Month: January 2022

Enlarge / A small selection of the characters that may not be appearing on PlayStation in the long term.

In the wake of Microsoft’s announcement that it intends to acquire Activision, it has been fun to gawk at the big numbers and speculate about the fate of rich CEOs, among other business implications. But for many PlayStation owners, there’s only one question that matters: will I need to buy an Xbox or PC to continue playing Activision franchises in the future?

Microsoft’s acquisition, which could be finalized as early as July 1, could threaten PlayStation owners’ access to everything from Diablo and Overwatch to Spyro and Tony Hawk. Even Crash Bandicoot, which used to be synonymous with the PlayStation brand, would be a Microsoft property after the deal closes.

And then there’s Call of Duty, the annual first-person shooter mega-franchise that’s particularly hard to imagine not being a part of the PlayStation universe anymore. Call of Duty games continue to be some of the PlayStation’s bestsellers year after year, so a Microsoft acquisition could leave a big gap in the PlayStation catalog. Sony also declared that PlayStation was “the new home of Call of Duty” back in 2015, hyping up early access to betas and map packs for PlayStation owners, and Call of Duty‘s official esports home shifted over to PlayStation that same year.

Enlarge / A look at the Windows 11-style Task Manager, with Mica theming and dark mode support. (credit: FireCubeStudios)

Microsoft’s piecemeal approach to updating and unifying Windows 11’s new look has led to updates for all kinds of old and obscure corners of the operating system, including everything from the volume indicator and the system icons to the humble Paint, Calculator, and Notepad apps. The next app to get its once-every-decade-or-two design renovation may be the Windows Task Manager, and it would be the first major update since Windows 8 came out a decade ago.

The Verge reports that engineering student Gustave Monce spotted the new Task Manager design lurking in a current preview build of Windows 11 (the FireCube Studios Twitter account later posted instructions for enabling it yourself). The app’s basic structure is visible in these builds—like all Windows 11-era apps, the window uses Mica theming and has dark mode support, and it trades the current Task Manager’s horizontal row of tabs for a vertical stack of navigation buttons that mirrors the modern Settings and Windows Security apps. Those text labels will also collapse into a vertical stack of buttons if the window is resized.

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  Redesign aside, the new Task Manager looks like it does the same things that the current one does. Also note how the navigation buttons on the left have collapsed to hide the text labels and make more room for the window content. [credit:
  FireCubeStudios
  ]

According to screenshots posted by users who have the new Task Manager working, it doesn’t look like the redesigned app includes significant functional improvements; the vertical buttons all correspond to the tabs in the current Task Manager, and the views for monitoring processes and resource usage all look pretty much the same as they do now. But the new design is clearly a work in progress, and Microsoft may have more changes planned before it formally introduces the redesigned app to Windows Insiders.