This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, January 4th, 2026.

We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and try to help each other understand.

Today's AMD earnings disappoint analysts, so they really want us to talk about the next Xbox.

They do. I'm Tom Merritt.

And I'm Sarah Lane.

Let's start with what you need to know with

the big story. Motang spotted the big story on our subreddit today. Thank you, Motang. During

AMD's earnings call, CEO Lisa Sue said Microsoft's development of an Xbox with a semi-custom

sock system on a chip from AMD is, quote, progressing well to support a launch in 2027.

Now, this is probably the rumored Magnus Sox supposedly built on TSM's N3P node based on RDNA5.

The CEO of AMD doesn't accidentally give the launch time for an Xbox,

so I'm guessing Microsoft wanted to let this slip for some reason. There were some court documents

from an FTC case against Microsoft last year that indicated Microsoft planned a 2028 release,

so maybe they wanted it out there that it's going to come earlier.

Sue also confirmed that Valve's steam machine is on track for a release early this year.

That's something Valve has talked about publicly before.

And don't forget, AMD also makes custom socks for Sony's PlayStation as well.

AMD is also happy for us to talk about that Xbox stuff because their earnings, while good,

included a disappointing forecast for Q1. Analyst didn't see the boost from data center spending

that they had hoped to see. But still, Q4 sales for AMD rose 34%. Data center spending for

AMD rose 39%. People just thought it was going to be bigger and they expected AMD to

project more coming in the next quarter. And Gadget reminds us that Xbox president,

...