Following heavy criticism of the change, the Xbox 000 has announced that it will not be increasing the price for its Xbox Live Gold subscription service. 'We messed up today and you were right to let us know,' the company said in its update on the matter. Instead, the company says you'll no longer need Xbox Live Gold to play free-to-play games on Xbox consoles.
Microsoft has revealed the Xbox Live Games with Gold for February 2021, and it seems that next month Gold subscribers are going to get a bonus game. Instead of the typical four games for free, Xbox Live Gold subscribers will have five, with none other than Gears 5 leading the charge. Gears 5 is a game that many Xbox One owners and even PC gamers will be familiar with, because it's one of the first-party titles Microsoft uses heavily in Xbox Game Pass advertising.
It's been a long time coming, but it looks like YouTube finally has HDR support on Xbox consoles. It doesn't matter if you're using a console from this generation or the last, if you're streaming YouTube on a TV that supports HDR, you should be able to tap into HDR while you watch. This is something that has apparently been in the works for a number of years, but it's here now at last.
Xbox Live Gold is getting more expensive, with Microsoft bumping up the price of its subscription gaming service. The fee adjustment for Xbox Live Gold - which includes online gaming, new game discounts, and more - will see the biggest hit on those who pay either monthly or quarterly for the service.
Microsoft is adding a new Edge feature that will be familiar to Chrome and select other browser users: an alert when your password is compromised. Called Password Monitor, the security feature is designed to alert users when their password has been discovered as the result of a third-party breach, such as from an old forum you used to post on that was later compromised.
Minecraft has grown considerably from its humble voxel beginnings and has branched out into different platforms and even genres. Some, like the Minecraft Earth AR game, didn't really take off but others like the hack-and-slash Minecraft Dungeons have stuck around so far. Mojang, under the auspices of Microsoft, has been trying to consolidate all of these under a single roof and one of its latest is to move Dungeons players to a new, unified Minecraft launcher.
Windows security vulnerabilities and bugs aren't new but most of the ones that we hear of involve downloading malicious software, often unknowingly, from dubious websites. In the past few days, however, at least one bug was reported that could corrupt your hard drive just by viewing a file's icon or typing a simple command. Now another slightly similar problem has been disclosed, one that could produce the dreaded Blue Screen of Death or BSOD, just by visiting a link or location on your own computer.
To date, people mostly think of Windows as an operating system for desktops and laptops. Despite Microsoft's efforts since Windows 8 and various "special editions" like Windows 10 S, the OS has struggled to fully adapt a user experience that could rival the likes of iPadOS or even Android when it comes to touch-based devices. Windows 10X, which was initially intended for the fully touch-centric Surface Neo, could be the break that Microsoft needs and a new video showing it in action could prove exactly that.
We find ourselves in the middle of January, and that means Microsoft has detailed a new batch of games that will be heading to Xbox Game Pass throughout the rest of the month. There are a lot of big-name titles hitting the service in the next couple of weeks, and most people with a Game Pass subscription will probably want to check out at least one of them.
Microsoft is joining a new, $2 billion investment round in Cruise, partnering with the autonomous vehicle company and General Motors to work on commercializing driverless technology. The deal will see Cruise valued at $30 billion, with Microsoft joining not only GM but Honda and other investors in adding new equity to the self-driving firm.
After becoming a mostly touch-based society thanks to smartphones and tablets, tech giants are trying to turn us back towards using our literal voices to drive our interactions with technology. AI assistants, smart speakers, and speech recognition have become staples of many products and services but, unlike touch, voice data also carries more privacy implications. After being criticized and scrutinized over such privacy invasions like its peers, Microsoft is now announcing a bigger change to its voice data collection practices that it says gives users more control.
Although the likes of Facebook Oculus and HTC Vive take the lion's share of the attention of consumers and mainstream media, their technologies are still mostly seen to lean more towards entertainment and gaming. In contrast, Microsoft's HoloLens platform was designed primarily to be an extension of the company's productivity ecosystem. That nature is being emphasized even more in the latest Insider Preview for the HoloLens, bringing Microsoft's new Edge browser at long last.
