Technology

Microsoft came out with a packed Xbox Games Showcase 2024 on Sunday, bringing new reveals and updates on games from its first-party studios and third-party partners. The Xbox parent showed off games from Activision, Bethesda, Blizzard, Xbox Game Studios and more. The showcase kicked off with a new campaign trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and concluded with a reveal for the next Gears of War title. Already announced titles like State of Decay 3, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Perfect Dark, Avowed and South of Midnight also received new trailers.

The Xbox Games Showcase aired two days after the Summer Game Fest and just a week after Sony held its State of Play live stream. In addition to first-party games, the showcase also featured trailers from third-party titles like Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and more.

Microsoft also unveiled three new Xbox Series S/X variants, including an all-digital Xbox Series X. The Xbox Games showcase was also followed by a Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Direct presentation. Here’s everything that was announced at the Xbox Games Showcase:

Gears of War: E-Day

The rumours came out to be true as Microsoft revealed the next Gears of War at the Xbox Games Showcase. Gears of War: E-Day, the next mainline game in the series, will be set 14 years before the original Gears of War, during Emergence Day. The game received a cinematic trailer, featuring in-game assets, and a new instrumental version of Gary Jules’ ‘Mad World,’ evoking the iconic 2006 Gears of War commercial. There’s no release window details available yet, but don’t expect E-Day to launch anytime soon.

Doom: The Dark Ages

Perhaps the highlight of the showcase was the reveal for the next mainline game in the Doom series. Doom: The Dark Ages takes a medieval approach to monster killing, putting the Doom Slayer in a dark fantasy setting. The epic trailer showed brutal moves, an insane skull-feeding gun and a bladed Shield Saw that flies off to cut down demons and returns to your hands like Thor’s hammer.

The Doom Slayer will also be able to utilise his Atlan mech against colossal demons and fly around on a cybernetic war dragon. Doom: The Dark Ages will arrive on Xbox Series S/X, PC and PS5 in 2025, with day-one release on Game Pass.

Perfect Dark

Perfect Dark received a first-look gameplay trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase, featuring first-person combat and parkour. Developed by The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics and published by Xbox Game Studios, Perfect Dark reboot was first teased officially at The Game Awards 2020.

The new trailer showcases the game’s Cairo setting and its protagonist, Joanna Dark. The gameplay features close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, gunplay, stealth, and smooth parkour traversal. Perfect Dark does not have a confirmed release date yet.

South of Midnight

Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, which was first revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in 2023, received a new trailer, showcasing third-person action-adventure gameplay. South of Midnight features a distinct art style and fantasy elements.

The trailer showed off the protagonist, Hazel, and her companion Catfish as they travel through a flooded wilderness and encounter magical beasts. Hazel can use her magic weaving powers in both combat and traversal. The game will be available on Xbox Series S/X and PC in 2025.

State of Decay 3

State of Decay 3 debuted a new trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase. The open-world zombie survival title will serve as a sequel to 2018’s State of Decay 2. Set years into the zombie apocalypse, the game tasks you with fighting the undead and reclaiming lost territories. There’s no official release date or window for State of Decay 3 yet.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

While the next Call of Duty received a dedicated Direct presentation after the Xbox Games Showcase, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was shown off with a campaign trailer at the showcase. Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Black Ops 6 is set in the early 1990s and will weave a thrilling story of espionage.

The trailer brings back familiar characters, blockbuster action and tight gunplay. The first-person shooter will arrive on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X on October 25, with day-one release on Game Pass.

Avowed

Obsidian Entertainment’s Avowed received a new story trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase. The action-RPG, played from the first-person perspective, focusses on melee and magic combat. The game will be released on PC and Xbox Series S/X in 2024.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

The Xbox Showcase featured a new trailer for MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, showing off new gameplay and story section from the game, featuring Indy chasing a mysterious artefact in the Himalayas. The game will arrive on PC and Xbox Series S/X later this year.

Here’s everything else that was announced or received an update at the Xbox Games Showcase:

• Age of Mythology: Retold (PC, Xbox Series S/X – Releasing September 4, pre-orders now live)
• Fable (PC, Xbox Series S/X – 2025)
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (PC, Xbox Series S/X – Releasing November 19)
• Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ gameplay reveal (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – Releasing November 15)
• Atomfall (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PS4, PS5 – 2025)
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5)
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – Fall 2024)
• Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – Releasing July 18)
• FragPunk (PC, Xbox Series S/X – 2025)
• Life Is Strange: Double Exposure (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – Releasing October 29)
• Mecha Break (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – 2025)
• Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater gameplay (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – 2024)
• Mixtape (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – 2025)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (PC, Xbox Series S/X – Releasing September 5)
• Winter Burrow (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X – Early 2025)
• Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (PC, Xbox Series S/X, PS5 – 2025)
• Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred expansion (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PS4, PS5 – Releasing October 8)
• Fallout 76 Skyline Valley expansion (PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PS4, PS5 – Releasing June 6)
• Starfield Shattered Space expansion (PC, Xbox Series S/X – 2024)
• World of Warcraft: The War Within expansion, PC – Releasing August 26)

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Microsoft is retiring its artificial intelligence (AI) agent builder tool GPT Builder along with support for Copilot GPTs. The tech giant announced that the feature will be removed from the Copilot Pro subscription bundle between July 10 and July 14. After its removal, subscribers will also lose access to the GPTs they have created. The company has not shared any reasons behind rolling back the feature. Notably, GPT Builders was introduced just three months ago, when Microsoft launched the Copilot Pro subscription in global markets.

Microsoft to Retire GPT Builder in Copilot Pro

In a support document, Microsoft has now confirmed that the feature will be removed. It said, “Microsoft will remove the ability to create GPTs starting July 10, 2024, and then remove all GPTs (created by Microsoft and by customers) along with their associated GPT data also starting July 10, 2024, through July 14, 2024.”

GPT Builder was introduced as a tool that would allow Copilot Pro subscribers to create mini chatbots for specific purposes. These GPTs, also known as AI agents, can be created with specific instructions and knowledge bases.

Due to their small size, they adhere to the guidelines efficiently. For instance, one can create a Copilot GPT to analyse research papers and find any inconsistencies in them. At the time of launch, Microsoft said these GPTs could also be used to save time by reusing a set of AI prompts.

Microsoft to Focus on Core Copilot Functionality

While the company did not specify any reason to discontinue the feature, it highlighted that it is evaluating its strategy for Copilot extensibility, and for the time being, will be prioritising the core product experiences for Copilot. Interestingly, GPTs will still be offered to Microsoft’s commercial and enterprise clients and are only being retired for the consumer-focused AI platform.

Microsoft has also asked users to save the instructions for any Copilot GPTs created before July 10, as GPTs and the data will not be accessible after that. To see the instructions, users can open the GPT in edit mode and go to the Configure tab. The company said it will delete any subscriber data that was collected by Copilot GPT from its servers.

In India, the company’s Copilot Pro subscription is priced at Rs. 2,000 per month. Microsoft has also shared details in case users want to cancel their subscription.

Taiwanese chip design giant MediaTek is developing an Arm-based personal computer chip that will run Microsoft’s Windows operating system, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Last month, Microsoft unveiled a new generation of laptops that feature chips designed with Arm Holdings tech, which provide enough horsepower to run the artificial intelligence applications that executives said were the future of consumer computing. The MediaTek chip is geared toward this effort.

The software company’s plans take aim at Apple which has released its own Arm-based chips for Mac computers for roughly four years. And Microsoft’s decision to optimize Windows for Arm could threaten Intel’s longstanding dominance in the PC market.

MediaTek and Microsoft declined to comment.

MediaTek’s Taiwan-listed shares closed up 2.4 percent on Wednesday, outperforming the broader index’s 1.2 percent gain.

The MediaTek PC chip is set to launch late next year after Qualcomm’s exclusive deal to supply chips for laptops expires, two of the people said. The chip is based on Arm’s ready-made designs, which can significantly speed development because less design work is needed using ready-made, tested chip components.

It was not immediately clear whether Microsoft has approved MediaTek’s PC chip for the Copilot+ Windows program.

Executives at Arm have said one of its customers used the ready-made components to build a chip in roughly nine months for a design that is already complete, which MediaTek’s is not. For experienced chip design businesses, advanced chips typically take considerably more than a year to construct and test, depending on the complexity.

In 2016, Microsoft tapped Qualcomm to spearhead moving the Windows operating system to Arm’s underlying processor architecture, which has long powered smartphones and their small batteries. Microsoft granted Qualcomm an exclusivity arrangement to develop Arm-based Windows-compatible chips until 2024, Reuters reported last year.

Because the Qualcomm exclusivity arrangement with Microsoft is expiring, other designers have opted to build chips to help power Microsoft’s latest push to use Arm designs. For decades, Windows machines have relied on chip architecture made by Advanced Micro Devices and Intel.

Nvidia and AMD are working on Arm designs for Windows machines, Reuters reported last year. The Nvidia effort for its PC chip involves help from MediaTek, according to a person familiar with the matter. The MediaTek effort for a PC chip is separate from its collaboration with Nvidia, two of the people said.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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Microsoft allows for greater synergy between a Windows PC and a smartphone, letting users reply to text, receive and make calls and check their phone notifications directly from the computer. The Phone Link app on PC, which syncs both Android phones and iPhone with Windows, also lets users share files between devices. Now, Windows is making file sharing from PC to Android more streamlined.

Windows share feature

As part of the new Windows Insider Preview, Microsoft is rolling out the ability to quickly share content to an Android phone from a share window on Windows PC. With the feature, hitting share on a file will now show up a quick share window that will display the user’s Android phone that has been paired with the PC.

According to Microsoft, users must have their smartphone paired to their Windows PC using the Link to Windows app on Android and Phone Link on their PC for the feature to work. Only paired Android smartphones will show up in share window and there’s no indication yet if the feature will be extended to iPhone.

Currently, right clicking on a file on Windows and selecting Share opens the share window with the options to quickly send the file to your email contacts or share it via Nearby Share feature or other applications.

The feature was announced as part of updates rolling out to the Beta Channel with Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22635.3785. These features may take time to be widely available to all Windows 11 users.

Windows 11 Preview Build

Other improvements being tested with the Preview Build include tweaks to the Windows Spotlight feature, in addition to other fixes for known issues. The update will make it easier for users to change images and engage with the Windows Spotlight experience on desktop.

Windows allows users to share files between Android devices and PC via cross-device copy and paste feature within the Phone Link app. The feature, however, is available only on Surface Duo and select Samsung, Honor, Oppo, and Asus devices.

Last month, a Windows Central report had claimed that the Phone Link app on Windows would soon be getting a new optical character recognition (OCR) feature that would enable users to copy text from images.

Asus Vivobook S 15 was launched by the company last month at its “Next Level. AI Incredible.” event, and the company’s first Copilot+ PC is now available for purchase as one of the first consumer laptops to be equipped with advanced Windows AI features and powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chipset. The device also sports an OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, and is claimed to offer up to 18 hours of battery life on a single charge.

Asus Vivobook S 15 (2024, Copilot+) price, availability

The Asus Vivobook S 15 (S5507) pricing starts at $1,299 (roughly Rs. 1,08,400) for the base model with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, while the 32GB+1TB version is priced at $1,399 (roughly 1,16,700). 

The laptop is now available for purchase in the US, in a Cool Silver colourway. It is also expected to make its way to other markets in the future, including India.

Asus Vivobook S 15 (2024, Copilot+) specifications

The company’s first Copilot+ PC is powered by Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100) chip that is equipped with 12 cores. It also features a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU with up to 75 total trillion operations per second (TOPS) and a Qualcomm Adreno GPU. The Vivobook S 15 is equipped with up to 32GB LPDDR5X of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.

It features a 15.6-inch 3K (2,880×1,620 pixels) Lumina OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, an 89 percent screen-to-body ratio, and up to 600 nits peak brightness. Asus says the display on the Vivobook S 15 has a Display HDR True Black 600 certification from VESA along with a TÜV Rheinland certification. 

Connectivity options on the Asus Vivobook S 15 include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. and it is equipped with a 3.5mm audio jack, a MicroSD card reader, and four ports — two USB 4.0 Gen 3 Type-C ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, and a HDMI 2.1 port. It features a Full-HD infrared camera for video calls, and Harmon Kardon-certified speakers. It also has Asus’ ErgoSense keyboard with support with a dedicated Copilot key. 

The Asus Vivobook S 15 is equipped with a 70Wh battery that can be charged at 90W. It is claimed to deliver up to 18 hours of battery life on a single charge. The laptop runs on Windows 11 out-of-the-box and will get Copilot+ features with future software updates, according to Asus. It measures 352.6x227x15.9mm and weighs 1.42kg.

Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company on Tuesday, dethroning tech heavyweight Microsoft as its high-end processors play a central role in a scramble to dominate artificial intelligence technology.

Shares of the chipmaker climbed 3.5 percent to $135.58, lifting its market capitalization to $3.335 trillion (roughly Rs. 2,78,15,901 crore), just days after overtaking iPhone maker Apple to become the second most valuable company.

Microsoft’s stock market value was $3.317 trillion as its shares dipped 0.45 percent.

Apple’s stock slipped over 1 percent, leaving its value at $3.286 trillion.

Nvidia’s stunning surge in market value over the past year has become emblematic of a Wall Street frenzy driven by optimism about emerging AI technology.

While Nvidia’s rally has lifted the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record highs, some investors worry that unbridled optimism about AI could evaporate if signs emerge of a slowdown in spending on the technology.

“It’s Nvidia’s market; we’re all just trading in it,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market strategist at Interactive Brokers.

Nvidia has also become by far the most traded company on Wall Street, with daily turnover recently averaging $50 billion, compared to around $10 billion each for Apple, Microsoft and Tesla, according to LSEG data. The chipmaker now accounts for about 16 percent of all trading in S&P 500 companies.

Nvidia’s stock has nearly tripled so far this year, compared with a rise of about 19 percent in Microsoft shares, with demand for its top-of-the-line processors outpacing supply.

Tech giants Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Google-owner Alphabet are competing to build out their AI computing capabilities and add the technology to their products and services.

An insatiable appetite for Nvidia’s AI processors, viewed as far superior to competitors’ offerings, has left them in tight supply, and many investors view Nvidia as the greatest winner to date from surging AI development.

“Nvidia has been getting a lot of positive attention and has been doing a lot of things very correctly, but a small misstep is likely to cause a major correction in the stock, and investors should be careful,” said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president at Wealthspire Advisors in New York.

Tuesday’s gain lifted Nvidia’s stock to a record high and added over $110 billion to its market capitalization, equivalent to the entire value of Lockheed Martin .

The company’s market value expanded from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in just nine months in February, while taking just over three months to hit $3 trillion in June.

Since its blowout forecast about a year ago, the company has consistently breezed past Wall Street’s lofty expectations for revenue and profit, with demand for its graphics processors far outstripping supply as companies rush to embed AI applications.

Nvidia executives said in May that demand for its Blackwell AI chips could exceed supply “well into next year.”

Sharp increases in analysts’ expectations for Nvidia’s future earnings have outpaced its stellar stock gains, resulting in a fall in the stock’s earnings valuation.

Nvidia recently traded at 44 times expected earnings, down from over 84 about a year ago, LSEG data showed.

Increasing the appeal for its highly valued stock among individual investors, Nvidia last week split its stock 10-for-one.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

In yet another setback for game preservation, Forza Horizon 4, the open-world racing title from Playground Games, is set to be delisted from digital storefronts. The Microsoft-owned studio announced Tuesday that the game would no longer be available for purchase on Steam and Microsoft Store starting December 15, 2024. The move comes only six years after Forza Horizon 4 was released in October 2018.

Developer Playground Games, a part of Xbox Game Studios, said the game was being removed from online stores owing to licensing and agreements with its partners. From December 15, players won’t be able to buy all versions of the game — Standard, Deluxe and Ultimate — and its additional content digitally.

Forza Horizon 4 to be delisted from Steam, Microsoft Store, Game Pass

In addition to Steam and Microsoft Store, Forza Horizon 4 will also be removed from Xbox Game Pass. Players who currently have access to the racing title via Game Pass will no longer be able to play the game once its digital presence is removed.

However, players who already own the game and its additional content, digitally or through a physical copy, will be able to download or install and access all offline, online, and multiplayer features. Playground Games confirmed the game’s servers will remain online even after the delisting.

While the base game will be removed from storefronts later this year, its DLC has already met its fate. All downloadable content has been delisted from online stores from June 25. Players who already own the game’s DLC can download the content and play it normally. Those who access Forza Horizon 4 via Xbox Game Pass and have purchased any DLC in the past, will receive a free game token for Forza Horizon 4 Standard Edition starting June 25. This, however, only applies to players who have a full-paid active Game Pass subscription on June 25. These Game Tokens will be sent via the Xbox Message Center and, if unused, will expire on June 25, 2026.

Forza Horizon Festival Playlist changes

Ahead of the game’s delisting, Playground is also bringing a few changes to the online Festival Playlist. Forza Horizon 4’s final series, Series 77, which includes the last Festival Playlist for the game, will be live from July 25 through August 22, after which the playlist screen will become inaccessible.

Forza Horizon 4 is currently available on Steam, Microsoft Store and Xbox Game Pass. Playground Games is also offering a discount for the game, with a sale coming to the Xbox Store on July 14. On Steam, the Standard Edition of the game can be purchased at a discounted price of Rs. 259 for a limited time.

Microsoft discontinued its foldable devices – known as Surface Duo – in 2023. However, the company is said to have attempted one last shot at a folding phone, and reportedly developed a Surface Duo 3 before scrapping it. A recently discovered patent suggests that the next generation Surface device would have looked like, with a single continuous display and a kickstand at the back. This development comes after the discovery of a similar patent in March which suggested that the Surface might yet have a Lazarus moment.

Microsoft Surface Duo 3 design revealed by US patent

According to a patent application discovered by PatentlyApple, Microsoft may have scrapped plans for a device that could have become the Surface Duo 3. The patent reveals that it would have featured a single continuous display – a big change from the dual-screen Surface Duo which never properly took off and was shut down by the company last year.

Microsoft’s foldable device, as per the patent document
Photo Credit: US Patent and Trademark Office/Microsoft

The device would have featured a magnetically attached kickstand at the back, enabling the user to place it on a table vertically or horizontally, without requiring any third-party accessories or cases. The patent also suggests a triple camera setup at the back of the foldable device with a module similar in shape to Apple’s iPhone Pro models. Another design element of the device would have been its power button, which could be used to unfold it. In theory, this would have made opening it manually redundant.

The patent is said to have been filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office on June 20. Although it was filed for a “kickstand for opening foldable computing device”, it mentions a device with a “flexible” display with support hinges which can fold 180 degrees. This device is speculated to be the now-cancelled Surface Duo device. Notably, it was revealed a few months ago that Microsoft discarded plans for a similar device which it codenamed Project Neon.

Interestingly, the patent application also mentions another device with a flexible display with support hinges that can be rotated 360 degrees so that the single continuous display is face-to-face.