With GDC kicking off, our team is in San Francisco to celebrate with independent developers who continue to inspire us every day with their ambition, creativity, and passion. In the past year alone, ID@Xbox has seen over 1,000 games launch, including fan favorites like Balatro, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and Phasmophobia, bringing new experiences to console and PC communities. Since ID@Xbox was launched in 2013, more than $5 billion have been paid to independent developers from all over the world. We're also proud to offer developers the ability to use our platform to maximize the opportunity to reach an audience across multiple screens.

As announced last week, over 1,000 titles are now supporting Xbox Play Anywhere (XPA). When players purchase an XPA game, they can play on Xbox and Windows 10/11 PCs at no additional cost, bringing their saves, progress and achievements across devices. This means players can access their favorite games in more places which has led to these titles getting 20% more play time. Today, Xbox offers more places than ever to play independent games: Xbox consoles, gaming PCs, and laptops, Windows handhelds like the ASUS ROG Ally X or Legion Go, mobile phones, tablets, Samsung and Amazon FireSticks enabled by the Cloud - all of these are an Xbox, and all a potential home for your next favorite ID@Xbox title like Another Crab's Treasure, Neva, and Animal Well.

The "standard" ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 OC Edition is already a really an "astronomically expensive" prospect (if you can find available stock); launch MSRP was $2800, but retailers pushed that figure beyond the $3000 mark. An even fancier golden variant exists—as a reminder; news outlets picked up on the existence of a "Dhahab" model early last month. This luxuriously decorated collector piece was likely introduced as a regional exclusive, for MENA (Middle-East and North Africa). This week, ASUS managed to sneak one gold encrusted sample out to San Francisco, California.

Ernest Cheng—Director of Marketing at the firm's North American branch—shared a photo (via LinkedIn) of the very unique ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhahab OC Edition model; freshly scribbled on by Jensen Huang during GTC 2025. The ASUS exec commented on this blessing: "graphics card is one of a kind when it's been anointed. But it says a lot more when it's a Golden ROG RTX 5090 Astral." Press outlets reckon that this extremely special item will be auctioned off for charity; the presence of Team Green CEO's autograph and slogan ("RTX ON!") will boost its value severalfold. A Jensen Huang-signed ROG MATRIX RTX 4090 PLATINUM card attracted a top bid of $16,000; Der8auer (aka Roman Hartung) was officially congratulated as the winner back in late 2023.

Update 18:02 UTC: ASUS has confirmed that it will be supporting a local charity: "we are extremely honored to have this special edition ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhahab OC graphics card, signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. This card will be officially auctioned to support relief efforts for the California wildfires in Los Angeles."

Yesterday evening, the NVIDIA AI Developer social media account sent out a red alert regarding a time limited sale of flagship-tier Blackwell gaming hardware: "GeForce RTX 5090s are available at the Gear Store in the park right now at GTC 2025. 90 units are available for the next 30 minutes, with more coming tomorrow. Come say hi!" PC hardware news outlets have picked up on Team Green's latest stock bulletin, with Tom's Hardware disclosing some extra details. Under normal circumstances, NVIDIA's Gear Store Mobile Truck would be selling fairly standard merchandise—e.g. T-shirts, sweaters, hats, etc. According to the latest reports, the company's mobile pop-up store is taking orders for add-in-boards (AIB) GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 models. An information placard advertises old school/launch day guide prices of $1999 and $999 (respectively).

Tom's Hardware noted several caveats: "the graphics cards must be purchased from NVIDIA's van from 7 AM to 12 PM on Thursday or Friday and then picked up at South Hall main entrance the same day. The graphics boards are available to conference pass ($1145 for one day, or $2295 for five days) and exhibit pass holders only; with a limit of one card per person." According to folks on the ground, Team Green and its board partners have stockpiled a thousand of each highly-desirable GPU model at the San Jose Convention Center. The first waves of time-limited batches were made available yesterday (March 19). Demand for flagship and top-end GeForce RTX 50 series cards has far exceeded supply, starting back in late January. Following an absorption of plentiful feedback, NVIDIA revived its "Verified Priority Access" scheme a couple of weeks ago. This anti-scalping initiative was advertised as offering: "a limited number of verified GeForce gamers and creators in the United States the opportunity to purchase one GeForce RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 Founders Edition graphics card from the NVIDIA Marketplace."

Shahram Mokhtari and Elizabeth Chamberlain—members of the iFixit Teardown Team—spent hands-on time with Framework's freshly introduced 4.5 liter Mini-ITX "Desktop" PC system. Official press material revealed cooling solution partnerships with Cooler Master and Noctua, but only a minority of "2nd Gen event" attendees were allowed to handle these pre-release modular parts. iFixit employees did not perform a full evaluation of Framework's new desktop model, since they were dealing with a prototype unit. A "repairability score" will be awarded once finalized hardware is delivered to iFixit's base of operations. In the meantime, their video team was hosted at Framework's Northern California office.

According to a follow-up report, Mokhtari and Chamberlain enjoyed their visit: "it's teardown time. Framework has been a beacon of repairability in the laptop space, and now they're bringing that ethos to desktops...Taking this thing apart was exactly as easy as we've come to expect from Framework. They brought us to their HQ to rip into it, and from the very first step, it was clear: this desktop was designed to be opened." Potential buyers—of Framework Desktop—are faced with many configurations, but a crucial choice will focus on available APU options. The highest-end builds will feature AMD's 16-core Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" processor—iFixit's teardown did not reveal any major revelations in terms of the APU's physical appearance. Even Framework's own press release contains an exposed shot—hardcore processor design enthusiasts are better catered to with a more in-depth analysis of "Strix Halo."

As we gear up for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025, we couldn't be more excited to meet up with our friends and colleagues in the industry and explore the many incredible new opportunities that await. This year, GDC takes place from March 17-21 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. We'll host partner meetings, participate in conference sessions, and sponsor events like the IGF Awards and the ESA Foundation's Nite to Unite. Attendees that come by the Xbox Lounge in Moscone South will have a chance to see the latest Xbox experience on PC, join a Q&A with an Xbox development expert, and learn about the opportunities and benefits of building with Xbox across PC, Cloud and Console.

Xbox is expanding to any screen on any device, making it easier for anyone to play with the friends they want - whether they choose to play with Xbox console, PC, Smart TV or mobile. At GDC, we're inviting game developers to go behind the scenes to better understand what it means for Xbox to be playable on any screen. We're committed to empowering game developers to tap into that opportunity by building cross-capable games that take advantage of Xbox across devices. Our presence will reveal the many ways game developers can reach more players with Xbox and showcase success stories of developers who are maximizing the opportunity.

We've been hinting that this year is going to be huge, and we're ready to share why… in two weeks on Feb 25th, at our Framework (2nd Gen) Event! We're holding this launch event live in San Francisco and streaming to our YouTube channel at 10:30am Pacific that day. You can sign up now to get notified when the stream starts. The last time we held a live launch event was in March 2023, when we unveiled Framework Laptop 16 and two new versions of Framework Laptop 13. It's been amazing seeing the interest in these products and the incredible ways the community has been using and extending on them. We've been heads down working for the last two years on an even bigger set of announcements.

For this event, in addition to bringing in press and partners, we're opening a pool of invites to the Framework Community to attend the event in person, meet the team, and get hands on with our newest products. If you're a current Framework fan and are in the San Francisco area (or are able to handle your own travel to us), you can apply to attend in this sign-up form. We expect we'll see a lot more interest than we have available seats in our venue, so we'll likely need to downselect from applicants.

The U.S. Department of Justice has stepped up its probe into NVIDIA and several other companies in the hopes of gaining evidence that NVIDIA could have violated antitrust laws. The DOJ moved from sending questionnaires to issuing subpoenas requiring recipients to provide more information. This puts the government one step closer to potentially filing a formal complaint. Antitrust officials are concerned that NVIDIA might be making it difficult for customers to switch to other suppliers and could be penalizing those who don't exclusively use its AI chips, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The probe, which first came to light in June via Bloomberg, has seen investigators reaching out to other tech companies for information. The DOJ's San Francisco office is leading the inquiry, though the department has declined to comment publicly on the matter. In response to the investigation, NVIDIA said in an emailed statement that its market dominance is due to the superior quality and performance of its products. "NVIDIA wins on merit, as reflected in our benchmark results and value to customers, who can choose whatever solution is best for them".

Embracer Group has entered (as of March 28) into an agreement to divest Gearbox Entertainment, for a consideration of USD 460 million (SEK 4.9 billion) to Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. ("Take-Two"). The proceeds from the deal will, upon closing, significantly reduce net debt, earnout obligations and capex. Embracer retains selected companies, including Gearbox Publishing San Francisco (to be renamed), with the publishing rights to the Remnant franchise, the upcoming Hyper Light Breaker and other notable unannounced game releases.

"Yesterday's announcement marks the result of the final structured divestment process and is an important step in transforming Embracer into the future with notably lower net debt and improved free cash flow. Through the transaction, we lower business risk and improve profitability as we transition to becoming a leaner and more focused company. After evaluating several options for Gearbox, I am happy that we have reached a solution that is in the best interest of all stakeholders. Randy and the team have been great team members throughout the past years, and I would like to thank them all for that. As one of the world's greatest games developers, I am confident that Gearbox will continue to innovate and thrive in their new home within Take-Two," says Lars Wingefors, co-founder and CEO of Embracer.

As GDC, the world's largest game developer conference, returns to San Francisco, Microsoft and Xbox will be there to engage and empower developers, publishers, and technology partners across the industry. We are committed to supporting game developers on any platform, anywhere in the world, at every stage of development. Our message is simple: Microsoft and Xbox are here to help power your games and empower your teams. From March 18 - 22, the Xbox Lobby Lounge in the Moscone Center South can't be missed—an easy meeting point, and a first step toward learning more about the ID@Xbox publishing program, the Developer Acceleration Program (DAP) for underrepresented creators, Azure cloud gaming services, and anything else developers might need.

GDC features dozens of speakers from across Xbox, Activision, Blizzard, King and ZeniMax who will demonstrate groundbreaking in-game innovations and share community-building strategies. Microsoft technology teams, with support from partners, will also host talks that spotlight new tools, software and services that help increase developer velocity, grow player engagement and help creators grow. See below for the Conference programming details.

"This year, every industry will become a technology industry," NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang told attendees last Wednesday during the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. "You can now recognize and learn the language of almost anything with structure, and you can translate it to anything with structure—so text-protein, protein-text," Huang said in a fireside chat with Martin Chavez, partner and vice chairman of global investment firm Sixth Street Partners and board chair of Recursion, a biopharmaceutical company. "This is the generative AI revolution."

The conversation, which took place at the historic San Francisco Mint, followed a presentation at the J.P. Morgan conference Monday by Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA's VP of healthcare. In her talk, Powell announced that Recursion is the first hosting partner to offer a foundation model through the NVIDIA BioNeMo cloud service, which is advancing into beta this month. She also said that Amgen, one of the first companies to employ BioNeMo, plans to advance drug discovery with generative AI and NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD—and that BioNeMo is used by a growing number of techbio companies, pharmas, AI software vendors and systems integrators. Among them are Deloitte, Innophore, Insilico Medicine, OneAngstrom, Recursion and Terray Therapeutics.

The Crew Motorfest Season 2 kicked off on December 6, marking the start of the game's partnership with Hoonigan, a brand focused on building custom cars capable of performing difficult and precise driving - and looking cool while doing it. Hoonigan is known for their series of Gymkhana films, which feature rally driver and Hoonigan co-founder Ken Block performing incredible stunts in major cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and more. They also created a YouTube series called This vs. That, which pits two customized cars against one another in a best-of-three drag race, and will frequently post new videos highlighting new and upcoming car builds. According to Hoonigan co-founder Brian Scotto, the company's mission statement (other than not to have a mission statement) is to be nimble and have fun, all in service of entertaining their audience (and themselves).

For Season 2, Hoonigan has completely taken over The Crew Motorfest, bringing a new Playlist, Gymkhaha Grid Masters, as well as curated weekly events on the Main Stage, monthly challenges, a car playground just offshore of the main island, and, of course, bespoke Hoonigan cars that can be earned by completing challenges or purchased from the in-game store. Some of the vehicles include Scotto's 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo TWB, Scotto's 1990 Audi Coupé Quattro, the 1965 Ford Hoonicorn Mustang, the 1988 Chevrolet Big Block ZZ632 Camaro, and the Audi S1 E-Tron Quattro Hoonitron 2021, among many others.