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It might not get the same kind of attention as Google and Apple, but Microsoft is still one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies operating today. It runs Azure, one of the biggest cloud computing services, and maintains Windows 11 and the whole Office suite of software. It also makes plenty of Surface hardware and has a whole slew of gaming products, including the Xbox Series X. But the company is ever expanding — building new hardware, acquiring new game studios, and making sure that even if Microsoft doesn't run your phone, it can touch plenty of the apps on it.

UK regulators likely to decide on Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal next week.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is expected to issue a preliminary decision on Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal next week, a source familiar with the situation tells The Verge. It follows Microsoft restructuring its deal — after the CMA blocked it over cloud gaming concerns — to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft.

This preliminary decision will then be followed by a final one, due by October 18th. The UK is the final regulatory hurdle for Microsoft’s giant deal.


Activision Blizzard wordmark over an Xbox logo
Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Xbox leak: new Xbox Series X design, next-gen in 2028, and more

A huge amount of unredacted Microsoft emails and documents have leaked online.

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It’s too late to delete Microsoft’s secret Xbox docs.

That hasn’t stopped the US District Court for the Northern District of California, though. After a massive leak of Microsoft’s Xbox roadmap earlier today, the District Court has now deleted all of the evidence in the FTC v. Microsoft case from its website. The FTC has also made it clear this leak was Microsoft’s mistake. Oops.


A lesson in not counting your tadpoles before they’ve hatched.

When Microsoft was considering future release titles to bring to Game Pass last May, Larian’s hit CRPG Baldur’s Gate 3 barely made the list. The game was described as a “Second-run Stadia PC RPG” in leaked emails from the FTC v. Microsoft case.

The explosive overnight popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3 must be pretty embarrassing in hindsight, especially given its absence on Xbox.


Phil Spencer gets real about gaming studio closures.

It’s not about profits. When asked if Game Pass could have prevented studio closures in a leaked email from the FTC v. Microsoft case, the Microsoft Gaming CEO said that closures are “almost always” because of “leadership leaving (Lionhead as an example) or team just losing its passion (Ensemble as an example).”


A screenshot taken from emails leaked in the FTC v. Microsoft case.
‘I swear. I’m just super worried about the moat you’ve built, that the winds will change and we have a bloodbath a few years down the road.’
Image: FTC v. Microsoft

What’s next for Windows and Surface without Panos Panay?

There’s a major shakeup atop the Surface line as Microsoft starts looking more toward AI.

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Microsoft accidentally leaked 38TB of data, but the company says no customer data was exposed.

Cloud security researchers at Wiz found the leak and reported it to Microsoft. Here’s what was leaked, according to Microsoft (with its emphasis):

Data exposed in this storage account included backups of two former employees’ workstation profiles and internal Microsoft Teams messages of these two employees with their colleagues. No customer data was exposed, and no other internal services were put at risk because of this issue. No customer action is required in response to this issue.


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The Verge
Have fun with that hilarious Destiny 2 glitch while you still can.

Bungie says in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that it has fixes ready to tame the game-breaking crafting glitch that lets players make weapons that should be impossible.

The developer’s first fix is a stopgap that will deploy within 24 hours, but “soon after,” its more permanent solution will return the “outlier” weapons “to a default state.”


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“The $1,400 device never ran a current version of Android.”

Sick burn from Ars Technica’s Ron Amadeo, who points out the Surface Duo is likely the “worst-supported premium Android phone ever” with only two super-late OS updates to its name.

Remember, this is the phone that saw Microsoft Surface boss Panos Panay team up with Google Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer and spend six whole years supposedly getting it right... only to ship a buggy foldable that’ll certainly make our next flops of the decade list.


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Starfield: you’re holding it wrong.

Remember when Steve Jobs suggested holding your iPhone differently to avoid “antennagate”? Here’s the Starfield version of that: “Upgrade your PC.”

Earlier this week, Tom put it extremely mildly: “Starfield [...] will demand the most out of both your CPU and GPU.” I would say the game runs comparatively poorly to many triple-A titles, with little graphically or mechanically awesome on screen to justify the low framerate.