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Image: Meta

Meta has shut down its AI chatbots that let you have conversations with alter-ego versions of celebrities, as reported by The Information. The celebrity chatbots were a big part of Meta’s announcements at its Connect event last September, now, you can’t talk with them anymore.

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The shutdown follows Meta’s Monday rollout of AI Studio, a tool that lets creators in the US make AI chatbots of themselves. Based on a statement, the company seems to be favoring this direction rather than the more handcrafted celebrity bots.
“You can no longer interact with AI characters embodied by celebrities,” Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney says to The Verge. “We took a lot of learnings from building them and Meta AI to understand how people can use AIs to connect and create in unique ways. AI Studio is an evolution, creating a space for anyone including people, creators and celebrities to create their own AI.”
Meta’s initial list of chatbots included alternate personas for people like Charli D’Amelio (Coco, a “dance enthusiast”), Dwyane Wade (Victor, an “Ironman triathlete motivating you to be your best self”), and Paris Hilton (Amber, a “detective partner for solving whodunnits”). The company planned to add more, like chatbots based on Bear Grylls, Chloe Kim, and Josh Richards, but as pointed out by The Information, the company didn’t follow through. Meta paid some of the celebrities millions for their likenesses, The Information reported in October.
Even though these celebrity lookalike bots didn’t work out the way Meta may have hoped, the company sees a lot of promise for AI chatbots. CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about chatbots a lot with The Verge’s Alex Heath in an interview last year. The company has also integrated its Meta AI assistant into Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Image: Meta

Meta has shut down its AI chatbots that let you have conversations with alter-ego versions of celebrities, as reported by The Information. The celebrity chatbots were a big part of Meta’s announcements at its Connect event last September, now, you can’t talk with them anymore.

The shutdown follows Meta’s Monday rollout of AI Studio, a tool that lets creators in the US make AI chatbots of themselves. Based on a statement, the company seems to be favoring this direction rather than the more handcrafted celebrity bots.

“You can no longer interact with AI characters embodied by celebrities,” Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney says to The Verge. “We took a lot of learnings from building them and Meta AI to understand how people can use AIs to connect and create in unique ways. AI Studio is an evolution, creating a space for anyone including people, creators and celebrities to create their own AI.”

Meta’s initial list of chatbots included alternate personas for people like Charli D’Amelio (Coco, a “dance enthusiast”), Dwyane Wade (Victor, an “Ironman triathlete motivating you to be your best self”), and Paris Hilton (Amber, a “detective partner for solving whodunnits”). The company planned to add more, like chatbots based on Bear Grylls, Chloe Kim, and Josh Richards, but as pointed out by The Information, the company didn’t follow through. Meta paid some of the celebrities millions for their likenesses, The Information reported in October.

Even though these celebrity lookalike bots didn’t work out the way Meta may have hoped, the company sees a lot of promise for AI chatbots. CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about chatbots a lot with The Verge’s Alex Heath in an interview last year. The company has also integrated its Meta AI assistant into Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

AMD just announced its second quarter 2024 earnings today, and the highlight was this: nearly half the company’s sales are now data center products — not chips for personal computers, not game consoles, not embedded chips for industry or vehicles.
The company’s data center business has doubled in a single year, and this quarter’s growth was primarily due to a single chip: the AMD Instinct MI300 accelerator, which competes with Nvidia’s infamously influential H100 AI chip. The AMD chip just did over $1 billion in sales in a single quarter, according to CEO Lisa Su, up from its previous milestone of $1 billion cumulatively since its December 2023 debut. (AMD says its Epyc server CPUs also contributed.)

Image: AMD
AMD’s earnings by segment: clock that 115 percent rise in data center.

It looks like AMD is following a similar path to Nvidia itself, which has profited so phenomenally from the Nvidia H100 that it will now make new AI chips every year, accelerating all of its research and development to stay ahead, focusing its business on the product that’s so popular it can’t keep on shelves.
AMD, too, plans to release new AI chips every year: it has the MI325X coming in the fourth quarter of this year, the MI350 in 2025, and it plans to have the MI400 in 2026, the company reiterated today on its earnings call. Su said the MI350 should be “very competitive” with Nvidia’s Blackwell, which it revealed this March as “the world’s most powerful chip” for AI and recently began sampling to buyers.
As far as today’s MI300, Su says she’s still selling as many as AMD can make. Despite supply chain improvements, “supply will remain tight through 2025.”
Nvidia has a tremendous headstart over AMD, and despite doubling this year, AMD’s data center business is a tiny fraction of the size of Nvidia’s — $2.8 billion in a quarter vs. $22.6 billion in a quarter for Nvidia, which also just had record results in data center.
What does all this mean for PC gamers and others looking for new chips? It could be that the rising tide raises all boats — each new GPU architecture, funded by AI dollars, could be handed down for other tasks, yielding faster improvements than before. But in 2024, at least, the AI fervor seems to mean no new GPUs for gamers.
That said, AMD’s personal computing CPU and GPU businesses were up, not down, this past quarter. Ryzen CPUs were up 49 percent year over year and slightly up quarter over quarter, and while flagging PlayStation and Xbox sales made gaming revenue decline 59 percent, AMD said its Radeon 6000 GPUs actually increased sales year over year.
In case you’re wondering where all the AMD Zen 5 laptops are at, AMD says there are more than 100 different “platforms” on track to ship with its Ryzen AI 300 “Strix Point” chips. While I think we’ve only seen the Asus ones hit shelves so far, plus a single HP announcement and an MSI preview, Su confirmed that Acer and Lenovo will have them too.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

AMD just announced its second quarter 2024 earnings today, and the highlight was this: nearly half the company’s sales are now data center products — not chips for personal computers, not game consoles, not embedded chips for industry or vehicles.

The company’s data center business has doubled in a single year, and this quarter’s growth was primarily due to a single chip: the AMD Instinct MI300 accelerator, which competes with Nvidia’s infamously influential H100 AI chip. The AMD chip just did over $1 billion in sales in a single quarter, according to CEO Lisa Su, up from its previous milestone of $1 billion cumulatively since its December 2023 debut. (AMD says its Epyc server CPUs also contributed.)

Image: AMD
AMD’s earnings by segment: clock that 115 percent rise in data center.

It looks like AMD is following a similar path to Nvidia itself, which has profited so phenomenally from the Nvidia H100 that it will now make new AI chips every year, accelerating all of its research and development to stay ahead, focusing its business on the product that’s so popular it can’t keep on shelves.

AMD, too, plans to release new AI chips every year: it has the MI325X coming in the fourth quarter of this year, the MI350 in 2025, and it plans to have the MI400 in 2026, the company reiterated today on its earnings call. Su said the MI350 should be “very competitive” with Nvidia’s Blackwell, which it revealed this March as “the world’s most powerful chip” for AI and recently began sampling to buyers.

As far as today’s MI300, Su says she’s still selling as many as AMD can make. Despite supply chain improvements, “supply will remain tight through 2025.”

Nvidia has a tremendous headstart over AMD, and despite doubling this year, AMD’s data center business is a tiny fraction of the size of Nvidia’s — $2.8 billion in a quarter vs. $22.6 billion in a quarter for Nvidia, which also just had record results in data center.

What does all this mean for PC gamers and others looking for new chips? It could be that the rising tide raises all boats — each new GPU architecture, funded by AI dollars, could be handed down for other tasks, yielding faster improvements than before. But in 2024, at least, the AI fervor seems to mean no new GPUs for gamers.

That said, AMD’s personal computing CPU and GPU businesses were up, not down, this past quarter. Ryzen CPUs were up 49 percent year over year and slightly up quarter over quarter, and while flagging PlayStation and Xbox sales made gaming revenue decline 59 percent, AMD said its Radeon 6000 GPUs actually increased sales year over year.

In case you’re wondering where all the AMD Zen 5 laptops are at, AMD says there are more than 100 different “platforms” on track to ship with its Ryzen AI 300 “Strix Point” chips. While I think we’ve only seen the Asus ones hit shelves so far, plus a single HP announcement and an MSI preview, Su confirmed that Acer and Lenovo will have them too.

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There’s a custom case for this and everything. | Image: Samsung

Samsung’s advertising for its Galaxy Z Flip series typically revolves around Gen Z photo shoots and showing off specific features like interpreter mode. But today, the company has taken quite a turn by highlighting the foldable phone’s use as… a policing tool.
In a post on Samsung’s newsroom titled “Samsung Technology Is Helping Police Authorities Protect the Public’s Safety,” we learn that two police departments in Missouri participated in a pilot program that led them to integrate the Z Flip into their daily operations. “This included their use as a body-worn camera to promote transparency, marking the first time that police have used a foldable device in this way,” the article says. Eventually, two other departments joined in.

There are some differences between consumer Z Flip devices and those that the police have been using. Samsung worked with Visual Labs, “a leading body camera solution provider,” to customize the phones for law enforcement. This included “remapping the external volume button to start the body camera recordings in urgent situations.” Recordings can also be set to automatically begin when the phone detects a pursuit or, if used with a dashcam, whenever a vehicle’s emergency lights are activated. Video footage can immediately be uploaded to the cloud using Visual Labs’ software.
Here are other direct quotes from Samsung’s blog post:

“The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series’ works well as a body camera due to its compact and foldable form factor, allowing for easy attachment to police uniforms and outer carriers.”
“In their use as body-worn cameras, Galaxy Z Flip devices can help improve evidence gathering and transparency by clearly documenting details of arrests and other interactions.”
“The Galaxy Z Flip additionally functions as a digital camera needed for taking pictures of crime scene evidence; an audio recorder for witness interviews; and a personnel locator for tracking an officer’s location through GPS.”

You don’t often see smartphone makers hyping their products for this purpose.
Samsung says “the solutions are now being extended to 25 metro police departments across five states, furthering Samsung’s commitment to bringing tools that can boost success for even more police authorities in the US.” As for Visual Labs, it’s got a partnership with T-Mobile for providing Android smartphone bodycams to law enforcement.
Axon dominates the body-worn camera market in the United States, followed by Motorola and other companies. The cameras have been positioned as an important tool for accountability and transparency, though as ProPublica and The New York Times reported last year, that promise is often undermined by local policies that can slow or outright prevent the release of footage.

There’s a custom case for this and everything. | Image: Samsung

Samsung’s advertising for its Galaxy Z Flip series typically revolves around Gen Z photo shoots and showing off specific features like interpreter mode. But today, the company has taken quite a turn by highlighting the foldable phone’s use as… a policing tool.

In a post on Samsung’s newsroom titled “Samsung Technology Is Helping Police Authorities Protect the Public’s Safety,” we learn that two police departments in Missouri participated in a pilot program that led them to integrate the Z Flip into their daily operations. “This included their use as a body-worn camera to promote transparency, marking the first time that police have used a foldable device in this way,” the article says. Eventually, two other departments joined in.

There are some differences between consumer Z Flip devices and those that the police have been using. Samsung worked with Visual Labs, “a leading body camera solution provider,” to customize the phones for law enforcement. This included “remapping the external volume button to start the body camera recordings in urgent situations.” Recordings can also be set to automatically begin when the phone detects a pursuit or, if used with a dashcam, whenever a vehicle’s emergency lights are activated. Video footage can immediately be uploaded to the cloud using Visual Labs’ software.

Here are other direct quotes from Samsung’s blog post:

“The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip series’ works well as a body camera due to its compact and foldable form factor, allowing for easy attachment to police uniforms and outer carriers.”
“In their use as body-worn cameras, Galaxy Z Flip devices can help improve evidence gathering and transparency by clearly documenting details of arrests and other interactions.”
“The Galaxy Z Flip additionally functions as a digital camera needed for taking pictures of crime scene evidence; an audio recorder for witness interviews; and a personnel locator for tracking an officer’s location through GPS.”

You don’t often see smartphone makers hyping their products for this purpose.

Samsung says “the solutions are now being extended to 25 metro police departments across five states, furthering Samsung’s commitment to bringing tools that can boost success for even more police authorities in the US.” As for Visual Labs, it’s got a partnership with T-Mobile for providing Android smartphone bodycams to law enforcement.

Axon dominates the body-worn camera market in the United States, followed by Motorola and other companies. The cameras have been positioned as an important tool for accountability and transparency, though as ProPublica and The New York Times reported last year, that promise is often undermined by local policies that can slow or outright prevent the release of footage.

Read More 

Player data from a single match on Call of Duty: Warzone’s Caldera map. | Image: Activision

Activision is sharing an open-source dataset pulled from Call of Duty: Warzone’s Caldera map for researchers to study and to help support AI model training.
“This first-of-its-kind data set release for Call of Duty, now available in OpenUSD, contains the near-complete geometry of Caldera as well as a collection of randomly selected anonymized time samples showing how players move around the map,” Activision writes in a blog post.
According to Michael Vance, an Activision SVP and fellow software engineer, it’s one of “the largest production-validated open data set releases from the gaming industry in terms of complexity of geometry and instance counts.” It’s also one of the largest publicly available OpenUSD (a file format for 3D content creation with backing from Pixar and Apple, among others) data sets, period.

Image: Activision

A screenshot of the Calera dataset. The actual Caldera map was removed from Warzone in September 2023.

Activision also believes this dataset provides “excellent data” for AI training and the evolution of content generation techniques, according to CTO Natalya Tatarchuk. The video game industry, like many other industries, is exploring ways it can take advantage of generative AI despite concerns from game developers, and this data could be used to assist with those efforts.
If you want to check out Activision’s Caldera data for yourself, you can download it from GitHub.

Player data from a single match on Call of Duty: Warzone’s Caldera map. | Image: Activision

Activision is sharing an open-source dataset pulled from Call of Duty: Warzone’s Caldera map for researchers to study and to help support AI model training.

“This first-of-its-kind data set release for Call of Duty, now available in OpenUSD, contains the near-complete geometry of Caldera as well as a collection of randomly selected anonymized time samples showing how players move around the map,” Activision writes in a blog post.

According to Michael Vance, an Activision SVP and fellow software engineer, it’s one of “the largest production-validated open data set releases from the gaming industry in terms of complexity of geometry and instance counts.” It’s also one of the largest publicly available OpenUSD (a file format for 3D content creation with backing from Pixar and Apple, among others) data sets, period.

Image: Activision

A screenshot of the Calera dataset. The actual Caldera map was removed from Warzone in September 2023.

Activision also believes this dataset provides “excellent data” for AI training and the evolution of content generation techniques, according to CTO Natalya Tatarchuk. The video game industry, like many other industries, is exploring ways it can take advantage of generative AI despite concerns from game developers, and this data could be used to assist with those efforts.

If you want to check out Activision’s Caldera data for yourself, you can download it from GitHub.

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Image: Mojang Studios

Two of the bestselling games of all time are joining forces for some very strange downloadable content in Minecraft. It involves visiting the “Tetris universe” inside of the game… which has taught me that there is something called the Tetris universe. Notably, the new Minecraft DLC is a form of dungeon crawler that also involves playing Tetris to find lost Tetriminos, those falling blocks that come in an assortment of iconic shapes. (This also isn’t the first time the two games have crossed over, though the previous collab wasn’t quite so weird.)
I’m not sure I fully understand it, so here’s the synopsis from Mojang Studios:

It’s your job to find the Tetriminos and bring them back. So how do you do that? The grid of blocks remaining after your round of 2D Tetris transforms into a 3D dungeon layout hiding not only the missing Tetriminos, but plenty of surprises – some more welcome than others! Each time you play, you face a unique dungeon.
The Tetriminos you use, the paths you make, and even how many lines you clear result in new traps, loot, and surprises around every corner. Solve puzzles, scavenge for rewards, and fight monsters as you make your way to the top. There await new Tetriminos that will fill the next dungeon you generate with even more secrets.

With the DLC, you can also just straight-up play regular Tetris in Minecraft’s lobby, adding to the many, many ways to experience the classic block-falling puzzle game. The Minecraft x Tetris DLC is available now.

Image: Mojang Studios

Two of the bestselling games of all time are joining forces for some very strange downloadable content in Minecraft. It involves visiting the “Tetris universe” inside of the game… which has taught me that there is something called the Tetris universe. Notably, the new Minecraft DLC is a form of dungeon crawler that also involves playing Tetris to find lost Tetriminos, those falling blocks that come in an assortment of iconic shapes. (This also isn’t the first time the two games have crossed over, though the previous collab wasn’t quite so weird.)

I’m not sure I fully understand it, so here’s the synopsis from Mojang Studios:

It’s your job to find the Tetriminos and bring them back. So how do you do that? The grid of blocks remaining after your round of 2D Tetris transforms into a 3D dungeon layout hiding not only the missing Tetriminos, but plenty of surprises – some more welcome than others! Each time you play, you face a unique dungeon.

The Tetriminos you use, the paths you make, and even how many lines you clear result in new traps, loot, and surprises around every corner. Solve puzzles, scavenge for rewards, and fight monsters as you make your way to the top. There await new Tetriminos that will fill the next dungeon you generate with even more secrets.

With the DLC, you can also just straight-up play regular Tetris in Minecraft’s lobby, adding to the many, many ways to experience the classic block-falling puzzle game. The Minecraft x Tetris DLC is available now.

Read More 

The Verge

Microsoft just posted the fourth and final quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $64.7 billion in revenue and a net income of $22 billion during Q4. Revenue is up 15 percent, and net income has increased by 10 percent.
Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud revenues, which include the company’s server products and cloud services, were $28.5 billion overall and up 19 percent year over year. Revenues from this part of Microsoft’s business now make up nearly 45 percent of all revenue. While cloud revenue is strong once again, Microsoft’s consumer devices push continues to dip. Xbox hardware revenue is down again, and Surface revenue has now declined for seven consecutive quarters in a row.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Microsoft’s new Qualcomm-powered Surface devices.

Windows and Surface revenue
Windows OEM revenue, the price that manufacturers pay to license Windows for laptops and PCs, is up 4 percent year over year. Gartner said earlier this month that PC shipments had grown for three consecutive quarters, and that’s reflected in Microsoft’s Windows OEM growing in the same three quarters.
Microsoft also launched its new Copilot Plus PCs toward the end of fiscal Q4, with a variety of Qualcomm-powered devices available from June 18th onwards. Two new Surface devices, the Surface Laptop 7th Edition and Surface Pro 11th Edition, also launched in June. The full impact of sales on devices revenue won’t be felt until next quarter, though.
That means Surface revenue, or what Microsoft now calls devices revenue, has declined again this quarter by 11 percent. The last time Microsoft’s Surface revenue was up was in Q1 FY23, the quarter ended September 30th, 2022.
Microsoft switched up its hardware portfolio amid layoffs in early 2023, and the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 for businesses don’t seem to have had a big impact on revenues. All eyes are on next quarter to see if the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro launches have helped devices revenue recover at all.

Image: Microsoft
A white discless Xbox Series X is coming later this year.

Xbox and gaming
Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Xbox Game Pass, is up by 61 percent this quarter. Activision Blizzard revenues have once again contributed to the majority of revenue here, with 58 points of net impact. Without Activision Blizzard revenues, Xbox content and services revenue will still have been up 3 percent year over year.
Microsoft revealed in February that Xbox Game Pass has now grown to 34 million subscribers, including the Xbox Game Pass Core (previously Xbox Live Gold) members. Microsoft is planning to launch a new Xbox Game Pass Standard plan soon, which is designed to replace the Xbox Game Pass for Console offering for new subscribers.
Microsoft just launched last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on Xbox Game Pass, and it’s also planning to make Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the next installment in Activision’s popular franchise, available on Xbox Game Pass later this year.
Microsoft’s price hikes for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass don’t come into effect until September, with Game Pass Ultimate increasing to $19.99 a month — a $3 increase over the current $16.99 a month pricing. PC Game Pass is also moving up to $11.99 a month in September.
While there’s a lot of anticipation for new games on Xbox Game Pass, console sales are still struggling. Xbox hardware revenue is down a massive 42 percent this quarter. Microsoft is planning to launch a discless Xbox Series X console in white later this year, alongside a new Galaxy Black special edition Xbox Series X.
Microsoft has also been focusing on the message of “no Xbox required” for its cloud streaming efforts recently. Microsoft’s Xbox TV app recently arrived on some Amazon Fire TV devices, as Microsoft turns it attention away from just marketing console hardware.
Despite the poor Xbox hardware revenue, gaming revenue at Microsoft is up 44 percent overall, helped again by the additional Activision Blizzard revenue. In fact, that revenue added 48 points, so overall gaming revenue at Microsoft would have been down 4 percent if the company hadn’t acquired Activision Blizzard.

Image: Microsoft
Microsoft’s cloud businesses are doing well.

Microsoft’s cloud and Office revenues continue to grow, as expected. Office commercial products and cloud services revenue grew 12 percent, with Office 365 commercial revenue up 13 percent.
On the Office consumer side, revenue is up 3 percent year over year. Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers also grew by 10 percent, up to 82.5 million now. LinkedIn revenue also grew 10 percent this quarter.
Server products and cloud services revenue jumped by 21 percent this quarter, with Azure and other cloud services revenue up by 29 percent. Investors continue to hunt down any signs of revenue growth in AI from Microsoft. This quarter, eight points of the Azure and other cloud services revenue growth is down to AI services, up slightly from the contribution in the previous quarter.
Microsoft is now planning to hold an investor call at 5:30PM ET / 2:30PM PT. We’ll update this article with comments from CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood.

The Verge

Microsoft just posted the fourth and final quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $64.7 billion in revenue and a net income of $22 billion during Q4. Revenue is up 15 percent, and net income has increased by 10 percent.

Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud revenues, which include the company’s server products and cloud services, were $28.5 billion overall and up 19 percent year over year. Revenues from this part of Microsoft’s business now make up nearly 45 percent of all revenue. While cloud revenue is strong once again, Microsoft’s consumer devices push continues to dip. Xbox hardware revenue is down again, and Surface revenue has now declined for seven consecutive quarters in a row.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Microsoft’s new Qualcomm-powered Surface devices.

Windows and Surface revenue

Windows OEM revenue, the price that manufacturers pay to license Windows for laptops and PCs, is up 4 percent year over year. Gartner said earlier this month that PC shipments had grown for three consecutive quarters, and that’s reflected in Microsoft’s Windows OEM growing in the same three quarters.

Microsoft also launched its new Copilot Plus PCs toward the end of fiscal Q4, with a variety of Qualcomm-powered devices available from June 18th onwards. Two new Surface devices, the Surface Laptop 7th Edition and Surface Pro 11th Edition, also launched in June. The full impact of sales on devices revenue won’t be felt until next quarter, though.

That means Surface revenue, or what Microsoft now calls devices revenue, has declined again this quarter by 11 percent. The last time Microsoft’s Surface revenue was up was in Q1 FY23, the quarter ended September 30th, 2022.

Microsoft switched up its hardware portfolio amid layoffs in early 2023, and the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 for businesses don’t seem to have had a big impact on revenues. All eyes are on next quarter to see if the new Surface Laptop and Surface Pro launches have helped devices revenue recover at all.

Image: Microsoft
A white discless Xbox Series X is coming later this year.

Xbox and gaming

Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Xbox Game Pass, is up by 61 percent this quarter. Activision Blizzard revenues have once again contributed to the majority of revenue here, with 58 points of net impact. Without Activision Blizzard revenues, Xbox content and services revenue will still have been up 3 percent year over year.

Microsoft revealed in February that Xbox Game Pass has now grown to 34 million subscribers, including the Xbox Game Pass Core (previously Xbox Live Gold) members. Microsoft is planning to launch a new Xbox Game Pass Standard plan soon, which is designed to replace the Xbox Game Pass for Console offering for new subscribers.

Microsoft just launched last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on Xbox Game Pass, and it’s also planning to make Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the next installment in Activision’s popular franchise, available on Xbox Game Pass later this year.

Microsoft’s price hikes for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass don’t come into effect until September, with Game Pass Ultimate increasing to $19.99 a month — a $3 increase over the current $16.99 a month pricing. PC Game Pass is also moving up to $11.99 a month in September.

While there’s a lot of anticipation for new games on Xbox Game Pass, console sales are still struggling. Xbox hardware revenue is down a massive 42 percent this quarter. Microsoft is planning to launch a discless Xbox Series X console in white later this year, alongside a new Galaxy Black special edition Xbox Series X.

Microsoft has also been focusing on the message of “no Xbox required” for its cloud streaming efforts recently. Microsoft’s Xbox TV app recently arrived on some Amazon Fire TV devices, as Microsoft turns it attention away from just marketing console hardware.

Despite the poor Xbox hardware revenue, gaming revenue at Microsoft is up 44 percent overall, helped again by the additional Activision Blizzard revenue. In fact, that revenue added 48 points, so overall gaming revenue at Microsoft would have been down 4 percent if the company hadn’t acquired Activision Blizzard.

Image: Microsoft
Microsoft’s cloud businesses are doing well.

Microsoft’s cloud and Office revenues continue to grow, as expected. Office commercial products and cloud services revenue grew 12 percent, with Office 365 commercial revenue up 13 percent.

On the Office consumer side, revenue is up 3 percent year over year. Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers also grew by 10 percent, up to 82.5 million now. LinkedIn revenue also grew 10 percent this quarter.

Server products and cloud services revenue jumped by 21 percent this quarter, with Azure and other cloud services revenue up by 29 percent. Investors continue to hunt down any signs of revenue growth in AI from Microsoft. This quarter, eight points of the Azure and other cloud services revenue growth is down to AI services, up slightly from the contribution in the previous quarter.

Microsoft is now planning to hold an investor call at 5:30PM ET / 2:30PM PT. We’ll update this article with comments from CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon laptops had the summer all to themselves, but that’s coming to an end. AMD is now shipping its Ryzen AI chips — and Intel has just announced it’ll “launch” its next generation of Core Ultra laptop chips, codename Lunar Lake, on a September 3rd livestream. It sounds like they won’t be available quite that soon, but the full reveal should be just five weeks away.

As we’ve discussed, Lunar Lake is an utterly overhauled chip that ditches the entire idea of plugging swappable memory sticks into your laptop, not to mention several of Intel’s previous ideas about how to achieve the best battery life and performance — plus a tripled NPU if you happen to have generative AI applications you’d like to run locally.
But more importantly, it’s Intel’s laptop answer to Qualcomm and Apple’s Arm-based chips, which offer more battery life than we’ve typically seen from x86 chips like the ones Intel builds. We’re all waiting to see if Intel can deliver a compelling combination of performance, battery life, and features to keep Intel upright as Windows on Arm finally becomes a viable challenger.
We’re currently testing one of the first AMD Ryzen AI 9 laptops to see if “Strix Point” makes for a promising machine in this new climate, and Lunar Lake will be the final piece of this year’s chip war puzzle this fall.
But as usual for chipmakers, you shouldn’t necessarily expect “launch” to mean that Lunar Lake laptops will be available to purchase that day. (“More details to come on availability at the event” is the current vibe, says Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford.)
For now, all Intel is confirming is that it “will reveal details on the new processors’ breakthrough x86 power efficiency, exceptional core performance, massive leaps in graphics performance and the unmatched AI computing power that will drive this and future generations of Intel products.”

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon laptops had the summer all to themselves, but that’s coming to an end. AMD is now shipping its Ryzen AI chips — and Intel has just announced it’ll “launch” its next generation of Core Ultra laptop chips, codename Lunar Lake, on a September 3rd livestream. It sounds like they won’t be available quite that soon, but the full reveal should be just five weeks away.

As we’ve discussed, Lunar Lake is an utterly overhauled chip that ditches the entire idea of plugging swappable memory sticks into your laptop, not to mention several of Intel’s previous ideas about how to achieve the best battery life and performance — plus a tripled NPU if you happen to have generative AI applications you’d like to run locally.

But more importantly, it’s Intel’s laptop answer to Qualcomm and Apple’s Arm-based chips, which offer more battery life than we’ve typically seen from x86 chips like the ones Intel builds. We’re all waiting to see if Intel can deliver a compelling combination of performance, battery life, and features to keep Intel upright as Windows on Arm finally becomes a viable challenger.

We’re currently testing one of the first AMD Ryzen AI 9 laptops to see if “Strix Point” makes for a promising machine in this new climate, and Lunar Lake will be the final piece of this year’s chip war puzzle this fall.

But as usual for chipmakers, you shouldn’t necessarily expect “launch” to mean that Lunar Lake laptops will be available to purchase that day. (“More details to come on availability at the event” is the current vibe, says Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford.)

For now, all Intel is confirming is that it “will reveal details on the new processors’ breakthrough x86 power efficiency, exceptional core performance, massive leaps in graphics performance and the unmatched AI computing power that will drive this and future generations of Intel products.”

Read More 

Image: Android Headlines

The Pixel Watch 3 looks like it will have a larger screen than the Watch 2, thanks to thinner bezels. Leaked marketing materials shared by Android Headlines suggest that the 41mm Pixel Watch 3 will offer 10 percent more screen than the Watch 2 in the same amount of space.
The Pixel Watch 3 could also have a brighter display — up to 2,000 nits, double the peak brightness of the Pixel 2 — as well as 20 percent faster charging. The spec sheet, if legitimate, confirms the previously leaked 45mm Watch and states that both sizes will have up to 24 hours of battery life with always-on display enabled or up to 36 hours with a new Battery Saver mode.
This could mean that the Pixel Watch 3 won’t use the “hybrid interface” rolled out in Wear OS 4, which is supposed to increase battery life up to 100 hours of regular use. So far, only the OnePlus Watch 2 has this feature.

Image: Android Headlines

The marketing materials also mention new fitness features, including the ability to create custom runs as well as “audio and haptic cues” that tell you when to sprint, cool down, or maintain pace. Additionally, a new Fitbit “morning brief” will offer a summary of health and fitness metrics to help you plan your workouts. These new features may eventually come to older models of the Pixel Watch, something Google has done in the past.
Other changes revealed in the leak include support for offline Google Maps, as well as the ability to view your Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell’s live feeds from the Google Home app. It also looks like you’ll be able to easily swap between photo and video when controlling your Pixel phone’s camera app from the watch. A previous leak suggests the Pixel Watch 3 will get ultra wideband support for better location tracking, but the marketing materials don’t mention that.
With Google’s hardware event coming up on August 13th, we won’t have to wait much longer to see what’s coming with the Pixel Watch 3 and the heavily leaked Pixel 9 lineup.

Image: Android Headlines

The Pixel Watch 3 looks like it will have a larger screen than the Watch 2, thanks to thinner bezels. Leaked marketing materials shared by Android Headlines suggest that the 41mm Pixel Watch 3 will offer 10 percent more screen than the Watch 2 in the same amount of space.

The Pixel Watch 3 could also have a brighter display — up to 2,000 nits, double the peak brightness of the Pixel 2 — as well as 20 percent faster charging. The spec sheet, if legitimate, confirms the previously leaked 45mm Watch and states that both sizes will have up to 24 hours of battery life with always-on display enabled or up to 36 hours with a new Battery Saver mode.

This could mean that the Pixel Watch 3 won’t use the “hybrid interface” rolled out in Wear OS 4, which is supposed to increase battery life up to 100 hours of regular use. So far, only the OnePlus Watch 2 has this feature.

Image: Android Headlines

The marketing materials also mention new fitness features, including the ability to create custom runs as well as “audio and haptic cues” that tell you when to sprint, cool down, or maintain pace. Additionally, a new Fitbit “morning brief” will offer a summary of health and fitness metrics to help you plan your workouts. These new features may eventually come to older models of the Pixel Watch, something Google has done in the past.

Other changes revealed in the leak include support for offline Google Maps, as well as the ability to view your Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell’s live feeds from the Google Home app. It also looks like you’ll be able to easily swap between photo and video when controlling your Pixel phone’s camera app from the watch. A previous leak suggests the Pixel Watch 3 will get ultra wideband support for better location tracking, but the marketing materials don’t mention that.

With Google’s hardware event coming up on August 13th, we won’t have to wait much longer to see what’s coming with the Pixel Watch 3 and the heavily leaked Pixel 9 lineup.

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Image: Sega

For almost 20 years, Nintendo and Sega have released Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games to coincide with the international sporting event. But now, according to a report in Eurogamer, that tradition is at an end. In 2020, the IOC made the decision to not renew the game’s licensing deal, ending a run of games that’s covered most Summer and Winter Olympic Games since 2007.
“Basically the IOC wanted to bring [the licensing] back to themselves internally and look at other partners so they would get more money,” Lee Cocker, a developer who worked on the Mario & Sonic franchise, told Eurogamer.
Strangely though, those “other partners” are NFTs and esports — products that are not currently known for their money-making possibilities. To coincide with the Paris Games, the IOC, in collaboration with Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid studio nWay, has developed Olympics Go! Paris 2024, a mobile game featuring minigames based on Olympic events. According to the game’s website, players are able to claim an “officially licensed, commemorative Paris 2024 NFT Digital Pin.”
Esports at the Olympics isn’t a new concept. The IOC hosted several summits to determine how best to incorporate esports events with the Olympics in 2017 and 2018 — during the height of esports’ popularity (and financial viability). In 2021, the Olympics held its first medal event called the Olympic Virtual Series and featured games including baseball, sailing, cycling, and motorsports. In June, the IOC announced its creation of the Olympic Esports Games to coincide with the 2024 Paris Olympics, with the event held in 2025 and hosted by Saudi Arabia, now a popular, if controversial, esports destination.

Image: Sega

For almost 20 years, Nintendo and Sega have released Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games to coincide with the international sporting event. But now, according to a report in Eurogamer, that tradition is at an end. In 2020, the IOC made the decision to not renew the game’s licensing deal, ending a run of games that’s covered most Summer and Winter Olympic Games since 2007.

“Basically the IOC wanted to bring [the licensing] back to themselves internally and look at other partners so they would get more money,” Lee Cocker, a developer who worked on the Mario & Sonic franchise, told Eurogamer.

Strangely though, those “other partners” are NFTs and esports — products that are not currently known for their money-making possibilities. To coincide with the Paris Games, the IOC, in collaboration with Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid studio nWay, has developed Olympics Go! Paris 2024, a mobile game featuring minigames based on Olympic events. According to the game’s website, players are able to claim an “officially licensed, commemorative Paris 2024 NFT Digital Pin.”

Esports at the Olympics isn’t a new concept. The IOC hosted several summits to determine how best to incorporate esports events with the Olympics in 2017 and 2018 — during the height of esports’ popularity (and financial viability). In 2021, the Olympics held its first medal event called the Olympic Virtual Series and featured games including baseball, sailing, cycling, and motorsports. In June, the IOC announced its creation of the Olympic Esports Games to coincide with the 2024 Paris Olympics, with the event held in 2025 and hosted by Saudi Arabia, now a popular, if controversial, esports destination.

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Apple’s second-gen earbuds are down to $69.99, which is a price we’ve seen only a handful of times. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Amazon Prime Day brought discounts on a whole swath of Apple products, from iPads and AirTags to the latest 15-inch MacBook Air. We also saw deals across Apple’s entire earbuds lineup — including a terrific deal on the second-gen AirPods, which quickly sold out at Amazon. Luckily, if you missed it the first time around, Apple’s entry-level earbuds are once again on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for $69.99 ($60 off), effectively matching their lowest price to date.

Admittedly, Apple’s second-gen earbuds can’t rival the latest AirPods Pro with USB-C or even the third-gen AirPods, for that matter. However, the vanilla buds do offer excellent wireless performance and reliable battery life, allowing you to eke out five hours of music playback or 24 hours with the included Lightning charging case. They also boast hands-free Siri access, audio sharing, and the ability to quickly switch between Apple devices, making them a great budget pick if you’re tapped into Apple’s ecosystem and want a no-fuss pair of wireless earbuds. What you don’t get are more modern perks like active noise cancellation and multipoint pairing, but it’s hard to complain given their current price tag and great ease of use.

Read our AirPods (second-gen) review.

A few more deals and discounts

If you’re not turned off by black geometric wall art, Best Buy is selling Nanoleaf’s Shapes Ultra Black Triangles Smarter Kit for an all-time low of $175.99 ($44 off). The limited edition, nine-panel set functions as an all-black version of its Shapes Triangle panels, meaning the modular LED light bars can still display 16 million colors and work with Apple Home, Alexa, and Google Home. They can also play a host of clever lighting animations in case you prefer the look of a simulated waterfall over a simple color pattern.
Nothing’s newest pair of noise-canceling earbuds, the Nothing Ear, are down to $129 ($30 off) at Amazon when you clip the on-page coupon. They aren’t going to provide the kind of ecosystem tricks you’d get with a pair of Apple or Samsung earbuds, but they can certainly match them in terms of sound. What’s more, the earbuds offer wireless charging, IP54 dust and water resistance, multipoint connectivity, and ChatGPT integration (if you’re using a Nothing phone), which is a lot for the price. Read our initial impressions.
The PlayStation 5 “slim” is on sale at Amazon for $449 ($50 off) while its digital-only counterpart is down to $399 ($50 off) at Walmart, which is an all-time low in both instances. Sony’s midcycle refresh is slightly smaller than the original model released in 2020, yet despite the sleeker build, it can tackle all the same games at the same 4K graphical fidelity. Plus, both the standard configuration and the Digitial Edition come with 1TB of built-in storage (up from 825GB on the OG model). Read our hands-on impressions.

Apple’s second-gen earbuds are down to $69.99, which is a price we’ve seen only a handful of times. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Amazon Prime Day brought discounts on a whole swath of Apple products, from iPads and AirTags to the latest 15-inch MacBook Air. We also saw deals across Apple’s entire earbuds lineup — including a terrific deal on the second-gen AirPods, which quickly sold out at Amazon. Luckily, if you missed it the first time around, Apple’s entry-level earbuds are once again on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for $69.99 ($60 off), effectively matching their lowest price to date.

Admittedly, Apple’s second-gen earbuds can’t rival the latest AirPods Pro with USB-C or even the third-gen AirPods, for that matter. However, the vanilla buds do offer excellent wireless performance and reliable battery life, allowing you to eke out five hours of music playback or 24 hours with the included Lightning charging case. They also boast hands-free Siri access, audio sharing, and the ability to quickly switch between Apple devices, making them a great budget pick if you’re tapped into Apple’s ecosystem and want a no-fuss pair of wireless earbuds. What you don’t get are more modern perks like active noise cancellation and multipoint pairing, but it’s hard to complain given their current price tag and great ease of use.

Read our AirPods (second-gen) review.

A few more deals and discounts

If you’re not turned off by black geometric wall art, Best Buy is selling Nanoleaf’s Shapes Ultra Black Triangles Smarter Kit for an all-time low of $175.99 ($44 off). The limited edition, nine-panel set functions as an all-black version of its Shapes Triangle panels, meaning the modular LED light bars can still display 16 million colors and work with Apple Home, Alexa, and Google Home. They can also play a host of clever lighting animations in case you prefer the look of a simulated waterfall over a simple color pattern.
Nothing’s newest pair of noise-canceling earbuds, the Nothing Ear, are down to $129 ($30 off) at Amazon when you clip the on-page coupon. They aren’t going to provide the kind of ecosystem tricks you’d get with a pair of Apple or Samsung earbuds, but they can certainly match them in terms of sound. What’s more, the earbuds offer wireless charging, IP54 dust and water resistance, multipoint connectivity, and ChatGPT integration (if you’re using a Nothing phone), which is a lot for the price. Read our initial impressions.
The PlayStation 5 “slim” is on sale at Amazon for $449 ($50 off) while its digital-only counterpart is down to $399 ($50 off) at Walmart, which is an all-time low in both instances. Sony’s midcycle refresh is slightly smaller than the original model released in 2020, yet despite the sleeker build, it can tackle all the same games at the same 4K graphical fidelity. Plus, both the standard configuration and the Digitial Edition come with 1TB of built-in storage (up from 825GB on the OG model). Read our hands-on impressions.

Read More