Let’s be honest, there’s only one thing most of the tech world is interested in today: Apple’s most important Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in years, at which it will reveal its possibly make-or-break AI strategy. But Tim Cook’s crucial keynote is taking place as this newsletter comes out, and we already gave you some previews a couple days ago, so right now let’s talk about gaming.
It’s increasingly looking like Microsoft will reveal a proper Xbox handheld. Yesterday, after the annual Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer made an appearance at IGN Live, and one of the things he was asked about was the possibility of making a version of the legendary console that users can carry around with them.
Now, Spencer has previously declared his enthusiasm for the concept of handhelds, but this time he wouldn’t even let his interviewer finish the question. “We should have a handheld!” he exclaimed. Spencer wouldn’t go so far as to confirm it was coming, but he did say “the future for us in hardware is pretty awesome” and professed excitement about the work his team was doing on “different form factors.”
Spencer also said he finds the ability to play games locally “very important” in a handheld, which should make sense to anyone who ever finds themselves out of range of an internet connection. That would be a major distinction between the hypothetical Xbox handheld and Sony’s PlayStation Portal, which came out late last year and which only streams games from the PlayStation 5 via the cloud. “I like my ROG Ally, my Lenovo Legion Go, my Steam Deck,” Spencer said, referring to handhelds that take the on-device gaming approach.
It should also be noted that Sony is rumored to be working on a new PlayStation handheld that also runs games locally—a successor to the classic PlayStation Portable or PSP, which ran games off a little optical disc called the Universal Media Disc, and was available between 2004 and 2014. But again, that’s just a rumor, and even the Xbox handheld remains in the realm of the theoretical for now.
As for stuff that’s actually been announced, Microsoft used its showcase yesterday to reveal new, disc-free versions of its Xbox Series X and S consoles, which it hopes will catch on with buyers when available for the upcoming holiday season 2024 (and no, I also can’t believe I’m already writing that phrase). Sony is widely expected to release a PlayStation 5 Pro around the same time; both companies will be hoping these launches pull them out of an industry-wide sales slump for consoles and games alike.
So there you go—non-Apple news is still happening! More of which below.
David Meyer
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NEWSWORTHY
“Addictive feeds” law. New York state is poised to get a new law that will force social media companies to get parental consent before showing algorithmically organized “addictive feeds” to under-18s. The state legislature has passed a bill requiring this—the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act—and Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to sign it, TechCrunch reports. If so, social media firms will have to get that permission or show kids non-addictive feeds that are simply listed in chronological order.
LinkedIn gives in to EU rules. LinkedIn has scrapped a tool in Europe that let advertisers target users on the basis of their group memberships, to comply with the new Digital Services Act (DSA), which governs online content in the EU. As Reuters notes, this follows a complaint by civil society organizations, which said the LinkedIn tool breached DSA rules forbidding ad-targeting based on sensitive personal data such as race, political opinions, and sexual orientation.
Indian telecoms in space. The Financial Times reports that India’s biggest telecoms companies, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, are about to launch satellite internet services in the country. Elon Musk’s SpaceX still hasn’t won approval to launch Starlink services in India, but Bharti Airtel’s joint venture with the Anglo-French Eutelsat OneWeb could go live this month, with JioSpaceFiber following later this year.
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
20%
—The drop in home and office printing since the pandemic, according to HP chief Enrique Lores, who blames hybrid work. “There are less people in the office every day, and this has driven the amount of pages down,” he said, according to The Register. Good news for trees, of course.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Jensen Huang created a unique culture at Nvidia that allows the AI chip leader to move ‘very, very fast’, by Jason Ma
CHIPS Act faces talent shortage despite $500 billion investment: ‘We have to make semiconductor manufacturing sexy’, by Dylan Sloan
IMF official delivers stark warning on AI’s potential to turn an ordinary downturn into a severe economic crisis, by Jason Ma
Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package to get ‘no’ vote from Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, by Bloomberg
Volvo is moving EV production from China to Belgium as the EU eyes tariffs on Beijing, by Bloomberg
Nevada is expanding electronic voting for Native American tribes. That ‘high-risk activity’ has some election security experts worried, by the Associated Press
BEFORE YOU GO
Arm vs Qualcomm. As Qualcomm prepares to give the Arm processor architecture a big boost in the new category of Copilot+ AI-enabled Windows PCs, a licensing dispute could halt shipments, Reuters reports. Somewhat incredibly, the dispute is between Qualcomm and Arm, which sued Qualcomm a couple years ago, claiming that Qualcomm should have negotiated a new Arm license when it bought the processor firm Nuvia.
Nuvia had been designing Arm-based server chips, but after the purchase, Qualcomm redirected the team to work on the laptop processor that will now power Copilot+ PCs; Arm claims Qualcomm should now either pay extra royalties or destroy Nuvia’s designs. “There is a degree of absurdity of Arm suing its second-biggest customer, and Qualcomm being sued by its largest supplier,” D2D Advisory CEO Jay Goldberg told Reuters.
