Month: January 2024

Microsoft Cloud drew in $33.7 billion in revenue last quarter as the company moves from “talking about AI” to “applying AI.”

The global push towards greater AI acceptance has seen a big move towards cloud computing, with the knock-on effect of making Microsoft’s latets financial results very positive.

An 18% increase saw the company’s overall revenue climb to $62 billion in the three months that ended December 31 2023 – jmore than both Microsoft and analysts had expected.

A large part of the company’s success has been attributed to the $33.7 billion revenue posted by Microsoft Cloud, marking a 24% year-on-year increase. Last quarter, Microsoft Cloud accounted for more than half of the company’s entire revenue.

Microsoft Cloud continues to grow

In the three months prior, Microsoft Cloud revenue sat at $31.8 billion, marking an increase of nearly $2 billion in the space of one quarter. In previous quarters, it was $30.3 billion, $28.5 billion, $27.1 billion, and $25.7 billion, illustrating a steady and continued growth for the business. 

Microsoft Cloud revenue has grown by around $6.6 billion since the company confirmed that it would invest an undisclosed multibillion-dollar amount into OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT and the one that lays the foundation for many of the generative AI solutions now available through Microsoft.

CEO Satya Nadella summarized the company’s progress in this area: “We’ve moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale.”

Nadella added: “By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we’re winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains across every sector.”

Moreover, Azure and other cloud services saw a considerable 30% increase in revenue, while Office Consumer products and cloud services saw the smallest growth of all areas, at 5%. Revenue pulled in by Devices dropped by an alarming 9%.

Looking ahead, it’s clear that Microsoft hedges its bets more on business cloud services, and the future of generative AI for the company looks to be extensive.

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Destiny 2 game director Joe Blackburn has announced he will be leaving Bungie next month.

Destiny 2 game director Joe Blackburn has announced he will be leaving Bungie next month. 

In a thread posted on January 30 to Twitter (now known as X), Blackburn shared that next month, at the start of major testing for the upcoming Destiny 2 expansion The Final Shape, he will be stepping away from the role.

“Next month, The Final Shape will be hitting one of its most critical internal milestones: a ritual we call the End-to-End playtest,” Blackburn wrote, adding that it’s been a “ritual” since Forsaken. He noted that he’s already been able to play “100s of hours” of The Final Shape, and that what the team has created has “quickly become of the things I’m most proud to have worked on throughout my career.”

He continued: “This ritual [playtest] will be especially meaningful to me personally, as it will also serve as a moment to pass the torch of Destiny 2 game director to the next era of leadership as I head on a new adventure outside the walls of Bungie.”

Blackburn then stated that Tyson Green, a long-time designer on Destiny 2, will takeover the position of game director when the playtest begins next month. He said: “If you’ve followed Bungie for any length of time, you’ve heard his name. From Halo PvP to the creation of Exotic weapons in D1 [Destiny], Tyson has been a critical part of Bungie’s legacy since Myth 2.”

The Final Shape is scheduled to release on June 4, 2024, and Blackburn says that he has “some time before I pass the torch,” but players should expect him to be playing the game alongside them in the future.

In other news, Bungie just announced a brand-new Destiny 2 and Mass Effect collaboration event set for February 13 which will feature Mass Effect-inspired cosmetics and in-game skins for players to purchase, along with a free Alliance Requisitions Bundle.

Here’s our list of the best FPS games if you’re looking for something new to play, as well as our picks for the best multiplayer games. 

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Circle to Search on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is the best way to make sense of generative AI.

Artificial intelligence, aka AI, has been around in smartphones for a good few years, in features ranging from clever ways to get the most out of your photos to smartly transcribing voice recordings. But recently we’ve moved from the idea of AI doing the heavy lifting of tedious tasks to generative AI, whereby machine learning algorithms can actually make new stuff or serve up fresh information based on user prompts. 

Both the Samsung Galaxy S24 series and new Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro phones come with generative AI features. These have been focused on photo editing and live translations; the letter I turn my nose up at a little, preferring to try and get the best shot first time than editing to perfection – heck, I’m not even a fan of filters in the likes of Instagram – and I’ve not felt the need yet to stick my phone near someone’s mouth in order to get their speech translated, though that’s more a perk of English being one of the most widely spoken languages. 

So while I think AI features are cool, I’ve not really been motivated by them. That was until I tried Circle to Search, created by Samaung and Google, on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

By simply holding the home button, you can activate an overlay that lets you circle – using a fingertip, or ideally an S Pen for the purposes of precision – objects or people on the screen. This highlights them for AI-powered search, which works to identify what’s been circled and serve up search results that should encapsulate the circled subject, or at least be related to it. 

For example, you could fire up Circle to Search, circle a photo of someone’s shoes, and then hope the AI could serve up results that show you what shoes they are, or the brand of footwear at a minimum. 

As you’ll see in the TikTok video below, I put Circle to Search to the test – and I was rather impressed. It didn’t really slip up, serving me solid results for a selection of circled objects. 

@techradar

♬ Trendsetter – Connor Price & Haviah Mighty

Moving on to one Becky Scarrott, TechRadar’s resident audio expert, it served up results showing the dress she was wearing, or dresses of a similar design and pattern. What it didn’t do is recognize Ms Scarrott, who is a star of the stage as well as of these hallowed web pages. But that’s more a privacy thing than a failure of the AI tech; Samsung and Google clearly don’t want Circle to Search to be used as some form of AI-powered stalking tool. 

While identifying what’s in an image or on a screen has been possible via the somewhat under-appreciated Google Lens features, Circle to Search is a step forward in AI tool evolution, and is not only more precise to use, but spits out better results, at least in my testing. 

It also feels like a genuinely useful AI tool. While I’m sure there are plenty of tech-centric pseudo creative types using AI to make artwork for various things, or using the likes of ChatGPT to produce wedding speeches or other ‘content’, I’d much rather the media I consume, virtual of physical, comes from a human, as I still don’t think AI can master the human touch provided by a thoughtful article or an expressive painting. 

But Circle to Search is a very practical AI-based feature that’s easy to use and serves up effective information. It’s also available on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Plus, and will be coming to Pixel phones as well, meaning you don’t have to fork out a wad of cash for the expensive S24 Ultra (though take a look at our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review to get an idea of why it may be worth it). 

My hope is that we’ll see more generative AI tools come to the fore, where they help the average person rather than just being used by so-called ‘tech bros’ to trim human workforces. Maybe I’m being an optimist here; but either way, Circle to Search feels like a mini marvel, and something properly interesting and practical for the smartphone world to embrace. 

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Avowed director Carrie Patel has explained that the open-zone format allows Obsidian’s RPG to have “more intentionality.”

Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming fantasy role-playing game Avowed is set to release later this year, and its director Carrie Patel has spoken more about what players can expect from the experience. 

In a new interview with PCGamesN, Patel admitted that it’s “hard in 2024 to escape some comparison to Skyrim if you’re making a first-person fantasy action RPG,” but clarified that Avowed is more comparable in its scope and world structure to Obsidian’s 2019 RPG, The Outer Worlds.

“For us, it’s about having a more focused experience, something that feels a little more curated. We can be a little more intentional,” she explained.

It was previously confirmed that Avowed isn’t going to be an open-world game, but instead be made of several open zones that are size comparable to The Outer Worlds’ larger areas. Speaking about this in the interview, Patel added that the zones “are definitely not small but certainly more constrained than a massive map that you can walk from, beginning to end, in several hours.” However, this allows the developers “to have a little more intentionality” in what they create. 

“I think there’s an appetite for games that are big sprawling RPGs with a ton of openness, but also games that are more curated, but also still maintain these elements of choice, character building, and progression,” Patel said. “I’ve been excited to see what we can do as a studio in mixing up those elements.”

During this month’s Xbox Developer_Direct, it was confirmed that Avowed is planned to release on PC and Xbox Series X|S at some point this fall, although no specific release month was announced at the time. However, whenever it is, Avowed will be playable via Xbox Game Pass on day one.

Avowed is arguably one of the most exciting upcoming games this year, but if you’re looking for something new to play right now, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best Xbox Series X games.

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