Fake Microsoft Office add-in tools push malware via SourceForge

Threat actors are abusing SourceForge to distribute fake Microsoft add-ins that install malware on victims’ computers to both mine and steal cryptocurrency. …

Published 2 months ago in 4th June 2025

Arkane Founder: ‘I Think Game Pass is Unsustainable’

The founder and former president of Arkane Studios Raphaël Colantonio, who left in 2019, took to social media weighing on the huge Microsoft and Xbox layoffs. “Why is no-one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough cough (Gamepass),” said Colantonio (spotted by VideoGamesChronicle). He added…

Published 1 week ago in 23rd July 2025

In the Wake of Xbox Layoffs, Founder of Dishonored and Prey Dev Arkane Slams Game Pass: ‘Why Is No-One Talking About the Elephant in the Room?’

Hot on the heels of the layoffs that have swept through Xbox, the founder of Microsoft-owned Arkane Studios has hit out at Game Pass, whose subscription model he called “unsustainable.” Raphael Colantonio, who founded the Dishonored and Prey developer and served as its president before leaving in 2017 to start Weird West maker WolfEye Studios

Published 1 week ago in 23rd July 2025

Hot on the heels of the layoffs that have swept through Xbox, the founder of Microsoft-owned Arkane Studios has hit out at Game Pass, whose subscription model he called “unsustainable.”

Raphael Colantonio, who founded the Dishonored and Prey developer and served as its president before leaving in 2017 to start Weird West maker WolfEye Studios, took to social media to ask: “Why is no-one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough cough (Gamepass).”

When asked to expand on his thoughts on Game Pass, which Weird West launched straight into as a day one title in March 2022, Colantonio said: “I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade, subsidized by MS’s ‘infinite money,’ but at some point reality has to hit. I don’t think GP can co-exist with other models, they’ll either kill everyone else, or give up.”

Colantonio’s comment sparked a vociferous debate about the pros and cons of Game Pass in industry terms as well as for the customer. Microsoft’s subscription service has been called many things over the years: the death of the video game industry; the savior of smaller developers who benefit greatly from payments made by Microsoft to secure their games; and everything in between. During the great Xbox FTC trial to decide the fate of Microsoft’s $69 billion aquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard, then PlayStation boss Jim Ryan claimed that he had talked to “all the publishers” and that, unanimously, they all hated Game Pass “because it is value destructive.” He also said Microsoft “appears to be losing a lot of money on it.”

Back in 2021, Xbox boss Phil Spencer countered Game Pass doomsayers, saying: “I know there’s a lot of people that like to write [that] we’re burning cash right now for some future pot of gold at the end. No. Game Pass is very, very sustainable right now as it sits. And it continues to grow.”

That was four years ago. What about now, in the wake of cuts that have seen Rare’s Everwild, the Perfect Dark reboot, and an unannounced MMO in the works at developer behind The Elder Scrolls Online all canceled?

Colantonio’s comments were backed by a number of industry peers, including the former VP of biz dev at Epic Games. Michael Douse, publishing director at Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian, said that the biggest concern right now revolves around what happens when all that money runs out. This, Douse added, is “one of the main economic reasons people I know haven’t shifted to its business model. The infinite money thing never made any sense.”

(It’s worth noting that Baldur’s Gate 3 has so far not launched in Game Pass or PlayStation Plus.)

Colantonio then ridiculed Microsoft’s insistence that launching games into Game Pass did not impact sales, only to later admit the contrary.

Douse responded to to say he prefers the Sony way of doing things. Sony’s PlayStation Plus policy is to keep first-party games off the subscription service at launch, only adding them some time later. That’s why you won’t see this year’s Sony’s Ghost of Yotei launch straight into PS Plus, but you will see Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 as a day one Game Pass launch.

“The economics never made sense, but at the same

Microsoft denies shutting down operations in China

Microsoft China denied it would cease operations in the country, after a screenshot of an internal email from Wicresoft, a Microsoft outsourcing partner, fueled speculation about a potential exit. On Monday, several employees of Wicresoft shared screenshots of layoff emails on social media. The email cites geopolitical tensions and shifts in the global business landscape

Published 2 months ago in 14th June 2025

How Microsoft’s AI chief measures consumer inroads for Copilot

Advertisement Business How Microsoft’s AI chief measures consumer inroads for Copilot Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman speaks at the company’s 50th anniversary celebration in Redmond, Washington, U.S., April 4, 2025. REUTERS/Jeffrey Dastin Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman speaks at the company’s 50th anniversary celebration in Redmond, Washington, U.S., April 4, 2025. REUTERS/Jeffrey Dastin Microsoft co-founder

Published 2 months ago in 23rd May 2025

Business

How Microsoft’s AI chief measures consumer inroads for Copilot

REDMOND, Washington : As Microsoft CEOs past and present gathered here to celebrate the company’s 50th birthday, one leader said he is targeting a particular metric’s improvement to guide his strategy on artificial intelligence.

Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive of Microsoft AI, said his consumer and research division is tracking the usual measures of adoption for the company’s AI assistant called Copilot. These include daily and weekly active users, distribution, and usage intensity for Copilot’s consumer offering, he said.

But Suleyman’s interest lies elsewhere.

“I really, really focus the team on SSR, the rate of successful sessions,” he said in an interview.

In an older era when consumers gave less real-time feedback on software, the time they spent with a product – on social media, for instance – or the problems they could solve represented crude “proxies for quality,” he said.

“Now, we actually get to learn from the anonymized logs and extract the sentiment,” said Suleyman, who joined Microsoft about a year ago after leading the startup Inflection AI. Suleyman was one of the only Microsoft executives other than former CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and current CEO Satya Nadella to speak on stage at Microsoft’s Friday event at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

Suleyman said Microsoft has tasked an AI model itself to assess such sentiment and help determine Copilot chats’ SSR.

“Over the last four months, it’s gone up dramatically, and that’s what we optimize for,” he said.

Suleyman declined to state the rate in absolute terms or disclose other Copilot metrics.

The company last fall announced a more amiable voice for its consumer Copilot and the ability to analyze web pages for users as they browse.

On Friday, Microsoft demonstrated further features for Copilot: personalized podcasts, a tool to help consumers research complex queries, and eventually a look for Copilot that can be custom to each user and conversation.

“I would definitely go for something that was cutesy,” said Suleyman, “like a little Furby-type thing.”

Source: Reuters

Fake Microsoft Office add-in tools push malware via SourceForge

Arkane Founder: ‘I Think Game Pass is Unsustainable’

In the Wake of Xbox Layoffs, Founder of Dishonored and Prey Dev Arkane Slams Game Pass: ‘Why Is No-One Talking About the Elephant in the Room?’

Microsoft denies shutting down operations in China