games on PC is also set for October 2026; the initial program announced in July included just four games.

The document also includes details about a way for players to get a digital version of a game that they already own on a physical disc, which The Verge’s Tom Warren reported on in July. The document says that if a player puts an Xbox One or Series game on disc into an Xbox One or Series X console with a disc drive, they’ll be granted a digital license that’s bound to “that disc and the player’s account.” The license will stay with a player across Xbox devices, but if the disc “changes hands,” the license will transfer to the new person. That should mean that gamers can still trade and sell discs; once the original owner of a disc does so, they can’t play the digital version they got from that disc anymore.

According to the document, a public beta for the disc-to-digital program was set for July with general availability set for August. We understand Microsoft had originally planned to test its disc-to-digital program with Xbox Insiders in July, but the beta was delayed. It’s unclear if the timeline of August general availability is still accurate.

The planned changes follow Microsoft’s major Xbox “reset” announced in July, which included thousands of layoffs and the company selling off four studios.

Xbox CEO lays out priorities in memo after major ‘reset’

2026-07-31T05:28:15-04:00

Asha Sharma. | Image: The Verge, Microsoft

After a massive Xbox “reset” that laid off thousands of employees and spun off four studios, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wants to get Xbox back to growth. In a memo obtained by The Verge, Sharma told staff by the end of fiscal year 2027 (which runs through next June), “we will return XBOX to player and revenue growth.” Xbox will also “improve profits back in line with industry averages,” Sharma said. “Every function and studio will own part of that outcome.”

Since taking over Xbox in February, Sharma has made sweeping changes to attempt to turn things around. Previously, she has cited challenges like a low accountability margin, increasing component costs for hardware, an “over extended” slate of studios, and platform infrastructure that’s “not built for the battle ahead.” In addition to the major structural changes, Xbox made Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution Xbox console exclusives and is planning to do more. Sharma has also set an ambitious and nearly impossible goal to make Xbox “one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day.”

In Thursday’s memo, Sharma laid out four Xbox priorities for fiscal year 2027:

CORE: Strengthen our platform, led by console

CONTENT: Grow great games into global franchises

CREATION: Make Minecraft the world’s creator platform

CONNECTION: Extend the worlds that fans love

Xbox will measure progress toward its goals in three “stages,” Sharma said. The first is to return to growth by the end of fiscal year 2027. The second is to turn its bets into growth; “In FY28 and FY29, our Four C’s and roadmap must move into businesses producing meaningful player value and revenue acceleration.” The third is to “scale what works,” and by fiscal year 2030, “our ambition is to be halfway to our long-term daily-player goal with sustained double-digit growth in players and engagement and industry leading margins.”

Sharma shared some vague numbers about Xbox’s current playerbase. “XBOX is one of the largest stadiums in the world, bringing together more than 100 million people every day, more than 500 million each month, and nearly one billion each year,” she wrote. She also noted that console “generates the majority of XBOX revenue and remains the foundation of our fandom” and that it is still Xbox’s “flagship experience.” Xbox’s OS, Game Pass, Windows, and streaming “become our platform for new players and developers.”

The company is also shifting its studio system from a decentralized model to one that’s “more focused around our strongest franchises and biggest new ideas,” Sharma said — something that’s already become evident with changes like the big new Fallout push. Xbox will build “long-term plans” for its biggest franchises “across film, television, consumer products, sponsorship, live experiences, and form new partnerships globally, including China.” Three Xbox franchises “already generate more than $1 billion annually,” though Sharma doesn’t specify which those are.

To grow its share in casual games, Xbox plans to lean on Candy Crush-maker King as well as Microsoft Casual Games, Sharma said. And Xbox is planning to invest in Minecraft “more than ever before.”

Microsoft is bringing original Xbox games to PC

2026-07-22T11:03:20-04:00

Microsoft is expanding its Xbox backward compatibility efforts today by bringing original Xbox games to PC. An early preview release will see four classic Xbox games available on PC today, as part of a bigger effort to bring more Xbox console games to PC in the future.

The first four games are Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy. You’ll be able to purchase and download each of these games on PC, and they’ll also be included with all Xbox Game Pass plans. If you already own a digital copy of these games, you can now play them on PC or handhelds like the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X.

Microsoft has also added a bunch of PC features to these games to make it easier to customize graphics settings while maintaining the original gameplay. VSync support has been added, alongside up to 4x resolution upscaling, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, fullscreen and windowed modes, and more.

Achievements are also coming to these four classic Xbox games in the coming months, a highly requested addition for both console and PC. All four titles will also include customizable language and audio settings.

Most modern PCs will be able to run these Xbox games comfortably, and Microsoft’s minimum system requirements include:

GPU: Nvidia GTX 950 or AMD Radeon RX 550 or Intel UHD 770 or Intel Arc A310
CPU: Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or AMD Ryzen Z2 A Processor
RAM: 8GB

You will also need Windows 11 to run these original Xbox games, and Microsoft recommends a GTX 1070 Ti or equivalent on the GPU side and a six-core CPU like the Intel Core i5-10400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 to get the best out of these games.

“This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve Xbox games from the past and bring them to PC over time,” says Jason Ronald, VP of next generation at Xbox. “Xbox Backward Compatibility on PC is another step toward preserving the games from the past and making it easier for you to enjoy and play more of the games you already own across the devices you use every day.”

Ronald first teased that classic Xbox games were coming to PC earlier this year, in a discussion about the next-generation Project Helix Xbox console. Microsoft’s next Xbox will also play PC games, and the company has been working on a disc-to-digital feature that will allow Xbox owners to digitize their existing physical game collections in preparation for future Xbox consoles.