2025 looks like a great year for Xbox

There’s a long-running joke in the Xbox community that Microsoft will finally hit its stride with Game Pass and the Xbox releases “next year.” The joke has been going around since 2018, when Microsoft… series big Studio acquisitions To create more Xbox games and make the game pass more attractive. Year after year, Xbox fans have been waiting for 12 months of new games, and it now looks like 2025 will be the “next year” everyone has been waiting for.

Annual Xbox Dively Direct Developer This week was nothing short of an excellent time, after a turbulent year for the platform in 2024. Microsoft kicked off the event with a promise that all the games shown off would be on Game Pass and, impressively, all of them would be on Xbox Play Anywhere. Can be purchased once and played on Xbox consoles and PC. Then she dropped big surprises: Ninja Gaiden 4 And lower shade of reformulation Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.

Published by Xbox Game Studios, Ninja Gaiden 4 It is the latest entry in a long-running franchise that has seen a lot of success on Xbox in the past. So it’s no surprise that Team Ninja also chose Microsoft to take on the Remaster of Ninja Gaiden II.

South of Midnight Finally, you’ve got a release date and a deeper dive into the gameplay and story as well. The game has a narrative that touches on Southern folklore, and the artwork is stunning. It’s heading to Game Pass on April 8 and will be joining this month Obscure and Obvious: Expedition 33 – Debut title from Sandfall Interactive. The turn-based RPG was developed by a team full of former Ubisoft developers. It features a host of voice acting talents and includes turn-based combat similar to Personality 5. Obscure and Obvious: Expedition 33 Launching on April 24.

Microsoft has wrapped up developer live with a deeper dive into ID software Agony: The Dark Ages. There is a Big focus on melee combat this time And a bunch of new UI sliders that let you adjust game speed or parry timing. It seems Agony: The Dark Ages It will have some unique gameplay that sets it apart from previous entries in death franchise, and I’m really looking forward to playing this on May 15th.

Three of the four games featured in the Developer Direct are also coming to PS5 (South of Midnight being the exception). It would have been interesting to see developers avoid verbally mentioning the PS5 during the Developer Live, but Microsoft was more than happy to include availability. Ninja Gaiden 4and Obscure and clear: Campaign 33, and Agony: The Dark Ages On PS5 at the end of each piece. It’s a refreshing change from when Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo pretended other platforms didn’t exist for cross-platform game announcements.

But Microsoft also highlighted its ecosystem advantage as it debuted cross-platform gaming. These titles will launch day one on Game Pass, Xbox Play Anywhere, and Xbox Cloud Games. This makes Xbox the most flexible way to purchase or subscribe to play these games because Microsoft offers cross-platforming, or cross-progression, and the ability to play them on PC or Xbox consoles or stream them to multiple other devices you own.

These three new games are now making a series full of Sbox Game Pass releases in the coming months. Obsidian advertiser It arrives on February 18, just weeks away Elite Snipers: The Resistanceand Eternal threadsand Sleeping citizen 2 Appears on day one in the game pass. Change It’s also supposed to debut on Game Pass in early 2025. This means there won’t be a month between now and June when subscribers don’t have something to look forward to, and that’s the first half of the year.

The Microsoft Summer Showcase will set the stage for the rest of the year and beyond. Ninja Gaiden 4 It’s coming in the fall, but Microsoft has also announced that Outer Worlds 2 and myth Are 2025 releases. It would also be interesting to see if Gears of War: E-Day It would make the 2025 release date which I heard Microsoft was planning for last year.

There could be some surprises on the way, too. In recent weeks, rumors have pointed to a recast Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I first heard about this Remaster last year, and at the time, Microsoft was targeting a tentative release in late spring or early summer 2025. I also hope we hear more about it Contraband or The revolution of the hour At the Xbox Summer Show.

If Microsoft can deliver the second half of 2025 as packed with games as it did at the end of 2024 with hits like… Indiana Jones and the Great Circleit looks like Xbox Game Pass is going to have its best year yet. If Microsoft somehow fails to deliver, then, Xbox fans say, there’s always next year.

Microsoft Executive Vice President of Business Development and Strategy and M12 Venture Fund, Chris Youngresigned from his role earlier this week, the company revealed in an SEC filing. While it seemed like a surprise announcement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella The pair had been discussing Young’s entrepreneurial interests and his “next game” over the past year, he said in an internal memo.

“During Chris’ tenure, he and the team have led hundreds of strategic partnerships across key sectors spanning AI and cybersecurity, while also advancing our opportunity in emerging areas such as autonomous transportation and digital biology – laying the foundation for our future growth.” Nadella.

Young will remain at Microsoft through the end of March to help transition the business development and M12 teams to Microsoft’s financial organization. John Teeterwho reports to Young and currently leads the business development team at Microsoft, holds “expanded remit for business development and M12 projects” and will report directly to the Microsoft CFO Amy Hood. “John is one of the people I work closely with on a daily basis (perhaps more than he would like!) because he and his team are behind our most significant deals and manage our most strategic AI partnerships,” says Nadella. .

In a separate email, Hood noted Young’s “special way” of providing direct feedback to Microsoft’s senior leadership team, with positive feedback and energy. “Even when we can be deep in Microsoft Speak, being able to always see our company and products through the eyes of our customers is something I deeply respect.”

• Microsoft’s Steam-like browser overlay is now available on Windows 11. After months of beta testing, Microsoft’s New in-game browser overlay on Windows 11 It was released this week. The Microsoft Edge Game Assist feature is a widget that appears in the game bar in Windows 11, like Valve’s Steam overlay browser. It’s also game aware, so it can detect which games you’re playing and offers tips and guides in a small side panel. It reminds me a lot of the Xbox One Snap Assist feature.
• BETA tests Xbox support massive amounts of external storage. If you need more than 16TB of external storage on your Xbox, maybe… Call of Duty Gaming, Microsoft has you covered. New software update It’s being tested with some Xbox insiders this week that supports dividing hard drives larger than 16TB into segments that can be used for game storage. You’ll still have to move Xbox Series S/X games to local storage or Xbox expansion cards, but if you really want to store more than 16TB of Xbox games, you’ll soon be able to.
• Microsoft opens testing for Windows AI research. If you have a Qualcomm-powered Copilot Plus PC, you can now choose to test New Windows search interface. It’s designed to make it easier to search for things in natural language, so “dog” instead of trying to find “img0071.jpg”. It uses local NPU to speed up searching, but it is limited to Windows settings and files in image and text formats at the moment. This is one way I would love to see AI impact windows to improve core tasks.
• Yes, there is an Excel World Championship. Twelve competitors faced off in the finals of the Hyperx Arena in Las Vegas last month Try To be the best spreadsheet in the world. I know this sounds like a joke, but it’s not. My colleague David Pearce did An excellent deep dive into the competitive world of Excel last year.
• Microsoft Openai makes AI computation available now. Microsoft says its relationship with Openai has “evolved” to the point the software giant wants it to No longer the exclusive provider From cloud infrastructure to Openai. We’ve already seen parts of this coming with Oracle deal last yearand now Microsoft will have the right of first refusal for additional compute capacity for Openai. Only one other thing has changed, so Microsoft is retaining exclusive rights to Openai’s Tech for use in Copilot and beyond and the ability for the Openai API to remain exclusive to Azure. The cutting-edge partnership comes hot on the heels of a joint venture between ARM, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and Openai to help build AI data centers. Stargate project You’ll see Openai and SoftBank start a $500 billion AI data center company, assuming they get the funding needed to make that a reality. Elon Musk seems to think so Stargate deal taken. Nadella was questioned about the financing this week. “All I know is I’m good for $80 billion,” he said. responseIn reference to Microsoft’s planned investments in Azure for AI in fiscal year 2025.
• Microsoft is rumored to launch Surface Pro and Surface Laptop soon. Although it looks like the Intel-powered versions of the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 are scheduled for next week, next week, Windows Central Reports Microsoft is also working on a smaller Surface Laptop. They’re rumored to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon
• Thesaurus may disappear from Microsoft Word. If you regularly look up synonyms within Word, you’re probably part of a group I was surprised to see Microsoft is about to remove thesaurus for the app. The method is rather removed on the web versions, however Microsoft warns Its smart search feature, which includes the Thesaurus function, was disappearing on January 1. I still see Thesaurus in desktop versions of Word, but I don’t know how long it will stay that way since it has already been removed in the web version. I’ve reached out to Microsoft to clarify what’s going on.
• Microsoft will automatically keep you signed in to your account starting in February. Microsoft is making some changes to the way you sign in to your Microsoft account next month. Starting in Februaryyou will remain signed to your Microsoft account automatically unless you log in or use a private browsing session. For most people, this is probably a good change, but people who use a public computer will need to be especially careful about logging out of their session. Microsoft began warning Outlook.com users about this earlier this month, and is rolling out the changes in February.
• The Microsoft Store in the UK is no longer available. Microsoft is Close the doors From the leading London retailer next month. Store Originally opened Just months before the Covid-19 pandemic began, Microsoft was quick to change it to an “Experience Center,” along with Retail stores closing in the United States in 2020. Makes me wonder how long the Experience Center will last in New York City.

Thank you for subscribing and reading until the end. I’ll be back to the regular batch on Thursday from Notepad Starting next week, after a busy period of GPU reviews.

If you’ve heard about any of Microsoft’s other secret projects, you can reach me via email at notepad@theverge.com Or talk to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, where I am tomwarren.01. I’m also Tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d prefer to chat there.