> 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

> 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/ 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-free-promise-in-question-as-dolby-sues-snapchat-over-codec/ 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.