Fortune reports that Microsoft's internal projections put the price of its 2028 holiday-season Project Helix console between $1,200 and $1,800, with a separate next-gen handheld planned by the end of next year. Fortune also reports internal disputes at Microsoft over whether the handheld should run a trimmed version of Windows or a custom operating system built by the Xbox team, with one executive reportedly threatening to cancel the device if forced to use Windows.
According to Fortune, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is planning additional rounds of job cuts in November, this month, and January. The cuts would follow a July announcement of a broader
Microsoft is reportedly planning an Xbox handheld device for holiday 2027, followed by a next-generation console codenamed Project Helix in holiday 2028, according to Fortune. The console is said to be internally projected to cost between $1,200 and $1,800 unless Microsoft subsidizes the hardware, and Fortune reports internal disagreement between Microsoft's Windows and Xbox teams over which software will run the system.
Microsoft is said to be working on a new, more compact 12-inch Surface Laptop that would use an ARM-based processor rather than Intel or AMD silicon. The report suggests this smaller model could be priced more affordably than existing Surface Laptop configurations, though Microsoft has not officially confirmed the device.
Microsoft has pulled out as anchor customer for Nscale's proposed 50MW (expandable to 90MW) AI data center in Loughton, Essex, which was meant to house 23,040 Nvidia GB300 GPUs for Azure starting in 2027. The withdrawal reportedly follows warnings from UK Power Networks that sufficient grid capacity may not arrive until the early-to-mid 2030s. Nscale says the project continues and it is seeking alternative power sources and sites.
Microsoft unveiled Guardian Agents, a new feature under its Project Perception security product, designed to watch over AI agents deployed within a company. The tool builds on a system originally launched in June with red, blue and green team agents meant to simulate and fix hacking vulnerabilities, but now addresses fears that enterprise AI agents themselves could pose risks, not just outside hackers.
Security firm Infoblox published a report detailing Help TDS, a traffic distribution system that has been abused since 2017 to funnel victims into fake Microsoft tech support scams. Researchers gained direct access to the platform's affiliate panel, revealing how scammers use fake security alerts to lure victims into calling bogus support lines staffed by criminals who push remote desktop software onto victims' machines.
A Hugging Face contributor and Arch Linux package maintainer built a bootable Arch Linux ARM setup for the ASUS ProArt P16 H7607BA-SE033W, a laptop with 128GB of RAM, 6,144 CUDA cores and a 2TB SSD that ships with official Windows-only support. The build incorporates NVIDIA's Ubuntu kernel work, custom ACPI overrides, a patched hid-asus driver for the keyboard, and official NVIDIA and ASUS firmware, with 7-Zip performance matching Windows and the OS correctly reporting the full 116GiB unified memory pool to CUDA.
ConnectWise disclosed that a threat actor used credentials tied to its Cloud Backup product (formerly SkyKick) to authenticate into Microsoft 365 tenants, discovering unauthorized access to application identities on Oct. 14. The company has since disabled Cloud Backup, SaaS Security, and Cloud Management for partners and clients while an incident response firm investigates, leaving backup, restore, and monitoring functions unavailable.
Microsoft has fixed a bug that caused games and Windows 11 apps using AC-3 (Dolby Digital) audio decoding to crash or fail to launch after installing the September 2026 preview update KB5124010. The fix arrives in the KB5127648 October 2026 Patch Tuesday update, which Microsoft says affected users on Windows 11 24H2 and later should install.
Microsoft has patched an issue in the classic Outlook desktop client that caused Copilot Chat and Copilot buttons to disappear from the navigation pane and ribbon for some licensed users. The company traced the problem to Outlook failing to retrieve certain account information from users' profiles, and said the fix addresses that root cause. This marks the second time Microsoft has fixed the bug after it resurfaced following recent updates despite an earlier June patch.
Mozilla says it met with Microsoft to discuss concerns from its 87-page report on how Windows pushes Edge, but found the company unresponsive. Mozilla counsel Kush Amlani points to post-update prompts that set Edge as default and Start menu links that open in Edge outside Europe, contrasting this with EU versions of Windows where such defaults respect user choice due to local law.
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