Microsoft news recap: Q3 FY21 revenue up across the board, Fortnite won’t be coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming, and more

Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

Microsoft Acquires Flatcar maker Kinvolk

This week saw Microsoft formally announce its acquisition of Kinvolk, the Berlin-based creator of Flatcar Container Linux, an enterprise-grade open cloud native stack. The amount paid has not been disclosed.

Halo Infinite will support cross-play and cross-progression between Xbox and PC

It has been confirmed that the next instalment of Halo, Halo Infinite, will support both cross-play and cross-progression between Xbox and PC when it launches in Fall 2021.

Epic Games won’t bring Fortnite to Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service

Epic Games has dashed hopes of Fortnite coming to Microsoft’s game streaming service, Xbox Cloud Gaming, after their Vice President of business development hinted that Xbox Cloud Gaming competes with its Epic Games Store offering on PC, and therefore Fortnite would not be coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Microsoft’s Q3 FY21 earnings point to high demand for its products

Microsoft’s latest earnings figures show a 19% revenue increase year-over-year. Areas across the company showed growth, including Xbox revenue increasing 50%, whilst Windows OEM revenue grew 10%, followed by search advertising revenue growing 17%.

This week in Microsoft Teams

New Calling experience is coming to Microsoft Teams in May

The timeline in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre has been updated to reflect that the new Calling experience for Microsoft Teams is expected to launch in May 2021. The update is aimed at providing a more streamlined calling experience across both Windows and macOS desktop apps.

Microsoft Teams now lets meetings organizers mute audio from individual attendees

Meetings organisers can now mute audio from individual attendees, preventing the individual from unmuting. This provides an ideal solution from the current workaround of having to mute all attendees.

GitHub app in Microsoft Teams gets new personal app experience, scheduled reminders, and more

The GitHub app in Microsoft Teams has received a bunch of new features. One of the main improvements is the new ‘personal app experience’, which allows users to follow their repositories and get notifications for key events, such as commits or issues, amongst other features and improvements.

Viva Learning is now available in preview in Microsoft Teams

Viva Learning has entered public preview in Microsoft Teams. Viva Learning is designed to make it easy to find training content from providers such as LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, as well as third-party providers.

That’s it for this week. We will be back next week with more Microsoft news.