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Microsoft Seeks to Win Over New Players at Gamer Gathering

General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
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Microsoft Seeks to Win Over New Players at Gamer Gathering

General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo

Microsoft held its biggest video game stand ever at the sector trade show Gamescom in Germany on Wednesday, aiming to win over players after several rocky months of studio closures and rising fees.
"We run a business. And it's definitely true inside of Microsoft, the bar is really high for us in terms of delivery that we have to give back to the company," Xbox chief Phil Spencer said during a live event at the show.
"There is a lot of pressure on the industry. It's been growing for a long time and now people are looking for ways to grow," he added, defending the US giant's strategy.
Microsoft took fans by surprise on Tuesday when announcing that its year-end blockbuster "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle", initially meant to be an exclusive for its Xbox console, would also be made available on rival Sony's PlayStation 5 in spring 2025, said AFP.
The decision follows a shift that began in February with four of its games being made available to rival consoles, marking a strategic turning point to attract players to Xbox with exclusive titles.
The move is aimed at increasing the profitability of its games amid flagging console sales.
'Big bet'
After completing in October the $69 billion takeover of gaming publisher Activision Blizzard, maker of gaming hits such as "Call of Duty" and "Candy Crush", Microsoft has faced a series of hurdles.
The takeover resulted in cuts of 1,900 jobs in January.
Then in May, Microsoft closed four studios of publisher Bethesda, which it acquired in 2020 as part of a $7.5 billion investment.
The announcement of the upcoming release of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 6", the first in the series to be available on Microsoft's platform Game Pass, coincided with an increase in service fees.
At the end of February, the service had about 34 million users, far short of its goal of reaching 100 million clients by 2030.
The move to release Call of Duty on Game Pass is Microsoft "pushing all of their chips in", said Mat Piscatella, an analyst for market research firm Circana. "This is their big bet."
Call of Duty's performance on the platform will determine the future of the formula and its viability, he said.
"I think it's evolving as the subscription market hasn't grown at the rate that some have expected," Piscatella said.
Microsoft also announced Wednesday that the new versions of its consoles unveiled in June, which include the Xbox Series X without a Blu-ray player, will be available from October 15.

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Technology

Hours-Long Microsoft Outage Disrupts Businesses, Governments Globally

This illustration photograph shows the Microsoft Outlook logo (C) displayed on a smartphone with the backdrop of Microsoft logo on a screen, in New Delhi on November 13, 2026. (AFP)
This illustration photograph shows the Microsoft Outlook logo (C) displayed on a smartphone with the backdrop of Microsoft logo on a screen, in New Delhi on November 13, 2026. (AFP)
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Hours-Long Microsoft Outage Disrupts Businesses, Governments Globally

This illustration photograph shows the Microsoft Outlook logo (C) displayed on a smartphone with the backdrop of Microsoft logo on a screen, in New Delhi on November 13, 2026. (AFP)
This illustration photograph shows the Microsoft Outlook logo (C) displayed on a smartphone with the backdrop of Microsoft logo on a screen, in New Delhi on November 13, 2026. (AFP)

A more than 12-hour outage of Microsoft Outlook and Teams crippled communications for businesses and governments globally on Friday, forcing some organizations to revert to fax machines and halting at least one bond repurchase in Europe.

Microsoft said server issues were behind the incident that also affected its Copilot AI assistant and that a broader roll-out of software fixes was starting to stabilize the system. It said it was not aware of any malicious activity.

Outlook and Teams are two of the most widely used workplace applications with hundreds of millions of users. The outage prevented people from performing essential functions such as sending emails, managing calendars and hosting virtual meetings.

It affected government agencies from Australia to Japan and the United States, caused delays at trading firms, hindered some companies from publishing earnings and prompted airlines to warn customers of communication lags, according to public statements.

Organizations that host Microsoft services ‌on their own servers, ‌rather than in the cloud, were somewhat spared.

ANOTHER OUTAGE FOR MICROSOFT

The outage is one of ‌the ⁠longest in Microsoft's ⁠history and the second disruption to its services this year.

Microsoft said the outage specifically hit features tied to Exchange Online - its cloud-based email and scheduling hub - leaving unconnected applications operational.

The incident deepens questions about the global reliance on a handful of Big Tech companies that supply both the essential software and the cloud infrastructure that underpins it.

Microsoft shares were down 0.4% in early trading. They have gained roughly 8% so far this year.

Disruptions and financial losses from the outage could result in numerous insurance claims, but the overall hit to insurers is expected to be limited, said Mario De Cicco, vice president of European financial institutions at Morningstar DBRS.

De Cicco estimated global insured losses from the incident at between $300 million and $500 million, well below ⁠the $400 million to $1.5 billion financial toll from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage that crashed more than 8 million ‌Windows-based computers and caused widespread disruptions.

Microsoft also faced an outage with its 365 services in January ‌this year and in October last year. Last month, it reported an outage of its Azure cloud platform that impacted its suite of productivity software, ‌and a range of industries worldwide.

"The bigger worry is that this is not the first Microsoft 365 outage this year," said Josh ‌Gilbert, a market analyst at trading platform eToro.

"If reliability starts to look like a recurring problem, it hands every IT department a reason to think twice before putting even more of their business in one provider’s hands."

Still, some analysts have questioned whether such incidents can push customers on to rivals due to the steep switching costs of replacing tools embedded so deeply in daily operations.

TRADES HAD TO BE CONFIRMED BY FAX

A spokesperson for the UK government said ‌it was working with Microsoft to find a solution for the outage that hit organizations such as the NHS and London’s Metropolitan Police.

Lack of access emails and other services was impacting ⁠the Metropolitan Police's ability to report some ⁠crimes online, though its ability to respond to calls was not affected.

NHS said its local services were turning to alternate measures such as using IT systems or paper records.

For businesses, the fallout was widespread.

European exchange operator Euronext reported email disruptions, British insurer Aviva activated backups for its earnings calls and Danish shipping giant Maersk warned customers of delayed updates.

American AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic also faced issues with Microsoft connectors, while Indian airlines IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India said their email support services were impacted.

The outage also disrupted fund management at Taiwanese securities firms, life insurers, and investment trust companies. One of the companies went as far as cancelling a bond repurchase transaction, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.

Another Taiwanese financial company resorted to using fax to confirm trades, a second source said.

In the US, electric truck maker Workhorse Group rescheduled its results on Thursday to November 16, while Switzerland's Richemont briefly delayed its first-half results announcement on Friday.

In Australia, where the spy agency and federal police were among organizations caught in the outage, Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft does not suspect a cyber attack.

"The impact that they are dealing with ... is very much on email systems," the minister added.

Technology

OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Wallet, Letting AI Agents Pay for Purchases

OpenAI's logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
OpenAI's logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
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OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Wallet, Letting AI Agents Pay for Purchases

OpenAI's logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
OpenAI's logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)

OpenAI ‌said on Friday it has launched ChatGPT Wallet, which lets AI agents pay for purchases without accessing users' card details, with a security check required for every transaction.

The wallet has been built in ‌partnership with American Express, ‌Mastercard and Visa, ‌OpenAI ⁠said.

It will ⁠initially be available in the US to ChatGPT Pro subscribers aged 18 and older with eligible US-issued cards. It can be accessed ⁠through "dots", the company's always-on ‌AI agents.

Users can review items, the total ‌and the selected card before ‌each purchase, then approve it with a security check such as Face ID or a fingerprint ‌scan.

The payment network will provide a payment ⁠token ⁠in place of the actual card details, so neither the business nor the agent can see them, the company said.

OpenAI expects users to eventually delegate purchases to agents within certain set parameters, such as spending limits, categories or time periods.

Technology

Colette Kress, the CFO Who Challenged Huang’s Bets, Is Nvidia’s Interim CEO

Nvidia's Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress poses for a photo in an unknown location. (Nvidia/Handout via Reuters)
Nvidia's Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress poses for a photo in an unknown location. (Nvidia/Handout via Reuters)
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Colette Kress, the CFO Who Challenged Huang’s Bets, Is Nvidia’s Interim CEO

Nvidia's Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress poses for a photo in an unknown location. (Nvidia/Handout via Reuters)
Nvidia's Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress poses for a photo in an unknown location. (Nvidia/Handout via Reuters)

Colette Kress spent years as the one Nvidia executive willing to check CEO Jensen Huang’s enormous, often risky ambitions. As he drove the chipmaker deeper into multibillion-dollar AI investments, she pushed back, according to two people familiar with the matter on Thursday.

Now the 59-year-old finance chief has been handed the top job on an interim basis, while Nvidia searches for a permanent successor. Huang on Thursday stepped downfrom the company he co-founded and ran for three decades in a cloud of scandal, leaving Nvidia to navigate its first leadership transition without the architect of its rise.

Through their conflicts, Kress served as an important counterweight to Huang, whose success afforded him great latitude on key decisions, the two sources said. Months before news that Huang had a relationship with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy, some on Wall Street were questioning whether his appetite for risk was sound and if the deals he struck were feeding an increasingly circular AI economy.

Kress and her ‌staff clashed with ‌Huang and the company's sales team over the massive and risky financing deals that fed into what ‌some ⁠Wall Street critics ⁠deemed a circular AI economy, including investments in OpenAI and AI infrastructure companies such as Lambda, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

A proposed $250 billion plan to support an OpenAI data center project in Ohio was ultimately pared to $120 billion.

"I think it's unlikely anyone but Jensen is going to invest in his own customers as aggressively," said a third source, a venture capital investor. Huang has pushed Nvidia to offer financing to startups, the person said.

KRESS THE PRAGMATIST

People who know her describe Kress as a calming contrast to Huang’s often confrontational style. Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after a long career at other tech industry giants including Microsoft, Cisco and Texas Instruments .

"Colette is a pragmatist," said a fourth source ⁠familiar with the matter. She can project calm and help stabilize markets while the search is ongoing, ‌the person said, adding that Kress had been on recent calls to reassure customers ‌and suppliers as the tumult inside the company unfolded.

Under her leadership, Nvidia is likely to "approach DC more like other tech companies do, by trying to ‌build capital and make friends," instead of picking "a fight over export controls" the way it did under Huang's leadership, the person said.

But ‌many investors, analysts and industry sources who spoke to Reuters questioned whether a finance executive could preserve the technological risk-taking that turned Nvidia into an AI chips powerhouse.

"Putting (Kress) in the interim role makes sense to keep the markets calm, but I don't think she is the long-term visionary that Nvidia needs to continue its current trajectory," said Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

Nvidia shares slumped 14% to their lowest in nearly 16 months on Thursday ‌after the company said Huang would step down, but pared losses to close down 4.3%.

Whether Kress will keep the CEO role permanently is yet to be decided. But other names have surfaced, ⁠including Nvidia executive Ian Buck, who ⁠helped launch AI on Nvidia chips and led development of the CUDA software system. AMD CEO Lisa Su as well as Arm boss Rene Haas have also been speculated as potential candidates.

WHAT DID KRESS KNOW?

Questions are also swirling about how much Kress knew about Nvidia's chip sales and Huang's affairs. China has denied the spying allegations. Reuters was not able to contact Alice Huang for comment.

A fifth source said Kress knew about his relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia's vice president of healthcare, who reported to him. Nvidia and Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Sunny Cheung, an analyst at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said Kress could face congressional questions about the company's oversight of chip sales involving Chinese military-linked institutions and Southeast Asian intermediaries.

In a 2023 interview with an Israeli publication, Kress credited her two young sons with urging her to join Nvidia in 2013 because they knew its chips from their video games.

She became a billionaire in 2025 based on the value of her Nvidia equity, according to media reports, and Forbes said her net worth of $1.2 billion in mid-2026 put her in 32nd place on its list of America's richest self-made women.

Kress, who holds an undergraduate degree in finance and an MBA, was also named among the 50 most powerful women in business on rankings compiled by Fortune and Forbes magazines in recent years.