Senior Editor
Tom Warren is a Senior Editor and author of Notepad. Tom previously founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge. Tom also used to work as an enterprise project manager in a variety of investment banks, and has a background in IT and Windows engineering. Tom has appeared on CNN, CNN International, BBC News, Channel 4, MSNBC, TWiT, and many others over the years.
You can reach Tom confidentially on Signal here.
Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed earlier this year that a new Xbox mobile store would be launching in July. Xbox fan Klobrille discovered an Xbox mobile store webpage recently, which suggests Xbox Insiders will get access first. “Testing has begun for our browser-based mobile store,” says Kari Perez, head of Xbox communications in a statement to The Verge. “Our work is progressing well and we will have more to share in the future.”
Update: Article updated with comment from Microsoft.
I’m hearing that Obsidian is about to announce an Avowed delay. The team had been targeting a November release, but with Xbox exclusive S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 delayed to November, things are getting stacked for Xbox games in the all-important holiday season. More on the Avowed delay and Xbox employees being back under one roof in this week’s issue of Notepad.
Microsoft employees are getting an extra bonus that will work out to between 10-25 percent of the value of their regular annual bonus, according to an internal memo seen by The Verge. The announcement comes at the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year, as the company’s cloud and AI efforts have continued to improve its stock price. The bonus will also help with employee retention in a competitive AI market.
Delta was hit particularly badly by the CrowdStrike outage that impacted millions of Windows-based machines earlier this month. Now, CNBC reports that Delta has hired an attorney to seek damages from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft after it had to cancel nearly 7,000 flights due to the IT outage. The outage may have cost Delta up to $500 million.