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Microsoft Hints at WinUI 3 Overhaul for Windows 11's Leftover Legacy Dialogs

Marcus Ash, Microsoft's design and research lead for Windows and Devices, has hinted that more of Windows 11's old dialogs and admin tools could get a modern makeover. Under Jen Gentleman's post about the new option to silence the Sticky Keys prompt, a user asked Microsoft to "winui-fy" the legacy Win32 dialogs and MMC apps, and to fully move Control Panel into Settings. Ash replied with a short "Noted and working on that too." He didn't give a timeline or name any tools, so it's more like a nod than a roadmap.

There's plenty to work with, as Windows 11 still ships more than 20 tools with older interfaces, including Defragment and Optimize Drives, Disk Cleanup, Device Manager, Event Viewer, and the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Folder Options and the Sticky Keys prompt still have no dark mode, and some links in Settings, such as the extra sound and mouse options, open the old Control Panel windows. Microsoft's recent dark mode update for Hyper-V Manager, another legacy tool, also came out incomplete.

GTA 6 Comes to Xbox One at Launch via Cloud Gaming, PC Players Out of Luck

Xbox One owners will be able to play GTA 6 when it launches on November 19, while PC players still have no official way in. In its pre-load announcement, which also confirmed a 30 FPS target on consoles, Rockstar says the game will be available through Xbox Cloud Gaming on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles, using Xbox Series S graphics settings. Xbox says streaming opens at 1 AM ET on launch day, and the game still has to be bought separately. Rockstar also warns that connection speed and other technical factors may affect performance in ways that local play would not.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma framed the news as the start of a much bigger deal with Rockstar's parent company. In a post on X, she called the Xbox One cloud launch the first step of a new 10-year strategic partnership with Take-Two, adding that GTA 6 is already the most pre-ordered game ever on the Microsoft Store. Neither company has shared the terms of that partnership so far. Xbox did confirm that GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and more Rockstar titles will join Xbox Cloud Gaming in the coming months. Back in October, Sharma reportedly told staff at an internal town hall that Xbox had something planned around GTA 6 that "no other platform holder is doing," which led to reports of exclusive streaming rights. Xbox CSO Matthew Ball shot those down shortly after, saying the game "will not be streaming exclusively or to PC."

Microsoft Developer Builds a GPU Task Manager to Show Which Apps Are Eating Your VRAM

Anyone wondering what is filling up their GPU's VRAM can now try gputaskman, a free, open-source tool from Microsoft VP Scott Hanselman. It runs in a terminal window with an htop-style layout and lists every process using the GPU with its memory footprint, engine activity, and loaded runtime, such as CUDA or Vulkan. A panel up top tracks utilization, clocks, temperature, and power. Hanselman shared the project on X last week and asked for pull requests.

Task Manager has shown GPU usage since 2017, and it will happily tell you that 15 GB of video memory is in use. It just won't say what is using it. gputaskman goes after that gap with a heavy focus on local AI. Its model inspector can identify the LLM a process has loaded and report its quantization, weights, and estimated KV cache cost, while Ollama and LM Studio users also get context size and proper model names. Hanselman calls it early, experimental software, and the AI breakdowns are estimates for now.

KORA Introduces AI-Focused Operating System with Local AI and Agentic Workspaces

There is a new player in the operating systems arena from KORA Systems Inc. Called KORA, this operating system is the first bottom-up OS designed specifically for AI PCs, enabling agentic workflows. It is one of the first concepts where a system is so heavily customized that AI workflows are native to it. The company developed this customized operating system on top of NixOS, using it as a foundational layer.

The customization includes the development of what are called neural workspaces and file systems, which replace traditional folders and desktop apps. While these traditional elements are still present, the workflow on KORA OS is organized around intent, context, and memory. Each workspace is divided based on user intent, and the OS manages the files accordingly. Security is robust, as KORA implements each workspace within a secured sandbox for applications and agents, with separate permissions. The memory and context of the workflow remain on the user's desktop, never leaving the machine. Features like semantic search and email are natively integrated, allowing you to search across your entire OS or email to find what you need.

Microsoft Patent Describes Paying PC Owners to Train AI on Idle GPUs

Gaming PCs sitting idle could one day earn their owners credits, or even cash, by training AI models, at least if a newly published Microsoft patent application ever becomes a product. Titled "Opportunistic Micro-training on Edge Devices Using Spare GPU Utilization," the filing US-20260349820-A1 from Microsoft Technology Licensing was submitted in April 2025 and made public on November 5. It describes chopping large training jobs into small micro-tasks sized to what each device can handle, then sending them to phones, laptops, and gaming PCs whenever they have spare capacity. Owners would have to explicitly opt in, after which the system could track the work done and apply credits to their account, redeemable for free software, access to the trained model, or money.

To stay out of the way, the system watches GPU and CPU load, memory use, temperature and power draw, and checks less often when the GPU is busy or hot. Apparently, tasks can be paused or stopped when limits are crossed, and results get cross-checked across devices to catch faulty or tampered work. The filing doesn't give a payout rate or list supported hardware, and Microsoft hasn't announced a Windows or Xbox service, so it's impossible to say whether the rewards would cover the extra electricity. Of course, this is only an application for now, and plenty of those never turn into products.

8BitDo Launches Ultimate 3C+ Wired Controller for XBOX and PC

8BitDo has officially announced the Ultimate 3C+ Wired controller for Xbox as a $39.99 Xbox controller that incorporates many of the same features as the Ultimate 3C+ Wireless launched in October, but at a much lower price. The 3C+ Wired controller has a traditional Xbox layout on both the face buttons and the offset analog sticks, but it features additional customization options that set it apart from a regular Xbox controller.

The headline features of the Ultimate 3C+ Wired controller include TMR joysticks with adjustable tension, which are supposed to resist joystick drift; remappable fast-trigger L4 and R4 buttons for additional inputs and faster trigger response times; Hall effect triggers with switchable dual-mode functionality; and a 3.5 mm audio jack at the bottom of the controller for more immersive sound. It also has two additional back paddles with an integrated paddle lock to prevent accidental activations.

Windows 11 Will Finally Let You Silence the Sticky Keys Prompt for Good

Pressing Shift five times in a row might soon stop summoning the Sticky Keys prompt on Windows 11. Microsoft is updating the dialogs that ask whether you want to turn on Sticky Keys or Filter Keys, adding a way to tell Windows not to ask again directly from the prompt. The change shows up in the release notes for Beta build 26320.9876 and Experimental build 26340.9882, both released to Windows Insiders on November 6. Right now, getting rid of the prompt for good means going into Settings > Accessibility > Keyboard and turning off the keyboard shortcut for each feature. The same Beta build also moves the channel to Windows 11 26H2 and brings Microsoft's rebuilt Windows Search.

This is a small tweak, though it fixes a long-running annoyance for gamers. Plenty of games use Shift to sprint or crouch, which makes it easy to trigger the Sticky Keys shortcut by accident, and the prompt can pull players out of full-screen games. Filter Keys has a similar shortcut that kicks in when the right Shift key is held down for eight seconds. Microsoft's notes don't mention games at all, saying only that it should mean fewer interruptions for people who don't use these features. It looks like another quality-of-life fix from Microsoft's internal push to clean up Windows 11. There's no word on when the updated prompts will reach regular Windows 11 PCs, and Microsoft notes that features in Insider builds may not always ship, so it's reasonable to expect a wait of at least a few weeks.

AMD Confirms Excessive SSD Writes in Radeon Drivers, Fix Coming with Adrenalin 26.11.1

AMD has confirmed that the current versions of Radeon drivers, Adrenalin 26.10.1 and Adrenalin 26.10.2, are experiencing an issue that causes excessive SSD writing. This problem results in the SSD writing dozens of gigabytes of data unnecessarily. The culprit appears to be AMD's External Events Client Module, which runs under the name atieclxx.exe on Windows systems. This module is causing some users' system drives to be constantly busy with writes. Reports indicate that the write rate ranges from 0.3 MB/s to 1.5 MB/s, with one Reddit user reporting sustained activity at 5 MB/s. The process is part of AMD's External Events Utility, which manages tasks such as detecting monitors and responding to Radeon software hotkeys. Unfortunately, it has entered an infinite loop of data writing.

While this may seem like a small amount, it's important to remember that systems can run for extended periods, and the writing can accumulate over time, potentially leading to SSD wear and tear. SSD lifespan largely depends on its ability to endure constant random writes, and forcing random writes onto an SSD will undoubtedly shorten its lifecycle. This is particularly concerning given the high cost of NAND Flash, as users are operating expensive SSDs that could undergo unnecessary wear. In response, AMD plans to release an update to its Adrenalin drivers with version 26.11.1, which will address this issue.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake Gets a Native PC Port Through Static Recompilation

A GitHub developer going by tangerineturtle1 has released NX2navi, a native Windows port of the new Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake built through static recompilation. Rather than emulating Switch 2 hardware, it converts the game into x86-64 code before you play, then draws everything through a custom Vulkan renderer. No game files are included, so players need their own dump of version 1.1.1, and the launcher then builds the game locally, which takes 10 to 25 minutes the first time. RTX owners get DLSS, while FSR 3.1 and its frame generation work on any GPU, and HDR is supported too. Resolution goes beyond 1440p to 5K, frame rate can be uncapped or set as high as 240 FPS (60 FPS is the default), and 21:9 or 32:9 ultrawide screens are supported with the HUD kept at 16:9.

The remake only launched last week, and it was already running through an emulator on launch day, albeit poorly. NX2navi is much further along, but it is still labeled early development. Visual bugs, the occasional crash and brief stutters when entering new areas are listed as known issues. It also needs 16 GB of RAM, about 30 GB of storage and a GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and mesh shader support. An earlier showcase on an RTX 5090 reportedly used 18.6 GB of VRAM, though a newer showcase claims memory use is way down.

Maxsun Readies Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake MoDT NAS Motherboards for November

Maxsun has shared full specifications for the SK-PTLNAS and SK-WCLAIO, two NAS-focused MoDT (Mobile on Desktop) motherboards built around Intel's Panther Lake and Wildcat Lake chips. Both were first shown at Computex 2026 and are expected to launch this month, though pricing is still unknown. The SK-PTLNAS now tops out at the Core Ultra 9 386H, a 16-core chip with four Xe3 GPU cores, a 25 W base power and up to 80 W of turbo power. The Computex listing mentioned options up to the Core Ultra X9 388H, which no longer seems to be on the table. It supports up to 128 GB of DDR5-7200 memory across two SO-DIMM slots, with five M.2 slots and three Mini SAS ports for storage. The board also gets a PCIe 5.0 x8 slot, 10GbE, 2.5GbE and two 1GbE ports, plus two Thunderbolt 4 ports. Maxsun lists Windows 11 and Ubuntu support.

The SK-WCLAIO measures just 90 x 165 mm, a big change from the mATX design shown in June. It runs the six-core Core 7 350 (2P + 4LPE) with two Xe3 cores, a single DDR5-6400 SO-DIMM slot for up to 48 GB, 1 TB of onboard UFS 3.1 storage and four M.2 slots. Wildcat Lake has very few PCIe lanes, so those drives probably won't each get full x4 bandwidth. Maxsun rates the system at 45 W when active and 16 W with drives on standby, which should suit an always-on home NAS. The power input is a bit unclear for now, since the listing mentions both a 12 V DC jack and USB-C PD.

GOG Announces New Galaxy Launcher for Linux in 2027 With Faster Launching for macOS and Windows Also Coming

GOG has long since confirmed that it was working on a Galaxy game launcher for Linux, but it has officially just previewed the updated GOG Galaxy launcher in a new announcement on X. According to the post, not only has GOG Galaxy received a proper Linux version for the first time ever, the macOS and Windows versions have also been updated with a new UI, faster loading, and new library management tools. The new launcher has yet to be made available to the public, even in testing, but the announcement video showed off the new game launcher's UI and announced a 2027 launch window.
GOG.com on XGOG GALAXY is officially heading to Linux. At the same time, we've reworked the client on Windows and Mac to be simpler, run faster, and give you cleaner ways to view your library. Most importantly, our core promise stays untouched: GOG GALAXY is entirely optional. Your games are yours to download and keep through offline installers, exactly as they've always been.

Discord Is Rebuilding Its App in Rust, Early Build Uses Just 290 MB of RAM

Discord is rewriting its desktop app in Rust and dropping Electron, and the early numbers look very promising. Discord CTO and co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy posted a Task Manager screenshot on X showing the new client, listed as "Discord Phoenix," using just 290.2 MB of RAM. In the same screenshot, Steam's WebHelper sits at 856 MB and Battle.net at 344 MB. That's a big drop, as Discord said late last year that its current Windows client normally stays under 1 GB, and it even tested auto-restarting the app once it crossed 4 GB. Vishnevskiy also shared a side-by-side clip on two laptops showing the new client booting much faster, adding that clicking around "feels instant."

Mobile is getting the same treatment. According to Vishnevskiy, Discord is dropping React Native as well, so the mobile apps will keep their native interface while sharing app code with the desktop client through Rust. The new client is built on GPUI, the Rust UI framework from the team behind the Zed code editor, rather than Tauri as many had guessed. There's no release date yet, and Discord only says it hopes to get it into testing with users soon.

ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX VBIOS Update Bricks Some Cards

When ASRock joined the group of AIBs patching Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX GPUs late last month, everything seemed fine for a few days. However, multiple users are now reporting that their ASRock GPUs have been bricked after updating the firmware with the latest VBIOS. ASRock has released VBIOS updates for ten of its Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards, joining Sapphire and GIGABYTE. The new firmware, version 1.0.5, was made available on ASRock's support pages on October 29 and includes updates for the RX 7600 XT Challenger and Steel Legend, RX 7700 XT Challenger, RX 7800 XT Challenger and Steel Legend, RX 7900 XT Phantom Gaming (including the White version), and the RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming and Taichi, along with the Taichi White.

However, several users have reported that VBIOS version 1.0.5 bricked their cards. The issue occurs when users start the ASRVBFlash 1.0.5 utility; Windows begins its reboot sequence, and the system then fails to boot. A solution to this problem appears to be reinstalling an older VBIOS, which some users have downloaded from TechPowerUp's VBIOS hosting. This can help if your PC is bricked by any VBIOS update, and you need to find an older version to flash.

AMD Brings FSR Upscaling 4.1.2 to Xbox Consoles

Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles are finally getting machine learning-based upscaling technology with the latest FSR Upscaling 4.1.2. Microsoft's Game Development Kit (GDK) now officially includes FSR Upscaling 4.1.2 in two models. One is the full-scale upscaling model based on the INT8 data type, and the other is a new and efficient Lite INT8 model. Both models are compatible with both consoles, but the key point is that game developers have the flexibility to choose which model to implement. Depending on the demands of a game, the appropriate model can be applied to achieve optimal upscaling performance.

For Xbox handheld devices, the AMD FSR SDK 2.4 adds FSR Upscaling support for the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and Ryzen Z2 A processors, which power the ROG Xbox Ally, ROG Xbox Ally X, and ROG Xbox Ally X20 handhelds. This is achieved using an efficient INT8 model. Since these devices run Windows, developers can integrate FSR Upscaling 4.1.2 through the standard AMD FSR SDK.

Satechi Launches ExtendView USB4 Dual HDMI Multiport Adapter

Satechi has introduced the ExtendView USB4 Dual HDMI Multiport Adapter. This is a compact, seven-port hub that connects two 4K displays at 60 Hz through a USB4 cable. The adapter works with Mac and Windows laptops without additional drivers or DisplayLink software. Besides the two HDMI 2.0 outputs, the adapter features two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 and two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, all supporting up to 10 Gbps of data transfer speeds. The dedicated USB-C power delivery port accepts up to 140 W from an external charger and delivers up to 125 W to the connected laptop. The USB-C data ports do not support video output, while the power delivery port is limited to charging.

The adapter connects to the host through an integrated 20.1 cm long braided USB4 cable with a bandwidth of up to 40 Gbps. It also features a built-in cable storage slot and an LED power indicator. The aluminium enclosure has an anodized Space Black finish and measures 140 x 59 x 20 mm, with a weight of 168.5 g.

Steam Hardware Survey: Old Leaders Return as 16 GB RAM and RTX 3060 Are Back on Top

Valve's October 2026 Steam Hardware & Software Survey shows much of September's odd data snapping back. After 32 GB system RAM overtook 16 GB last month, the 16 GB tier is back in first place at 41.42% (up 3.60 points), while 32 GB dropped 5.16 points to 37.06%. The GeForce RTX 3060 is the most common GPU again at 3.62% across all platforms, a spot it held before September, while the RTX 5070 fell from 5.86% to 3.56%. It looks like the survey sample played a big part. Simplified Chinese fell 9.41 points to 21.98%, while English rose 4.84 points to 39.04%. The survey is voluntary, so a change in who responds can move the numbers without an actual hardware change behind it. We can't confirm that, but it would explain why so many categories shifted at once.

Windows 11 rose 1.17 points to 72.51%, and Linux climbed 0.90 points to 3.95%. The 1440p share dropped 5.22 points to 21.82%, while 1080p sits at 50.23%. On Windows, Intel gained 0.89 points to reach 53.48% CPU share, with AMD at 46.51%. Valve's Steam Frame, which launched in September, now holds 4.13% of surveyed VR headsets, up 3.72 points, while Meta Quest 3 continues to dominate with a 27.27% share. However, headset owners are only 1.75% of the survey, so it's a small group. The interesting bit is still the system RAM split, and while 32 GB RAM had been slowly gaining on 16 GB, it looks like September was the outlier. November's data should give us a better idea of the split.

Microsoft Adds Cloud Rebuild Recovery to Windows 11 in Latest Preview Update

Microsoft has introduced Cloud Rebuild, a recovery option that can wipe and reinstall Windows 11 by pulling a fresh image and the PC's drivers from Windows Update, even when the system refuses to boot. It ships with KB5127936, the optional preview update released on October 28 for Windows 11 25H2 and 26H2, and it's rolling out gradually. If Windows still loads, the option sits under Settings > System > Recovery as "Rebuild PC." If it doesn't, the PC falls back to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) after a few failed boots, where Cloud rebuild shows up under the Troubleshoot menu.

The "Reset this PC" menu has had a Cloud download mode for a while. According to Microsoft, Cloud rebuild goes a step further by grabbing drivers as well and by not depending on the installed copy of Windows being intact. It is a clean slate, though. The system drive gets reformatted, wiping apps, settings, user accounts, and local files, and only data synced to services like OneDrive survives. Anyone handing the PC off can pick a sanitize mode that has the drive securely erase itself first, and IT admins can kick off a rebuild remotely through the Recovery CSP.

Dragging the Windows Taskbar To Move It Is Dead, and That's a Feature

Microsoft recently restored the ability for Windows users to move the Taskbar to any screen edge, nearly five years after Windows 11 launched. The Windows 11 implementation, however, is not the same as it was in Windows 10, where users could click and drag to move the Taskbar and lock it in place when they were happy with its position. Instead, Windows 11 makes users go into the settings app to change the Taskbar position, and now, in response to a news story about a third-party utility that allows Taskbar dragging, Windows Vice President of Design, Diego Baca, explains that this is indeed a feature, not a bug, and that the drag-and-drop repositioning often caused accidental movements.
Diego Baca, Windows Vice President of Design at MicrosoftFrom our research, dragging the Taskbar to reposition it can lead to accidental movements, which is one of the reasons "Lock the Taskbar" existed in previous versions of Windows. We also found that changing the Taskbar position isn't something people do frequently.

We felt that providing a discoverable setting, just one right-click away, was a more intentional and predictable experience. It's a deliberate design decision, not a missing capability.

Digital Extremes's Fantasy ARPG "Soulframe" Launches Into Free Open Alpha in November

Digital Extremes, the game studio behind Warframe, has been working on its latest game, Soulframe—an open-world, co-op fantasy action RPG with a strong focus on melee combat—for a number of years, with ongoing invite-only alpha testing having been live since 2023. Although it looked like the game was preparing to launch in some capacity over a year ago, Digital Extremes has waited until November 9 to launch the full-scale open alpha test of Soulframe. This means that the game will no longer require an invitation to play.

Digital Extremes announced the Opem Preludes along with the reveal of the upcoming Verse of the Veilands update, which introduces rideable wolf companions, which players can raise from pups, alongside new weapons and pacts, bosses, and the Veilands, described as a new "environmental world progression system." Soulframe features crafting, weapon progression, story-driven quests, and highly customizable combat and skills.

New UEFI Tool Lifts NVIDIA's Tensor Cap on RTX 20 to 40 Series Cards in Windows

Last week, modders found a way to double the tensor throughput of GeForce RTX 20, RTX 30, and RTX 40 cards, though Zagitta's original tool only ran on Linux. Now, Chinese modder physicsdolphin has released nv-uefi-unlocker, a UEFI tool that lifts the same limit on Windows. NVIDIA runs FP16, BF16, and TF32 tensor math with FP32 accumulation at half rate on GeForce cards, while the same silicon in professional cards runs at full speed. The tool removes that cap before the driver even loads, without any VBIOS flashing. An earlier Windows port from impacifist targeted a single RTX 3090 system, while this one covers all three generations.

The gains look substantial. One user's RTX 4070 Ti Super went from 57.00 to 150.93 TFLOPS in FP16 (2.65x), though board power also climbed from 227 W to nearly 292 W. An RTX 2070 reportedly jumped from 36 to around 60-63 TFLOPS. Not every card has been tested; RTX 20 owners have to enable GSP firmware mode first, and RTX 50 isn't supported at all. The unlock resets on every power-off, so it runs from a USB stick on each cold boot, with Secure Boot disabled or a self-signed certificate enrolled. That could be a problem for games whose anti-cheat requires Secure Boot.

PSA: Fake KytyPS5 and AnyPS5 Repos on GitHub Are Spreading Malware

Fake GitHub repositories posing as two PS5 projects, the KytyPS5 emulator and the AnyPS5 porting tool, are being used to spread password-stealing malware, according to NordVPN's Threat Intelligence team. As reported by Tom's Hardware, visitors get pointed to a ZIP file whose Windows executable unpacks a hidden multi-stage loader. The loader first checks whether it's on a real gaming PC, and exits if the system has less than 2 GB of RAM or no physical GPU, or looks like a virtual machine or cloud server. It seems built to dodge sandboxes and security researchers. Here's how NordVPN CTO Marijus Briedis put it:
Emulation fans are a perfect target. They are used to downloading experimental software from GitHub and running unsigned files, so nothing about this feels suspicious. But this is not an emulator. It steals your data, hides from your antivirus and erases its own tracks before you notice anything is wrong.

Microsoft Unifies GPU Crash Diagnostics with DirectX Dump Files

Microsoft is bringing some of its Xbox console technology to Windows PCs with the introduction of DirectX Dump Files. When a GPU crashes on your PC, you can investigate what happened in the same way Xbox developers do with their GPU crashes, gaining insight into the underlying issues. With the latest Agility SDK 1.620 and PIX 2610.28, DirectX Dump Files provide data from Windows, Direct3D, and GPU drivers to help investigate a crash, understand its cause, and improve the graphics rendering pipeline to prevent future crashes. Joining Microsoft in this effort are AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm.

The process begins with a GPU crash. Once the GPU stops its graphics processing, DirectX creates a new dump file containing traces of what occurred before Windows resets the GPU. This includes the last Direct3D runtime state, hardware and driver data, and up to 2 MB of data from the game developer that might be traced. These files can be saved on developers' machines, but on players' PCs in production, they aren't saved by default. However, game developers can set up a crash pipeline to send crash data back to them for analysis. Once the data is available, Microsoft's PIX tool, used for performance-tuning and debugging DirectX 12 games, helps analyze the situation. PIX decodes data, analyzes dump files, identifies hang points, and traces shaders and resources that caused the crash. This allows developers to quickly isolate and fix the problem.

Microsoft Reports 22% Decline in Windows OEM and Devices Revenue

Microsoft reported strong Q3 2026 results with $92.3 billion in revenue. However, the company's earnings report also revealed that, despite overall revenue growing 19% year-over-year, the Windows OEM licensing business is struggling, with a 22% decline on a yearly basis. This quarter, revenue from Windows 11 OEM licensing and Surface PCs amounted to $3.6 billion, a significant drop from the $4.6 billion this segment generated last year. Several factors contribute to this decline, making it the only business unit, alongside Xbox, to experience a downturn. The first factor is the drop in consumer PC demand. As Microsoft sells Windows 11 licenses to PC OEMs, weakening demand in this space, caused by rising prices, has directly resulted in fewer licenses sold to major PC OEMs like ASUS, HP, Dell, and Lenovo.

Additionally, Microsoft Surface PCs are included in this mix. The generally weak PC demand means consumers are less willing to spend on other brand PCs, and they are behaving similarly toward Microsoft. Surface PC shipments have seemingly declined, as these products are historically priced for mid-tier to high-end buyers. When recent increases in memory and storage supply chain costs affected Microsoft's procurement, general price increases followed. Consequently, consumers are opting to wait for another opportunity to purchase a PC.

Biostar Introduces the EdgeComp MS-U320 Fanless Edge AI System

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of edge AI solution, IPC systems, motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today introduced the EdgeComp MS-U320, a compact fanless edge AI system powered by the Intel Core 5 320 processor (Wildcat Lake). Designed for equipment manufacturers and system integrators, the MS-U320 combines on-site data processing, light AI computing, and industrial connectivity for applications in industrial automation, smart manufacturing, industrial IoT, smart retail, and smart infrastructure.

The MS-U320 features an onboard Intel Core 5 320 processor with six cores, clock speeds of up to 4.6 GHz, a 15 W TDP, and integrated Intel graphics. A single DDR5-6400 SO-DIMM slot supports up to 64 GB of memory, while the integrated CPU, GPU and NPU deliver up to 40 TOPS of AI performance. This combination supports local data processing and light AI workloads without requiring a separate accelerator.

RecompLauncher Gathers Nearly 200 Fan-Made Console Ports Into One PC Catalog

Anyone hunting for fan-made PC ports of console games now has one place to look. RecompLauncher, from the developer behind RecompStore, a homebrew store for jailbroken PS5 consoles, is live as a catalog of community recompilations, listing a hefty 192 PC projects at the time of writing. Many of these are static recompilations, which turn a console game's code into a native PC program instead of emulating the original hardware. The list spans several Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox generations, with Zelda 64, God of War III, and Skate 3 among the familiar names, and it can be filtered by Windows, macOS, and Linux support. Not every entry is finished or downloadable yet, though. Apparently, the project started out as a PC expansion of RecompStore and picked up its current name after community feedback.

The launcher itself isn't out yet. Its download page marks it as coming soon to Windows, and promises to install recomps, pull updates from each developer's GitHub, and set games up from the user's own disc image or ROM. Titles available on both platforms can also be configured once on PC and then sent over to RecompStore on a PS5. No game files are included, and the site says every game needs a legally owned copy. Videocardz points out that Quiver Launcher already offers a downloadable app with install and update management, so RecompLauncher isn't the first to try this. We have seen a huge boom in native fan ports recently, including a Driveclub recomp and the original Uncharted trilogy, both of which also need the player's own game dump.
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