Notepad | The Verge

Microsoft’s new Xbox chief starts making her mark

2026-04-16T09:21:54-04:00

Microsoft's new Xbox chief has had a busy couple of months after promising "the return of Xbox." Asha Sharma met with publishers at the Game Developers Conference in March, and has also been on the road visiting Microsoft's own game studios and product teams in recent weeks. Sharma, who used to work in Microsoft's CoreAI division, is very much in learning mode and talking to as many people as she can before she makes strategic decisions on the future of Xbox.

Some of those decisions are about to be made very soon.

Sources at Xbox tell me Sharma has been looking closely at Game Pass pricing recently, with a view to offering a wider range of …

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The MacBook Neo is the best thing to happen to Windows in years

2026-04-18T07:06:21-04:00

If there's one thing I know about Microsoft after covering the company for more than 20 years, it's that it will always respond to a competitive threat. Apple's MacBook Air convinced Microsoft and Intel to launch thin and light laptops with the Ultrabook initiative, the iPad pushed Microsoft to create its own tablet hardware, and the threat of Chromebooks saw Microsoft try to match the security and simplicity of ChromeOS with S mode versions of Windows.

A history of fast follows (and my own sources) tells me that Apple's $599 MacBook Neo announcement last month will force Microsoft to seriously improve Windows. A lot of changes are imminent …

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Inside Microsoft’s big Xbox leadership shake-up

2026-03-02T08:52:20-05:00

Asha Sharma named EVP and CEO, Microsoft Gaming. | Image: The Verge, Microsoft

Xbox fans had been anticipating the retirement of Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer for years, but what most hadn't expected was the departure of Xbox president Sarah Bond too. For many outside the company, Bond seemed like Spencer's natural successor, a deputy of sorts.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft CFO Amy Hood clearly didn't agree.

Instead of picking Bond for the role, Microsoft promoted Asha Sharma, a former Microsoft AI executive, to the top of Xbox. The decision to overlook Bond might have surprised many Xbox fans, but for the more than a dozen current and former Microsoft employees I've been speaking to, it's felt inev …

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Here’s what Xbox is working on for 2026

2026-02-08T08:13:02-05:00

Microsoft has a big year ahead for Xbox as it marks its 25-year milestone. After the tough decision to release more Xbox games on rival consoles two years ago, 2026 is a chance to refocus on the platform and celebrate some of Xbox's biggest franchises. It's also an opportunity for Microsoft to define its vision for the future of Xbox, after months of confusion from fans and plummeting Xbox hardware sales.

Xbox kicked off 2026 with its annual Developer Direct last month, a preview of some of the games it's publishing this year. Microsoft is lining up its "four horsemen" for 2026: Forza, Halo, Fable, and Gears of War. These franchises have be …

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Microsoft is working to rebuild trust in Windows

2026-02-01T12:21:41-05:00

Windows is in a weird spot. In its 40-year history, the operating system has weathered its fair share of missteps, but Windows 11 is testing the patience of its users in new ways. Persistent bugs, performance issues, intrusive prompts, ads, and bloatware have eroded the core Windows experience. Early system requirement decisions have also damaged trust among Microsoft's most loyal users, an erosion that's accelerated by the company's aggressive push into AI that doesn't always deliver on its promises.

Windows is at breaking point, and Microsoft knows it. Sources familiar with the company's plans tell me Windows engineers are now focusing on …

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Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft

2026-02-02T13:25:02-05:00

Developers have been comparing the strengths and weaknesses of Anthropic's Claude Code, Anysphere's Cursor, and Microsoft's GitHub Copilot for months now, looking for a winner. While no individual AI coding tool manages to be the best at every task that software developers do each day, Claude Code is increasingly coming out on top for its ease of use, both for developers and nontechnical users.

It seems like Microsoft agrees, as sources tell me the company is now encouraging thousands of its employees from some of its most prolific teams to pick up Claude Code and get coding, even if they're not developers.

Microsoft first started adopting …

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Microsoft is closing its employee library and cutting back on subscriptions

2026-01-16T10:02:54-05:00

Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. | Image: Getty Images

Microsoft's library of books is so heavy that it once caused a campus building to sink, according to an unproven legend among employees. Now those physical books, journals, and reports, and many of Microsoft's digital subscriptions to leading US newspapers, are disappearing in a shift described inside Microsoft as an "AI-powered learning experience."

Microsoft started cutting back on its employee subscriptions to news and reports services in November, with some publishers receiving an automated email cancellation of a contract. "This correspondence serves as official notification that Microsoft will not renew any existing contracts upon the …

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The PC market braces for an AI-driven storm

2026-01-08T09:52:03-05:00

The personal computer has remained surprisingly resilient to change over the past 15 years. Apple promised a "post-PC" era with the iPad in 2010 and failed to deliver one. Smartphones even overtook laptops as the most popular device to connect to the internet a decade ago, but millions of people still kept buying PCs every year. But this PC resiliency is going to be tested even further this year.

RAM and NAND / SSD prices have surged in recent months due to shortages created by AI data center demand. Some stores have had to sell memory like it's lobster, prebuilt PC costs have risen, and some assemblers are even selling PCs without RAM.

No …

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Microsoft is quietly walking back its diversity efforts

2025-12-04T14:27:37-05:00

Microsoft has been publishing data about the gender, race, and ethnic breakdown of its employees for more than a decade. Since 2019 it's been publishing a full diversity and inclusion report annually, and at the same time made reporting on diversity a requirement for employee performance reviews.

Now it's scrapping its diversity report and dropping diversity and inclusion as a companywide core priority for performance reviews, just months after President Donald Trump issued an executive order to try and eradicate workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Game File reported last week that Microsoft will cease publicati …

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How Microsoft’s developers are using AI

2025-11-27T08:52:56-05:00

Microsoft is pitching a future where AI controls everything on your PC and agents go and do work for you in the background. But before the company gets there, it has to build the tools to make these systems work and convince its own developers that AI is actually capable of achieving these big promises.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed earlier this year that up to 30 percent of the code of "some of our projects" is written by AI, and I've been eager to learn exactly how Microsoft's developers are using the technology ever since. I've been speaking to sources and company execs to get a better idea of how AI is being used by Microsoft dev …

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