Microsoft is decision downward The Garage, a set of famous creator spaces anywhere workforce worked on experimental projects and collaborated on amazing new apps and hardware during the company’s annual hackathon events.
“We’re winding downward The Garage program as a centralized function,” says Microsoft in an inner FAQ to employees, seen by Notepad. “We volition continue to examine new ways to assistance workforce build skills, collaborate throughout boundaries, and bring a hacker mindset to their work.” GeekWire archetypal reported on The Garage’s closure.
The chief Garage area was located at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, evidence and served as the chief hub for about 15 Garage locations throughout the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Microsoft workforce could use it to test alongside prototypes, build hardware, and equal rotate hobbies into complete Microsoft products.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella regularly attended Garage hackathons, giving workforce a chance to showcase their projects and diagram the notice of elder executives. Many apps and services have emerged from The Garage complete its 17-year history, including the AI-powered Seeing AI app that describes objects and content to group who are blind or have low vision. It was delivered out of a 2015 hackathon event and shipped 10 years ago.
Microsoft employee Tuong Do used The Garage to create Mouse Without Borders in his spare time, operating on it during evenings and weekends. The app is motionless accessible today and lets you authority up to four PCs alongside a sole mouse and keyboard. Microsoft workforce have additionally used The Garage to create new learning tools and accessibility features for Word, Microsoft Edge, and PowerPoint. I would item you to the Microsoft Garage hall of fame for a catalog of all the top projects, but Microsoft has removed the website — erasing the affluent former of its employee-led workshop.
One of the most celebrated achievement stories of The Garage was Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller. The accessibility-focused Xbox controller was a company attempt by workforce throughout Xbox and Surface, but it originated at a hackathon event anywhere workforce were experimenting alongside construction a gaming equipment that used Kinect motion-sensing innovation to track movements and translate them to an Xbox controller.
An administrator saw the nearly 40-person squad trying to build the project, turned it into a genuine thing, and eventually additional than 80 workforce were engaged alongside bringing the Xbox Adaptive Controller to life. While the equipment was nearly cut because of prosperity constraints, it eventually launched and went on to rotate into the celebrity of Microsoft’s 2019 Super Bowl commercial.
Microsoft is now preparedness to breeze downward its Garage locations, and several spaces volition be closed as shortly as tomorrow, Friday, October 23rd. The closure of The Garage volition additionally average changes to Microsoft’s annual employee hackathon event, which could possibly disappear. “As we appearance to the future, the hackathon squad is reimagining the program to encounter the needs of today’s employees, customers, and innovation landscape. We’ll have additional to portion at a afterward date,” says Microsoft’s inner FAQ.
Internally, the business is trying to market workforce on the idea that “the soul of experimentation that formerly lived chiefly in dedicated programs is now reflected in how teams activity all day.” Employees I’ve spoken to see the closure as the latest in Microsoft’s continued cutbacks.
Earlier this twelvemonth Microsoft closed its employee library and cut rear on subscriptions in favor of an “AI-powered learning experience.” The archive used to home thousands of books, journals, and reports that workforce could use to learn, research, and examine ideas — much akin The Garage.
“We’re grateful to the employees, volunteers, and partners who helped build The Garage and appearance onward to continuing its bequest in new forms,” says Microsoft’s FAQ. It’s difficult to ideate item replicating the distinctive mix of expert advisers, dedicated creator spaces, hands-on workshops, and internship programs that The Garage offered workforce looking to create new skills.
- Microsoft employee causes an Xbox AI stir. Microsoft employee Brandon Stirrup posted multiple times on X this week to get everyone talking concerning AI use in gaming. “Gaming is the lone industry anywhere leaders are fearful to conversation concerning AI,” said Stirrup. “Users desire the truth. We’re using AI.” Stirrup’s posts elicited the customary reply from gamers against AI, but he stated he’s “happy to obtain the hit if it method hundreds at Xbox can halt pretending that they’re not using AI.” Hours following Stirrup’s posts, he impaired his X account.
- Microsoft’s new Photos app combines your PC, OneDrive, and iCloud galleries. Microsoft has redesigned its Photos app for Windows 11, combining images and videos from your PC, OneDrive, and iCloud into a sole space. The new app includes a redesigned viewer, a native editor, and a new exhibition view. The new publishing company is the most engaging aspect to me personally, merely since it loads a lot faster now and lets you quickly crop and edit photos. You can additionally edit HDR, HEIC, and WebP photos. The spectator has additionally been sped up, alongside improved HDR viewing and improved document category support.
- Microsoft says Windows 11 is now “more responsive” and runs improved on 8GB of RAM. Microsoft’s fixes for Windows 11 have made it “up to 20 percent additional responsive,” according to the company. Microsoft has made improvements to Start, File Explorer, Search, Edge, and another parts of Windows 11 to make the OS awareness faster. A big part of the improvements comes downward to improved recollection management, to the item anywhere there is now a “meaningful difference” on PCs alongside fair 8GB of RAM. I motionless think there is motionless a way to go to completely enhance Windows 11, but these are awesome archetypal steps compared to a twelvemonth ago.
- Ikea’s Xbox gathering is now accessible online. The new nine-piece “Yxstaby” gathering from Ikea was designed in collaboration alongside Microsoft. It debuted archetypal at Ikea’s bodily stores before this month, and it’s now accessible to command online. The row includes accessories and furnishings inspired by Xbox controllers.
- Nvidia’s latest GPU controller brings a new way to speed up PC games. Nvidia has rolled out a new GPU controller (621.01) this week that enables Microsoft’s new Advanced Shader Delivery technology to speed up equivalent launches. The innovation additionally removes mid-game “just-in-time” shader compilation, reducing stuttering and CPU spikes. Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery plant by offloading shader compilation for distinct hardware combinations to the cloud. Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 now the two assistance Advanced Shader Delivery, as lengthy as you download the games via the Xbox PC app. “This scheme is storefront-agnostic, definition you advantage equal whenever playing games purchased on Steam, as lengthy as the Xbox PC app is installed on your PC,” says Nvidia’s Andrew Burnes.
- Microsoft donated $10 myriad to Trump’s ballroom. The Washington Post has obtained a list of all the important donors to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including earlier undisclosed contributors. Microsoft donated $10 million, which puts it approximately in the center set of tech donations from the likes of Apple ($25 million), Amazon ($5 million), Nvidia ($25 million), Google ($22 million), and Meta ($5 million).
- Xbox mandates a four-day come back to office. Microsoft asked its workforce to come back to the agency three days per week final year, and it’s now upping this necessity to four days a week for most Xbox employees. An inner memo, seen by The Verge, describes the alter as a “need to create additional opportunities for group to activity together” following feedback from Xbox employees. “Starting February 1st, 2027, Xbox workforce in Puget Sound who live inside 50 commuting miles of Studio D are required to activity from the agency a minimum of four days a week,” says Jacinda Chislum Pearson, Xbox chief group officer, in the inner memo. Some Xbox workforce I’ve spoken to perspective this as a stealth layoff, during others have noted that the existing three-day regulation was lone lightly enforced.
- Microsoft says it’s operating on making Edge updates small of a hassle. Microsoft has shared a prototype demo for “seamless updates” to Edge that would evade you needing to restart the browser. The characteristic is motionless in development, but it could certainly assistance alongside things akin insecure TLS certificates and another issues anywhere a browser needs to be patched.
- Surface Laptop Ultra review: a distinct benevolent of MacBook Pro. I spent a week reviewing Microsoft’s latest Surface laptop, and I’m impressed alongside the hardware. The MacBook Pro-esque scheme is dissimilar any another Windows laptop, gratitude to a ample haptic trackpad and USB-C magnetic charging. The application that the Surface Laptop Ultra is trying to push, in particular local AI, feels a lot small polished, though. Overall, the Laptop Ultra is targeted at a extremely niche spectators of AI developers.
- Microsoft reportedly plans Xbox handheld in 2027, next-gen console in 2028. Microsoft is reportedly preparedness to initiate an Xbox “next-generation handheld device” for the holiday period of 2027. The Xbox next-gen console, codenamed Project Helix, would afterward initiate in the holidays of 2028, according to a new report from Fortune. It’s not apparent if the rumored handheld is an genuine first-party Xbox device, or one from an OEM akin Asus. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has earlier described Project Helix as a “family of devices,” suggesting that Microsoft’s next Xbox console may not be fair one part of hardware. The study additionally suggests that Sharma is preparedness a caller circular of Xbox layoffs this month, followed by additional in November and January.
- Microsoft abandons the UK’s largest data center project. Microsoft is strolling distant from a agreement alongside Nscale for a new data center in Loughton, Essex. Nscale has faced delays getting the data center online, alongside UK National Grid officials not capable to provision power to the location until the 2030s, according to Reuters. The agreement was initially announced onward of Trump’s second province sojourn to the UK final year, alongside Microsoft boasting of its $30 milliard funding in the UK.
- AMD is bringing FSR 4.1 to Xbox consoles and handhelds. AMD has revealed that it’s bringing its latest upscaling technology, FSR 4.1, to the Xbox Series S and X consoles, as fine as laptops, 6000-series GPUs, and the two the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds. It’s coming to Xbox developers “very soon,” but Xbox console owners volition have to delay a small longer. The example rate-boosting innovation should have a noticeable effect on the Xbox Series S, and it plant alongside additional than 300 games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 6, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
- Microsoft: Frontier models cannot be trusted. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated before this duration that we should assume that all AI models are “compromised,” and now Microsoft is going one stage further. “Unfortunately, frontier models, despite of their origin, cannot be trusted,” says Hayete Gallot, administrator vice chairman of Microsoft Security. Microsoft is naturally positioning its new Project Perception as a resolution to securing AI models. It’s an agentic safety scheme designed to assistance cybersecurity professionals safe and authority AI agents.
- Xbox is experimenting alongside a blades dashboard. Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet has been “cooking up retro vibes” as part of Microsoft’s new Xbox Labs effort. The outcome is what looks akin a vibe-coded choice to choice your dashboard on an Xbox console. This is merely an test correct now and it’s not apparent if we’ll always see specified an option, but Xbox CEO Asha Sharma asks “blades on the web. Do we akin this experiment?”
- Microsoft’s headcount is downward year-over-year. Microsoft’s annual report reveals the business employed about 223,000 group as of June 30th. That’s 5,000 small than the 228,000 group employed in 2025. It’s the archetypal period Microsoft has had a headcount decrease in 10 years, following the gutting of the Nokia phone endeavor in 2015 and 2016. The decrease comes as Microsoft has laid off additional than 9,000 workforce complete the former year.
- Xbox Cloud Gaming’s pay-as-you-go choice starts at $3.99 for 10 hours. Microsoft announced final duration that it volition let anyone admission Xbox Cloud Gaming in November, without the need to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. The new pay-as-you-go model volition necessitate players to acquisition bundles of haze hours, and now Microsoft is revealing that bundles volition commencement at $3.99 for 10 hours of haze playtime. If you desire 25 hours it’ll disbursal $7.99, and 50 hours is $11.99. All of these haze hours volition contain ad-free haze gaming, shorter delay times, and higher-quality streaming.
I’m continually eager to comprehend from readers, so delight autumn a comment here, or you can attain me at [email protected] if you desire to conversation item else. If you’ve heard concerning any of Microsoft’s concealed projects, you can attain me via email at [email protected] or conversation to me confidentially on the Signal messaging app, anywhere I’m tomwarren.01. I’m additionally tomwarren on Telegram, if you’d favor to conversation there.
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