Xbox caps cloud gaming at 15 hours a month, VW to cut 100,000 jobs

Xbox is introducing strict monthly time limits for Game Pass subscribers who stream games online through its cloud gaming service. The changes, which come into effect in November, will see a subscriber to the £16.99 Ultimate monthly plan able to stream games for up to 15 hours a month – before having to purchase additional cloud play time. Xbox said the limits were due to the rising cost of cloud gaming, and they would allow the firm to “continue to invest” in the service’s “reliability and performance”. BBC 

Which EVs are best able to stave off the issue of battery degradation?  Austrian EV battery diagnostics firm, AVILOO, compiled data from more than 500,000 battery State of Health (SoH) tests conducted across North and South America, Asia, Australia and Europe, between 2022 and 2026.  Results showed that electric car batteries are lasting a lot longer than some sceptics may have envisioned. None of the 20 EV models tested showed a median drop in SoH of more than 10 per cent in the first 50,000km. Auto Express

At least 14 people from across Serbian civil society were targeted with advanced spyware earlier this year in what the digital rights group Share Foundation said was the largest documented ​wave of such infection in Serbia to date. The wave of spyware infections was discovered in August after Apple notified people in 110 ⁠countries that they had probably been victims ⁠of mercenary spyware. The Guardian 

German car giant Volkswagen said that management and unions had agreed to cut a further 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, bringing total job losses to 100,000. Volkswagen is about to shed one in seven of its workers. The German car giant said on Thursday that management and unions had agreed to cut a further 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade, on top of 50,000 already planned, bringing total losses to 100,000. “It is essential to systematically align workforce levels with economic realities,” the 10-brand group said in a statement.  Euronews 

Roku has announced its first-ever OLED TVs: the Roku Pro Series OLED TV and Roku Pro Series LX OLED TV. However, rather than just the panel tech, it’s the aggressive pricing that has caught our attention. Prices start at $999 (around £740/ AU$1389) for the 55-inch Pro Series OLED and $1299 (around £962/ AU$180) for the Pro Series LX OLED. The Roku Pro Series OLED is available in 55- and 65-inch sizes, and comes with a 120Hz panel with support for Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and HLG. Gaming features include ALLM, VRR, and FreeSync Premium, and it also supports Dolby Atmos. WhatHiFi

Apple reportedly plans to release MacBook Pro models with OLED displays by early 2027, and Omdia analyst David Hsieh has predicted that the laptops will have an M5 Ultra chip option. Given that these MacBook Pro models might actually be branded as “MacBook Ultra” models, it would be fitting if there were configurations with the M5 Ultra chip available. But keep your expectations low, as there has never been a MacBook with an Ultra chip, and a previous report from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman only mentioned M5 Pro and M5 Max chips for these laptops. MacRumors