> It's worse for our users, but easier for our developers

What's easiest for both users and developers is royalty-free video formats.

AV1 is solution to these video format licensing problems. Microsoft is part of the Alliance for Open Media: https://aomedia.org/about/members/

Dolby has made direct threats to the royalty-free status of AV1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...

So Microsoft and all the AOMedia members will need to defend AV1 if they want it to remain royalty-free.