This week, we cover Microsoft’s latest AI abomination–this time targeting the gaming industry. Plus, we deep dive into the new state of matter that Microsoft claims to have “invented.”

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Topics

Microsoft Muse - A Generative AI for “Gameplay Ideation” - Backwards Compatibility?

Link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/introducing-muse-our-first-generative-ai-model-designed-for-gameplay-ideation/

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/02/19/muse-ai-xbox-empowering-creators-and-players/

Microsoft’s Muse project is an AI model designed for gameplay ideation. In their examples, they’ve trained their model one 1 second of real footage from a Ninja Theory game called Bleeding Edge. It’s… something alright.

But one of THEIR biggest claims is that they “believe this could radically change how we preserve and experience classic games in the future and make them accessible to more players”. Using AI to… preserve older games inaccessible? I mean… we have a thing. It’s called Emulation, and it’s pretty fucking good.

Microsoft’s new State of Matter

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/technology/microsoft-quantum-computing-topological-qubit.html

It’s not Solid, Liquid, Gas, or Plasma… it’s something new entirely, as per Microsoft. MS dubs it… the “topological qubit”. All of this to fuel a quantum computer. Personally I can’t wait for a quantum GPU to fit in my PC powered by this mysterious state of matter.

Amazon v Steam - How David felled a Goliath

Link: https://gameworldobserver.com/2025/02/19/why-amazon-failed-to-compete-with-steam-store

“We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions”

The Death of the AA games market

Link: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ps5-japan-studios-closed-because-the-double-a-market-has-disappeared-says-shuhei-yoshida/

Former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Shuhei Yoshida spoke about the death of Sony’s former “Japan Studio”. He chiefly attributes the death of the studio to the evaporating AA market, where AAA games got bigger and bigger and indies came in to fill in the void. Are AA games truly dead? Is the middle class of gaming dead?

VxKex NEXT - For those who refuse to leave Windows 7 behind

Link: https://github.com/YuZhouRen86/VxKex-NEXT

https://github.com/i486/VxKex

https://x.com/TheBobPony/status/1891308340837249317

“VxKex NEXT is a set of API extensions for Windows 7 that allow some Windows 8, 8.1 and 10-exclusive applications to run on Windows 7.” Quite a few programs that no longer support Windows 7 (most notably, Steam) runs on Win7 using VxKex NEXT. Quite impressive r