It looks like Microsoft is readying its Powerpoints to show off the future of Windows — and much more. A new report signals that the company will put forward a series of live streams that showcase its ambitions for its operating system, the Microsoft 365 suite (and work in general), security, gaming and the cloud.
This upcoming Windows event will likely show off the refreshed version of Windows 10, code-named Sun Valley. It's also been a while since we've heard talk about Windows 10X, so that may also be on the agenda.
This is all, of course, the company's way to do things differently while it cannot have live events because of the rules of social distancing during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
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This news come from a story at The Verge, which notes it "learned" of Microsoft's plans for "a series of news events over the coming months."
The first event is titled "Reimagine the Employee Experience," and will take place at 9 a.m. ET this Thursday (Feb. 4). Since it was posted by the Microsoft 365 account, we expect to see how Teams, Word, Excel and the rest of the Office suite has been updated for optimal co-working.
It will be hosted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft 365 Corporate VP Jared Spataro.
Watch @SatyaNadella and @Jared_Spataro discuss ways to transform the employee experience. Save the date for our digital event. #EmployeeExperience https://t.co/LV5KjcwBPF pic.twitter.com/uHHbQlFdcXJanuary 28, 2021
As for the gaming event, Microsoft's XCloud and Xbox Game Pass seem like top contenders for news — as such an event seems more likely to focus on services than actual game news. We're not getting anything close to a normal E3 this year, so Microsoft could still save some game announcements for its own stream. It's unclear when Microsoft's gaming event would be at this point.
These events reportedly won't replace Microsoft's Build and Ignite events, but rather augments them as a series of announcements.
There's no word about how Microsoft plans to announce the Surface Pro 8 — as it just gave a minor update for business and education crowds with the Surface Pro 7+.
