Microsoft

Microsoft’s big GDC announcement turned out to be bringing Xbox mode to every Windows 11 PC, starting next month. It’s the latest encouraging sign after Xbox’s big leadership shakeup, but Microsoft has work to do to earn back users’ trust.

We’d heard it was at the Game Developers Conference and here it is: the original metal X prototype, which predated the Bill Gates / The Rock stage reveal of the actual console. Also see a few other items from Xbox history in my quick gallery:

We’re in line for Microsoft’s keynote, but look what we spotted at its booth at GDC! “Cross-platform is the future of the Xbox ecosystem,” it writes. “Build for Xbox on PC.” Again, the future of Xbox is W.

These images posted to X by the official Microsoft Game Dev account actually appear to show existing dev kits for older console models like the Xbox One and Series X — but given they’re tagged as a “sneak peek” for GDC 2026, the Project Helix hardware may be revealed soon.

Fortune has a report on how Epstein got into Gates’ inner circle, and then leveraged a bridge player rumored to be Gates’ ex-girlfriend against him: “The richest man in the world is so cheap, his former bridge girl and toy, lives on a friends sofa,” Epstein wrote. Epstein wanted Gates to manage a “donor-advised fund” to reduce his taxes.

Microsoft sure seems to be hinting so! And I suspect Tom is right about what that means. (Better W than L, right?) The company will be at GDC on Wednesday with a “Building for the future with Xbox” keynote session.

The Cowork integration was built in close collaboration with Anthropic and aims to help Copilot perform “long-running, multi-step tasks,” according to Microsoft’s announcement. The feature is in testing and will be available to preview later this month through Microsoft’s Frontier program.

Prompted by recent GitHub outages, OpenAI is in the early stages of developing its own code repository, with completion still months away. The company is considering making it available to OpenAI customers, putting the ChatGPT creator in direct competition with Microsoft, a company holding a significant stake in OpenAI.

The Asus NUC 16 and Dell Pro Desktop for Windows 365, both arriving in Q3 2026, are the latest “Cloud PCs” from Microsoft, following the Windows 365 Link from 2024. They’re designed for businesses accessing Windows from the cloud with added security features like a “small, locked-down operating system” called Windows CPC.

Epstein “found success boring into the inner sanctums of Microsoft,” according to The New York Times, more so than any other major tech company. New Justice Department documents show he spent a decade networking with top Microsoft executives, including Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, and Steven Sinofsky, even after serving time for soliciting a minor.

Microsoft gaming CEO Asha Sharma says almost nothing’s been decided about the future of Xbox, telling Windows Central:

Over the last few years, Microsoft has been bringing its big exclusive franchises to rival platforms like PlayStation and Switch. Satya Nadella even said he wanted to “get rid of” console exclusives — that might not be a great move. But the new Xbox boss seems open to the idea that the console’s identity hinges on exclusives.

Windows MIDI Services is ready for primetime and brings support for MIDI 2.0 and improvements to MIDI 1.0 to Microsoft machines. This includes support for higher resolution expression, loopback, and bidirectional communication with MIDI 2.0 hardware. Now with the major OS providers onboard, maybe adoption of MIDI 2.0 will pick up steam.

Like Phil Spencer, Bond had a note for the employees at Xbox as she announced her departure, which she shared on LinkedIn Friday evening.

The big shakeup at Xbox means that Asha Sharma is taking over for Phil Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming. Her previous role at Microsoft was AI-focused, and here’s what she has to say about utilizing AI for games:

The Extended Support Release for Firefox version 115, the last version available on Windows 7 and 8, will no longer receive security updates after this month, Neowin reports. The loss of support comes three years after Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 and 8 in 2023.

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman seems to think AI will be ready to replace most white-collar work within two years — presumably not including his own, of course. He also claimed more of Microsoft’s own AI models are due this year.