Some of the fired workers were forcibly removed after occupying the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. Google head of global security Chris Rackow said that the company "will not tolerate" such incidences and warned that the company could take further action.

"If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again," he told employees in a letter. "The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination."

However, workers in the "No Tech for Apartheid" group organizing the protests called the dismissals "a flagrant act of retaliation." It added that the Google saying protests largely involve people not working at the company is "insulting," adding that the push to drop Project Nimbus is supported by "thousands" of their colleagues.

"In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” it wrote in a Medium post. "Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.”

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"Our vision: Develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences," one of the slides reads. "Optimized for real time game play and creators, we will enable new levels of performance beyond the capabilities of the client hardware alone." In a slide, Microsoft projects the next-gen console arriving in 2028 with "cloud hybrid games" and an "immersive game & app platform."

On the hardware side, Microsoft foresees things like next-gen DirectX raytracing, dynamic global illumination, ML based super resolution, micropolygon rendering optimization and more. The system could allow for different types of devices, ranging from relatively powerful consoles to "Thin OS… $99 consumer or handheld devices" that rely on xCloud computing.

"Hybrid compute" would presumably differ from regular cloud gaming by using hardware and cloud computing to display in-game elements simultaneously. For instance, primary characters would run on your local GPU, while NPCs, background elements and more would be generated remotely.

Microsoft also sees heavy use of AI and machine learning (ML) in next-gen gaming. From a performance vantage, neural networks would power super resolution, frame rate interpretation and latency compensation, for instance. They would improve game experiences (AI agents, codex, matchmaking, player ranking) and player services (safety & toxicity, personalization & discovery, support services). It would also aid on the creator side via AI game testing, procedural content, physics, NLP dialogue and live ops (engagement & retention management, monetization, cloud resource optimization).

One slide suggested Microsoft was seeking to forge deals with AMD for Navi 5 graphics and Zen 6 CPU cores, but another stated that the company needs to make an "Arm64 decision." In any case, it may have already begun its plans. Another slide titled "The journey has already started" shows a full roadmap: hardware design and hybrid game design starting in 2024, with dev kits available by 2027 and shipping by 2028.

The slide appears to be part of a conversation, and not a fixed roadmap by any means. Preceding the slideshow are documents showing a conversation between CEO Satya Nadella, Xbox's Phil Spencer, and others. Saying that the company is working on four types of computers (cloud everything, a hybrid Xbox, hybrid Windows, and hybrid HoloLens), Nadella notes that "we need to bring the company’s systems talent together to align on a unified vision," adding that "we can't go from big idea to big idea. We need to bring the company's systems talent together to align on a unified vision."

Other ideas revolve around a "mobile controller," whereby the "controller becomes the hero." That makes it seem that Microsoft was still working out its vision for next-gen Xbox at the time of the presentation — so it may have changed course completely since then.

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Amazon (through Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft are by far the biggest players in that field in the UK. Between them, they had a market share of between 70 and 80 percent last year, according to a report from media regulator Ofcom, which asked the CMA to investigate the market. Google is in third place with a relatively paltry share of between five and 10 percent.

Ofcom believes that competition in the market is constrained by a number of factors that make it hard for customers to switch suppliers or use more than one at the same time. A key issue is egress fees, which customers often have to pay to transfer their data to another service. "The cost of transferring data between rival providers can discourage customers from using more than one cloud provider and in some cases make switching more costly," Ofcom said in its report.

A lack of interoperability and portability can make it overly laborious for customers to configure their data and apps to work on different services, the regulator said. Discounts can also dissuade customers from using more than one provider.

Those factors give Microsoft and Amazon a leg up over the competition, Ofcom suggests. "Limits on the ability of customers to credibly threaten to switch away can reduce the competitive pressure on the market leaders, giving them a degree of market power," the report states. "If customers have difficulty switching and using multiple providers, it could make it harder for competitors to gain scale and challenge AWS and Microsoft effectively for the business of new and existing customers."

In addition, Ofcom notes that some cloud service providers have raised concerns over the business software licensing practices of some cloud players, especially Microsoft. "We have received submissions that say Microsoft engages in several practices that make it less attractive for customers to use Microsoft’s licensed software products on the cloud infrastructure of rival providers compared to Microsoft Azure," the report states. "The submissions allege that this limits their ability to compete for customers." The products in question include Windows and Microsoft 365. Ofcom says that Microsoft has disputed the veracity of these claims.

"We welcome Ofcom’s referral of public cloud infrastructure services to us for in-depth scrutiny," CMA CEO Sarah Cardell said in a statement. "This is a £7.5 billion [$9.1 billion] market that underpins a whole host of online services — from social media to AI foundation models. Many businesses now completely rely on cloud services, making effective competition in this market essential." The CMA plans to conclude its investigation by April 2025.

Microsoft and Amazon both say they'll work constructively with the CMA. Amazon took issue with Ofcom's claims, telling Reutersthat the watchdog's conclusions were rooted in "a fundamental misconception of how the IT sector functions, and the services and discounts on offer."

The cloud has been a sticking point in another Microsoft-CMA tussle. The watchdog initially blocked the company's proposed $68.7 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard due to concerns that Microsoft would hold too much power in the cloud gaming market. Microsoft later pledged to sell cloud game streaming rights to Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft if the deal goes through. That concession, made as part of Microsoft's revised agreement, "opens the door to the deal being cleared," the CMA said in September. The regulator will make its final decision on the merger this month.

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Unity Muse is described as an “ever-expanding suite of AI-powered features” made for developers of all skill levels. The platform lets you source usable code by interacting with a chatbot. This bot will also answer any questions you may have about what to do next, as it has complete access to the platform’s resource library. These types of bots are becoming a key tool in the game designer’s arsenal.

There’s also a tool designed specifically to streamline the creation of 2D sprites, which is perfect for all of you budding Metroidvania designers out there. It’ll automatically generate sprites that match predetermined parameters and will give you several variations, allowing you to pick the best match.

Muse offers a similar process to generate textures appropriate for use in both 2D and 3D projects. The sprite and texture tools have been trained entirely on data and images that Unity owns or has licensed. This ensures the platform won’t accidentally run afoul of any copyright law. Unity says Muse results will never contain any “people, logos or recognizable artistic styles.”

The company says that the sprite and texture tools are just the beginning. In the coming months, Muse will boast AI mechanisms for animating characters and for setting NPC behaviors, among other tasks. You won’t need to code to do any of it, which is becoming something of a trend in the industry. Muse subscribers also get access to a rapid-prototyping and collaboration platform called Sketch.

The availability of Muse wasn’t the only announcement at today’s Unity Unite conference. The company also provided more details on Sentis, a forthcoming AI-powered neural engine that goes well beyond sprites and textures, as it can solve complicated coding problems and even create new in-game features from scratch. Sentis is currently in open beta and will launch to the public sometime next year.

The company also announced a set of cloud-connected tools to further assist with collaborations and it offered up some availability details on the long-awaited Unity 6. It’s coming next year.

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“Broadcom has received legal merger clearance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Israel, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions,” the company said. “We are excited to welcome VMware to Broadcom and bring together our engineering-first, innovation-centric teams.”

The Broadcom/VMware deal lacked the glamour of tech’s other mega acquisition involving Microsoft and Activision. However, San Jose-based Broadcom’s products form the structure of much of the internet, as they’re widely used for data centers, cloud providers and network infrastructure. VMware, meanwhile, makes virtualization and cloud computing software that allows corporations to safely link local networks with public cloud access.

That made VMware a logical target for Broadcom, but it also placed the acquisition in the crosshairs of regulators in multiple regions. The European Commission, for one, was concerned that Broadcom could harm competition by limiting interoperability between rival hardware and VMware’s server virtualization software. It also worried the company could either prevent or degrade access to VMware’s software, or bundle VMware with its own hardware products.

Broadcom gained EU approval for the deal in the summer though, mainly by providing IP access and source code for key network fiber optic components to its main rival, Marvell. The EU also concluded that fears of VMware bundling were unfounded and that Broadcom would still face competition in the storage adapter and NIC markets.

There were also concerns that tensions between China and the US could scuttle the deal, after the Biden administration announced new rules in October making it harder to export high-end chips to China. However, approval in that market was announced yesterday, with conditions imposed by China on how Broadcom sells products locally. Namely, it had to ensure that VMware’s server software was interoperable with rival hardware, China’s regulator said in a statement.

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