Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Redmond today. It seems Microsoft has accidentally published a pile of its own highly confidential documents, in the context of its legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the Activision merger.
The unredacted documents were uploaded Friday to the website of the District Court of the Northern District of California, which is hearing the case, as part of a wider release of redacted information. And this incident really is a doozy. One of the documents details Microsoft’s Xbox roadmap, revealing the design and specs of a revamped, disk-free Series X console that will apparently drop next year, together with a new controller codenamed “Sebille.” The next-gen Xbox will come out in 2028, it seems.
Another document provides a now-out-of-date release schedule for a bunch of Bethesda games, including remasters of Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Meanwhile, an email exchange in another of the leaked documents shows Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer contemplating takeovers of Nintendo and Steam-maker Valve.
“The FTC was not responsible for uploading Microsoft’s plans for its games and consoles to the court website,” spokesperson Douglas Farrar said in a statement this morning. Spelling it out more clearly, Farrar told NBC News that “Microsoft was responsible for the error.”
These aren’t the only revelations to emerge from the case this week. An intentionally released document shows, for example, that Elder Scrolls VI won’t come out before 2026, and won’t be available on Sony’s PlayStation console. (Speaking personally, these Elder Scrolls tidbits are the most intriguing. I don’t really game, but when I do, it’s Khajiit time.) But the unintentional release of those other documents—which were reportedly attached to an uploaded file and badly hidden—is surely prompting some lively discussions at Microsoft HQ. The company is yet to comment.
But y’know, stuff happens. One unfortunate Big Tech firm yesterday admitted that an employee accidentally exposed 38 whole terabytes of his former colleagues’ private data, including Teams messages and comprehensive backups of their workstations, by misconfiguring a security token in a URL posted to a public GitHub repository. The company—and yes, of course, it’s Microsoft—says its customers’ data was not put at risk by the incident.
One more Microsoft story, because they are just having one of those weeks: Panos Panay, the company’s chief product officer, is leaving nearly two decades after he joined Microsoft as a PC hardware group program manager. Consumer marketing chief Yusuf Mehdi will replace him.
According to Bloomberg, Panay is jumping across to run Amazon’s hardware division, as unit chief David Limp is retiring. So it’s goodbye Surface and hello Echo, at a time when the Amazon unit is reportedly suffering from low morale due to a lack of hits on the horizon—perhaps Panay can fix that.
More news below.
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.
David Meyer
NEWSWORTHY
Musk floats X paywall. Elon Musk says X is “moving to having a small payment for use of the system,” and is pitching this paywall as “the only defense against vast armies of bots.” As the BBC reports, this will likely be less money than ex-Twitter currently charges for its premium features, but it risks seeing a lot of users leave the platform, which would in turn harm ad revenue.
Instacart goes public. Instacart, buoyed by the success of Arm’s IPO, priced its shares at the top end of its range—$30—and is poised to make its stock market debut today. The Financial Times reports that Instacart’s IPO raised around $660 million at a $9.9 billion valuation, about one quarter of its private market valuation in 2021.
Jack’s back. Jack Dorsey is going to be heading up Square again after CEO Alyssa Henry announced her resignation. CNN reports that Dorsey, who already enjoys the title of “Block Head” due to his CEO-ship of the Square parent, will also assume the role of “Square Head.”
ON OUR FEED
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on the anti-Ulez online manipulation campaign on Twitter alone.”
—London Mayor Sadiq Khan, of the U.K.’s Labour Party, says somebody paid a lot of money to turn Londoners against the expansion of British capital’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez). The anti-Ulez campaign is credited with helping the increasingly unpopular Conservative Party hang onto a seat in west London during a recent special election.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Exclusive: VSCO appoints new CEO as social media app looks to help ‘creators to make some money’, by Paolo Confino
‘Ozempic TikTok’ is fueled by a hidden economy where weight loss influencers trade referrals for drug discounts and cash, by Alexandra Sternlicht
YouTube suspends monetization of Russell Brand’s channel after ex-Hollywood star is accused of rape and sexual assault, by Chloe Taylor
Google is adding Bard to Gmail, Maps and YouTube in fight with OpenAI and MIcrosoft for AI dominance, by Associated Press
Tim Cook says he watched the entire third season of ‘Ted Lasso’ on Apple Vision Pro, by Chris Morris
The U.S.-China trade war is counterproductive–and the Huawei P60’s chip is just one of its many unforeseen ramifications, by Ben Harburg
Meta millennial morale improves as the La Croix flows and the corporate hoodies get touted around again, by Bloomberg
BEFORE YOU GO
AI on the desktop...or not. AMD CEO Lisa Su may have said earlier this year that her company would put AI in "every single product" within the next five years, but it seems the company isn’t being overly bullish when it comes to desktop CPUs.
AMD commercial client chief Justin Galton told The Register that AI is still a thing for “the top of the stack” and AMD was only putting an AI accelerator into one CPU at this point—the Ryzen 7040. Galton: “I don’t think small to medium business will be bullish on AI.”
This is the web version of Data Sheet, a daily newsletter on the business of tech. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
