Jay Peters
Muse is coming to Windows.
Meta’s new AI agent will be getting a native app on Windows, Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri announced at today’s event. No timeline on when, though. Meta launched a Mac Muse app in September.
Microsoft
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.
It’s RTX Spark time.
Tom Warren and Sean Hollister
Tom Warren
HP accidentally revealed the first Nvidia RTX Spark laptop prices.
Microsoft is holding a Windows and Surface event later today, but it looks like HP has spoiled some of the pricing surprise for Nvidia’s RTX Spark laptops. Notebookcheck reports that HP briefly posted a $2,999.99 price for its OmniBook X, with an 18-core CPU and 32GB of RAM. An OmniBook 16 was also priced at $4,999.99, with 64GB of memory, before HP removed both listings from its website. We’ll be covering all the announcements from Microsoft’s Windows and Surface event live this morning from 10AM PT / 1PM ET.
Tom Warren
Forza Horizon 6 reportedly arriving on PS5 in January.
I reported last month that Microsoft was planning to delay the release of Forza Horizon 6 on PS5 to early 2027. Dealabs now reports that the game will release on January 26th, a date I’ve also been hearing from sources. It’s not yet clear if there will be early access to Forza Horizon 6 on PS5 through a premium edition of the game.
Forza Horizon 6 on PS5: we reveal the exact release date
[Dealabs Magazine]
Tom Warren
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Asus finally priced its new MacBook Neo competitor: $799.99 with an OLED and Snapdragon X.
Asus first announced its colorful Zenbook 14 laptop back in June, and it’s now available. The new Zenbook starts at $799.99 with a Snapdragon X1-26-100 chip, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and a 14-inch OLED display. An Intel Panther Lake version is due out before the end of the year, but that’s sure to cost way more.
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Microsoft is expanding ‘biomimicry’ at its data centers as it faces more pushback from locals over construction, pollution, and noise.
Justine Calma
Tom Warren
Is everything ok Microsoft?
The official @microsoft X account has been compromised. Microsoft’s X account followed a Clippy crypto account earlier today, reposted one of its tweets, and had its profile picture changed to a Clippy one. The posts were then removed, but a strange “apology” tweet appeared around 30 minutes later and was deleted rather quickly.
“We have confirmed unauthorized access to our account on X including posts that did not come from Microsoft,” says Microsoft spokesperson Brent Colburn. “The account has been secured and the unauthorized posts have been removed, and we are continuing to investigate the circumstances.”
Update: Microsoft has confirmed its X account has been compromised.
1/2The Microsoft account quoted an obvious Clippy crypto scam account. Screenshot by Tom Warren / The Verge
Tom Warren
‘Something new is coming from Windows,’ says Microsoft.
Microsoft is holding a Windows and Surface event in San Francisco next week. With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in attendance, it was already clear that RTX Spark PCs would be the main focus of the event. Now Microsoft says the October 7th event will include “RTX Spark and new experiences designed to unlock more possibilities for developers and builders.” Mysterious. Stay tuned for full coverage from The Verge next week.
Tom Warren
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
A confident return for one of Xbox’s most iconic franchises is coming during a period of dramatic upheaval.
Andrew Webster
Tom Warren
Windows 11’s 2026 update is now available.
Microsoft is rolling out Windows 11 version 26H2, aka the Windows 11 2026 Update today. It’s what Microsoft calls a “small enablement package,” allowing Windows 11 users to download and install the latest release quickly with a single restart. So what’s new? Well, due to the way Microsoft releases new Windows features these days, many of the same features that have been rolling out to version 25H2 will be part of 26H2.
How to get the Windows 11 2026 Update
[Windows Experience Blog]
Tom Warren
Xbox is releasing a Gears of War pizza cutter.
Xbox has teamed up with Prince St. Pizza to launch a pizza cutter to mark the launch of Gears of War: E-Day. The $60 cutter is built in the shape of the Prototype Lancer weapon from the game, and also includes an in-game pizza emblem. Price St. Pizza will also be selling an “Emergence Pie” pizza with a spicy vodka sauce in stores across the US and Canada through November 1st.
Emma Roth
Human workers are reviewing prompts and images sent to Microsoft Copilot.
That’s according to a report from 404 Media, which viewed internal messages from contractors who describe seeing disturbing requests and potentially illegal images:
Some of the Copilot contractors complained in the private forum about accepting “tasks” that they unknowingly contained explicit unsafe or even potentially illegal images. “I just came across an image set that consisted of eight upskirt photos,” the contractor wrote, while asking for superiors to add an unsafe content flag to the task. On the same thread, another contractor said they had seen images of “some sort of animal sacrifice.”
Terrence O'Brien
The Sift is coming to Minecraft in 2027
Minecraft Dungeons 2 is coming out on September 29th with the first new Minecraft dimension in 14 years: The Sift. But Microsoft has confirmed that you’ll also be able to check out the new realm in both the Java and Bedrock editions of Minecraft in 2027.
Richard Lawler
Bill Gates says regulate AI, because it’s powerful enough to cause a billion deaths.
NBC News released this clip from a Meet the Press interview with Gates that will air on Sunday, where he said, “No one thinks self-regulation is enough” around AI.
Saying that AI is “certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths,” he suggested, “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like… And that has to be a required thing. And it will be a little bit of overhead for the industry, but not a dramatic slowing of what they’re doing.” Everyone agrees someone should do it, but who, and how?
Sean Hollister
Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Microsoft Ink Canvas is an AI-powered digital sketchpad.
Microsoft is launching a new digital sketchpad app for Windows next month. Microsoft Ink Canvas will be available first on the new Surface Pro 12-inch, and other supported devices on October 13th. It supports sketching with pen or touch, and includes AI image generation and summaries. It’s essentially an AI-powered version of the various digital whiteboard apps Microsoft has created over the years.
Richard Lawler
State of Decay developer Undead Labs announces layoffs as it goes independent.
While Undead Labs is avoiding closing as Xbox’s assortment of developers continues to shrink, the studio announced on LinkedIn that “Unfortunately, today we are also saying goodbye to a significant number of our colleagues. It’s difficult to reach this moment knowing that not everyone who helped get us here gets to make the rest of the journey with us.”
Its blog post earlier said that State of Decay 3 development “remains actively underway,” targeting a 2027 release on Xbox, Game Pass, PC, and PlayStation.
Xbox is barely Xbox anymore
Andrew Webster
Tom Warren
Undead Labs has completed its separation from Xbox.
State of Decay 3 developer Undead Labs is now an independent employee-owned studio. It’s the third studio to successfully separate from Xbox, after Double Fine and Compulsion Games did the same recently. “Development of State of Decay 3 remains actively underway at Undead Labs,” says the team. The game is still planned to release in 2027 on Xbox (and Game Pass), PC, and PlayStation.
Sadly, it looks like Ninja Theory won’t be the fourth Xbox studio avoiding closure, though.
Undead Labs becomes Independent Studio
[State of Decay 3]
Tom Warren
Microsoft planning Xbox layoffs today.
Microsoft is due to announce another round of Xbox layoffs today, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The cuts will reportedly be part of a larger restructuring, with The Information reporting that Microsoft plans to “consolidate several of its game studios.” Today’s layoffs will reportedly affect hundreds of employees, and are part of the 3,200 Xbox layoffs that Microsoft is planning by the end of June 2027.
Stevie Bonifield
Microsoft patent application shows how it might start using in-game context to show ads.
A system for “contextually aware” ads described in the patent application could pause gameplay “at the operating system level” to show an ad when certain in-game events or triggers happen. For instance, players might get an ad break after a boss fight or when their avatar “is determined to be in a safe location, such as the user’s team base.”
Richard Lawler
A Microsoft exec called AI scraping ‘theft of unprecedented proportions.’
In court documents unredacted Thursday, lawyers for the NYT in its copyright infringement case against Microsoft and OpenAI cited Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, saying that “millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions… almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use.”
The Orlando Sentinel, which is also part of the suit, reports a Microsoft filing “framed Hecht as someone on the payroll to play a contrarian.”
Sean Hollister