Microsoft's Minesweeper ugly Xmas sweater has already sold out
Because beauty, just like a mine, is on the inside.
It’s that time of year again and Microsoft released its annual themed ugly sweater for the Christmas season. In previous years, we’ve seen homages to Microsoft programs like Windows XP and the much beloved MS Paint.
Though it sold out pretty quickly once again, this year Microsoft featured Minesweeper in it’s ugly sweater efforts. For those who are too young, Minesweeper is a puzzle game included in some versions of windows. Players click squares and hope there aren’t any mines on it, or they right click them in the hopes that there are. Later they might learn that the numbers are there to help them figure this out. It might be embarrassingly later in life for some.
This Minesweeper themed sweater has the traditional square grid from the game, shaped like a Christmas tree in the centre with a snow and mine filled motif around. The often judgemental, smiley in the top centre is wearing a red and white snowy hat to match and the scores at the top are 1990 and 2021. These are paying homage to the year Minesweeper released as part of the Microsoft Entertainment Pack 1, and obviously also this year, the year the sweater was released.
Windows 11 review: what we think of the new OS
How to install Windows 11: safe and secure install
What you need to know before upgrading: things to note before downloading the latest OS
Windows 11 TPM requirements: Microsoft's strict security policy
While you can’t get one anymore, Microsoft’s seasonal ugly sweaters are also tied to some sort of charitable donation. This year, the company is giving $100,000 USD to AbleGamers, a wonderful charity that helps connect people with disabilities with more accessible ways to play games. They're absolutely worth checking out, ugly sweater or no.
We also have a list of some other ugly gaming sweaters we would totally maybe wear that you can buy. For other things you can buy, some Cyber Monday deals are still ongoing and we’re still collecting the best ones for you here.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding.
Jen-Hsun Huang might be 'Taylor Swift but for tech', but did you know he was once praised in Sports Illustrated as being 'perhaps the most promising junior ever to play table tennis in the Northwest'?
Some high-stakes poker players are cheating with an earpiece that's 'so small that you can’t take it off with your fingers' and looks like a 'James Bond movie device'