Xbox fans won’t want to miss the upcoming XO19 fan event in London in November. Microsoft will offer three days of festivities at the Copper Box Arena on November 14-16, and the Xbox team emphasized that “it’s the biggest Xbox event we’ve ever hosted in the UK.”

The event will kick off with a special Inside Xbox episode on November 14 which will also be live streamed on Mixer and other Xbox social media channels. Moreover, Microsoft will also hold the first Xbox FanFest ever in the UK on the same day.

Xbox FanFest attendees will be able to watch the Inside Xbox broadcast live and in-person, then following the show they will have early and exclusive access to the X019 showfloor, including world premiere hands-on gameplay, special activations, the Xbox Official Gear Store and its exclusive products, plus much more!

If you think gamescom is big, just wait. Get ready for “the biggest Inside Xbox show of the year” at X019!

Tickets go on sale September 24: https://t.co/pyj1UMHvjg pic.twitter.com/jo6MmivkED

— Xbox (@Xbox) August 19, 2019

XO19 attendees can expect some hands-on gameplay with the biggest new Xbox games launching this Fall, panels with Xbox Game Studio teams, as well as developer meet-and-greets and autograph sessions. Xbox head Phil Spencer will also make the trip along with Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty and Xbox Director of Programming Major Nelson.

All tickets will go on sale Tuesday, September 24 at £19 per session, and Microsoft said that all proceeds will go to charity. All tickets will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Microsoft will have more information about ticketing details in the coming weeks on www.Xbox.com/X019.

PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG) is getting crossplay support between Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in October. The news was announced today during Microsoft’s special Inside Xbox episode, and it should be an exciting update for fans of the popular battle royale game.

“This has been, hands down, the most requested feature since we launched on consoles and we’re so happy to finally provide this for our console community on Xbox One and PlayStation 4,” wrote Cecilia Lee, Community Manager, PUBG Corporation. Crossplay will go live first in late September on the PUBG Public Test Server, and it will be generally available in early October.

You’ve never seen the Battlegrounds like this before. PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS Season 4 is here.

????????: https://t.co/jTq6soX7XS pic.twitter.com/B4Y0FLw3Ch

— Xbox (@Xbox) August 19, 2019

The PUBG team also announced plans to ship new content updates on consoles faster than before, and the goal will be to ship new updates within two weeks of their PC release. “Starting Aug. 27, PUBG Season 4 will release on console and all-in game content will be aligned across all platforms. All subsequent console updates will then land two weeks after its release on PC,” Lee said today.

If you haven’t tried PUBG yet, the battle royale game available for free with Xbox Game Pass. For a limited time, you can get two months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (which includes Xbox Game Pass for Console, Xbox Game Pass for PC, and Xbox Live Gold) for just $2.

Microsoft has just kicked off its special Inside Xbox episode with some exciting Xbox Game Pass news. Devil May Cry V and Stellaris: Console Edition are now available in the console catalog starting today, and Age of Empires Definitive Edition is also available on PC starting today.

Four more games will be available later this month, starting with Ape Out (PC) and Kingdom Come Deliverance (console) on August 22). The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut, an Xbox Play Anywhere game will also be available on both console and PC on August 27, and it will be followed by the brand new Blair Witch game (also for console and PC) on August 30.

In addition to these new Xbox Game Pass additions, Microsoft also announced some updates to the new Xbox beta app for PC: There will be new filters, more options to manage downloads, as well as the ability to search for friends from Facebook or Steam. Microsoft is also copying Discord by allowing users to add a link to their YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit accounts on their player cards.

We’re excited about the progress we’re making to deliver a great Xbox Game Pass for PC experience and we will continue to deliver more improvements over the coming months based on your input, so please keep the feedback coming,” the Xbox team said today.

Microsoft Paint and WordPad may soon become optional features on Windows 10 PCs. Microsoft made some changes to the Optional Features page in Settings in the latest 20H1 preview build 18963, and Windows Latest has spotted that Microsoft has added the two aforementioned apps in this section in this build.

This Optional Features section includes other legacy Microsoft apps such as Windows Media Player, and users are free to uninstall apps in this category to free some space. Microsoft previously considered making Paint an optional Microsoft Store download following the release of Paint 3D, but the company eventually did a 180 and decided against removing it from the OS. Actually, the software giant even added new features to Paint in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update.

As for WordPad (not to be confused with Notepad), the basic word processor has now been outshined by other free alternatives including OneNote, Office Online, or Google Docs. Microsoft has yet to announce that WordPad is being deprecated, but making this app an optional feature should be a welcome change for Windows 10 users who don’t need it.

It’s weird that Microsoft didn’t announce the addition of Paint and WordPad to the optional features in the release notes for the  build 18963, though it’s certainly not the first time that we discover hidden surprises in new preview builds. We’ll see if the company shares more details soon, but in the meantime let us know in the comments if you plan to remove Paint on WordPad from your PC once you’ll be given the choice.

Microsoft has opened up its wallet recently and purchased the leading contributor to the AdoptOpenJDK project, jClarity.

The details of the acquisition have yet to really surface but both Microsoft and jClarity have issued press releases about the new acquisition whom both tout the continued efforts by both companies to increase performance for Java workloads on Azure.

The team, formed by Java champions and data scientists with proven expertise in data-driven Java Virtual Machine (JVM) optimizations, will help teams at Microsoft to leverage advancements in the Java platform.  At Microsoft, we strongly believe that we can do more for our customers by working alongside the Java community. The jClarity team, with the backing of Microsoft, will continue to collaborate with the OpenJDK Community and the Java ecosystem to foster the progress of the platform.

With jClarity being one of the top dogs in JVM development, the new purchase makes all the sense in the world for Microsoft who can now offer Azure customers better performing Adobe, Daimler and Scoiete Generale workloads.

For current jClarity customers, the company plans to reach out them in the coming weeks to discuss transition efforts with guides on product anqd support issues.

Back at E3 2019, Microsoft announced that an upcoming console streaming feature would allow Xbox One owners to transform their console into a personal xCloud server. This feature will make it possible to stream any game from your Xbox One library to mobile devices, and it will require your console to stay on all the time.

This should be a nice complement to Microsoft’s full-fledged Project xCloud service, which will only launch in beta in select markets in October. The console streaming feature is also expected to make its debut with the 1910 Update for the Xbox One, and Windows Central managed to get some screenshots showing the setup process on the console.

To enable console streaming on Xbox One, a preliminary network test will be necessary to identify any issues related to bandwidth, network latency, and more. The feature will also require a recent Xbox Wireless controller with Bluetooth, and the console will also need to be configured to use instant-on power mode.

Once all game streaming requirements are met on the console, the setup process will need to be completed on a mobile device using a Preview app that Microsoft has yet to launch. Users will also be required to connect the same Bluetooth-enabled Xbox controller that has been previously paired with the console.

Microsoft already lets Xbox One owners stream games to a Windows 10 PC using the Xbox Companion app, though this feature require the Windows 10 PC and the Xbox One console must be on the same home network. This new console streaming feature will be just for mobile devices, though it’s still not clear if it will work on both Android and iOS.

Console streaming will likely ship first to Xbox Insiders who are already testing the Xbox One 1910 update. We hope to get more details about this feature later today during the special Inside Xbox episode at 8AM PDT.

Despite Microsoft canceling the much-anticipated Super Duper Graphics pack for Minecraft, the sandbox game will still get a significant graphical upgrade thanks to a new rendering engine and ray tracing support on Windows 10. Mojang has teamed up with NVIDIA to enable ray tracing on GeForce RTX GPUs, and the result looks quite impressive.

“With the capabilities of this tech, you’ll be able to experience your Minecraft worlds with realistic lighting, vibrant colors, , realistic water that reflects and refracts naturally, and emissive textures that light up,” Mojang explained. You can see how real-time ray tracing will look in Minecraft for Windows 10 in the video below.

Ray tracing will come as an optional feature in an upcoming beta version of Minecraft for Windows 10, and Mojang expects to make it generally available next year. If NVIDIA has been pioneering ray-tracing in its high-end GPUs, Mojang also plans to make the feature available on other platforms that support DirectX raytracing.

In addition to ray-tracing support on Windows 10, the Minecraft developer is also working on a new Render Dragon engine for the Bedrock versions of Minecraft, which will introduce bring graphical improvements such as edge highlighting and new lighting techniques. The company says in the announcement that it actually demoed this new rendering engine during the Minecraft Earth demo at Apple’s WWDC conference back in June.

“Render Dragon supports a range of graphics features, depending on what your device is capable of. Not all devices will support ray tracing, but we will have some graphics enhancements on most devices,” Mojang explained today. The company plans to share more news about this new engine soon, adding that “you’ll see individual Minecraft Bedrock platforms update in the months ahead as we learn the capabilities of our lovely new game engine.”

Welcome back to our Windows 10 news recap, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s flagship operating system.

Notepad is coming to the Windows 10 Microsoft Store

Microsoft is working on unbundling Windows 10’s default text editor, Notepad, from the OS by bringing it to the Microsoft Store, allowing it to be updated independently of Windows 10.

Windows 10 Halo app is being retired today

This week saw the Halo app on Windows 10 being retired, as the developer behind the game, 343 Industries, focuses on bringing Halo: The Master Chief Collection to PC, as well as the next instalment in the franchise, Halo: Infinite. The app will no longer receive any updates.

As we look to the future and future projects, we have to say goodbye to some existing ones. Today, we are letting you know of plans to officially sunset the Halo App for Windows PC beginning August 16. Read more: https://t.co/MJAh1ynqCS pic.twitter.com/HKH4hqHQsx

— Halo (@Halo) August 15, 2019

Windows 10 Plex app leaves the Microsoft Store, New desktop version launched

The Plex app for Windows 10 has left the Microsoft Store. Instead, the company has developed a new desktop version. This marks a shift away from Microsoft’s own store offering, and a move back to standalone software.

New Windows Search Home experience is now coming to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Users on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update are set to receive the new Windows Search Home experience, after Microsoft began rolling it out based on “positive feedback.”

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Windows 10 news.

For reasons seemingly undisclosed to the public, Microsoft has decided to put an end-of-life date for its Photos app video sync to OneDrive.

According to a post on its Windows Support page, January 10, 2020, will be the date that metadata from any video project synced to OneDrive via the Photos app will not only be unsupported but deleted.

What’s happening exactly?

The feature that syncs in-progress video projects to OneDrive is being removed from the Video Editor in the Windows 10 Photos app.

When this happens on January 10, 2020, the metadata for any video projects that are being synced to OneDrive will be deleted. The metadata includes things like the photo and video clip order, music timing, and text for the title cards for a given video project. None of your actual photos, video clips, or anything else you’ve saved to your personal OneDrive will be affected by this change.

With that being said, Microsoft must be hoping its six-month warning is enough time for people to come up with a backup solution; if not, they are offering a couple of options of their own for users.

• The easiest way to save all of the latest versions of all of your video projects you’ve synced to OneDrive is to select the Turn off sync for all projects link in the app message that you’ll see on the main Video Editor page.
• Another way is to open each video project one at a time. If the project is synced to OneDrive, you’ll see this message – select Turn off sync now and the latest version of that project will be saved to your device. Again, you’ll only see this message if you’re currently syncing the project to OneDrive.

For any users who may forget to manually switch, Microsoft will automatically do the switch for them after January 10, 2020, but some saved projects my lose their most recent changes during the transition.

Microsoft has yet to explain the move or give any insights into what comes next for the video editing suite in the Photos app that will either supplement or replace the removed sync situation.

Microsoft is planning to bring and make Notepad as a store-updatable app on Windows 10. This will come as a massive change, and will finally un-bundle the popular text editor from the operating system, allowing for more frequent updates.

The announcement of this change was made today as part of Windows Insider Build 18963. According to Microsoft, future Notepad updates, and starting with build 18963, will be automatically available via the store.

“This will allow us the flexibility to respond to issues and feedback outside the bounds of Windows releases.” As always, if you have any feedback for Notepad, we welcome it in the Feedback Hub under Apps > Notepad,” explained head of the Windows Insider Program, Dona Sarkar.

Previous featured updates to Windows 10 have introduced new features like expanded line ending support, as well as wrap around search, and an indicator for when there is unsaved content. With Notepad coming to the Microsoft Store on Windows 10, the possibilities of new features will likely be almost endless.

That was a bit unexpected, but Microsoft has just released a new Windows 20H1 build for Fast Ring Insiders, and it’s a pretty big one. Indeed, The preview build 18963 brings GPU temperature to Task manager for PCs with dedicated GPUs, something that PC gamers should appreciate.

Power users who juggle between multiple virtual desktops all day will also be pleased to know that it’s finally possible to rename virtual desktops in this build, and name changes will persist after a reboot. For now, this feature will only be available for 50% of Fast Ring Insiders, and Microsoft says it will roll it out to more Insiders in the futures.

There are many other new features in this build, including a Mouse Cursor speed in Settings, improvements to Windows Search, and Microsoft also made some changes to make an new account picture in Windows appear more quickly across Windows apps.

Another important change in this build is that Notepad is becoming a Microsoft Store app. After years of neglect, the has been updated with a couple of new features recent in recent months, and this change will allow Microsoft to update it separately from Windows updates.

You can check out everything that’s new in this build below:

GPU temperature comes to Task Manager

One of the longstanding requests we’ve been tracking for Task Manager is to add temperature monitoring support, and with today’s build we’re making progress on that ask. If you have a dedicated GPU card, we will now bubble up the current temperature next to its listing in the Performance Tab.

We hope you like the change! If you have any further feedback for Task Manager, please don’t hesitate to share it. To make suggestions or report issues in this space, press WIN+F and file the feedback under Desktop Environment > Task Manager in the Feedback Hub.

Notes:

• Showing the GPU temperature in Task Manager is currently only supported if you have a dedicated GPU card.
• You may need an updated graphics driver to see the temperature. Specifically one which supports version 2.4 (or higher) of WDDM is required. To check which version your PC has, press WIN+R and enter dxdiag. Under the Display tab, it will say your WDDM version next to Driver Model.
• Currently the temperature value is only supported in Celsius.

Renaming your virtual desktops

Virtual Desktops exist to help you visually and cognitively separate different tasks on your PC. They can also be handy when doing presentations – enabling you to prepare demos on different desktops. Something we’ve heard loud and clear is that you want to be able to set names for your different desktops, in order to help cement the separation between workspaces, and we’re excited to share that rolling out to Insiders in the Fast ring is exactly that!

Wanna try it out? With the change, when you open Task View (by selecting the Task View button in the taskbar, or by pressing WIN+Tab,) clicking the name of your desktop will now switch it to be an editable fiel where you can set the name to be anything you’d like (including emoji). You can also right-click the thumbnail of the desired desktop in Task View, and a context menu with a Rename entry in it should appear. If you don’t have any additional desktops created yet, select “New desktop” in Task View to get started.

And yes, since we know you’ll ask – the names persist reboot.

Currently this change is live for 50% of Insiders in the Fast ring, and we’ll be expanding the rollout over the next few weeks as we evaluate the quality of experience.

Improving the Optional Features page in Settings

Based on your feedback, we’ve made a number of usability improvements to the Optional Features page in Settings (Settings > Apps & Features > Optional Features), and they’re now starting to roll out to Insiders in the Fast ring.

• Multi-select: You can now select and install multiple optional features at the same time.
• Better list management: You can now search through lists of optional features and sort them by Name, Size, and Install date.
• More useful information: You can now see the install date for each optional feature in your ‘Installed features’ list. We’ve also added feature dependencies to the description of each optional feature in the list of features available for install.
• Easier page navigation: View the status of your latest installs/uninstalls/cancels right on the main page in the ‘Latest actions’ section. You can now add optional features and view your history via pop-up dialogues, so you never have to navigate away from the main page

We’re excited for you to try it! Currently these changes are live for 50% of Insiders in the Fast ring, and we’ll be expanding the rollout over the next few weeks as we evaluate the quality of experience. Here’s a peek at what you’ll see once it’s available on your PC:

Adding Mouse Cursor speed to Settings

As some Insiders have noticed, you can now set your mouse cursor speed from within Settings! This is the latest piece of our larger ongoing effort to converge Settings and Control Panel experiences. You can find the setting under Settings > Devices > Mouse.

Making Notepad store-updatable

Notepad has been a well-loved text editor in Windows for over 30 years. Over the last few releases, we’ve been making a number of small improvements to Notepad based on your feedback (including expanded line ending support, wrap around search, and indicating when there’s unsaved content.) Starting with this build, we’re making a change so that future Notepad updates will be automatically available via the store. This will allow us the flexibility to respond to issues and feedback outside the bounds of Windows releases. As always, if you have any feedback for Notepad, we welcome it in the Feedback Hub under Apps > Notepad.

Traditional Chinese IME improvements

Thank you everyone who’s shared feedback about the new Traditional Chinese Bopomofo, ChangJie, and Quick IMEs. The developer team has been working on improving the quality and fixing bugs. With today’s build:

• Toolbar Improvements: We fixed an issue where toolbar shows up even when [Use IME toolbar] is turned off in the setting. We also added [Hide toolbar] button in the toolbar menu.

Note: Other ways to show/hide toolbar:

• From settings: Right click [中/英] icon > Click [Settings] > [General] > [Use IME toolbar]
• From right click menu: Right click [中/英] icon > [Show/hide IME toolbar]

 

• Candidate Window Improvements: We have been working on improving candidate window quality.
  • We fixed an issue where candidate window sometimes only showed limited number of candidates.
  • We fixed an issue where candidates shown in table view cannot be selected by number keys.

Please keep trying out this new IME, and let us know your feedback.

Changes to your account picture in Windows

Changing the picture for the account you use to sign in to Windows is now better than ever! Your updated picture will now show up quickly across Windows, apps, and many of the Microsoft sites you use every day. Previously, you might see as many as three or four different pictures for your account in different apps and sites at one time. Its super easy to try out – just go to Your info in Windows settings and change your picture there!

Steps

1. Open “Your info” in Windows settings by pressing the Windows key, and typing “Your info,” and selecting “Your account info.”
2. Use the options in ‘Create your picture’ to select a new picture for your account.
3. Check if your picture has been updated in Windows, and on the sites and apps you use.

Note: We’re still working with many sites and apps that will need to be updated to work well with this new feature. For example, the account manager control that appears in the upper right of many Microsoft websites currently updates every 24 hours. This will be changed in the next few months to update quickly when your account picture changes.

Other updates for Insiders

Windows Search improvements 

We wanted to take a moment to cover some of the server-side search improvements we’ve been rolling out based on your feedback:

Improved spell correction for Apps & Settings searches

Windows Search has built-in spell correction to help you find what you’re looking for. When you’re typing quickly sometimes mistakes happen – we’re excited to announce that we’ve updated our spell correction technology to intelligently understand and correct small typos like “powerpiont” and “exce;,” which previously would return no results. With these updates, you get better results faster. This feature is now available on both Insider and retail builds in English-language markets.  

Hints to improve Best match results

Our goal with Windows Search is to provide a simple, to-use experience, and a key aspect of this is making results easy to understand. Something we’ve heard from you is surprise that sometimes settings search results don’t match your search. To help address this, in certain cases where the Best match result isn’t an exact match for your search, a “Related:” line will be included below the result to help clarify why this result is appearing.  We’ll be expanding this feature to include Apps search in the coming weeks.  This feature is now available on both Insider and retail builds in English (United States).

Bringing the latest Search Home experience to more users

With the Windows 10 May 2019 Update we updated Search Home to help you save time by adding quick access to your Top apps and Recent activities. After receiving positive feedback and comments about this new experience, we’re now making it available to more users by rolling it out to everyone using the Windows 10 October 2018 Update as well. We hope you find them useful and that they help make Search Home more productive for you.

Here’s a glance at what it looks like for those on the Windows 10 October 2018 Update:

We hope you like the changes, and if you have any further feedback about search, let us know!

As usual, there are a couple of quality fixes in this new build, including a fix preventing Insiders to setup Windows Hello in Settings in recent builds. Moreover, starting with this build Microsoft is making its Connect app available as an optional download in the Windows 10 Settings app. You can learn more about bug fixes, changes and known issues in our separate post.

If you’ve been encountering issues during the installation of the latest “Patch Tuesday” update for Windows 10 version 1903, you’re not alone. As reported by Windows Latest, many users have been sharing on Reddit and Microsoft’s Community website that they’re currently unable to install this latest patch and seeing error codes such as 0x800f0982, 0xe0000100, or 0x80073701.

Microsoft has yet to acknowledge these installation issues, but some users have also been complaining about random reboot issues on Reddit. Again, Microsoft hasn’t mentioned it as one of the known issues for the latest Windows 10 1903 build, and and it’s still hard to know if these installation and reboot issues are really widespread. So far, we haven’t seen encountered them on our non-Insider PCs.

Microsoft is now pretty quick to indicate any problems affecting the different versions of Windows 10 on the new Windows 10 Health Dashboard, and the company also releases one or two optional patches with several fixes between the monthly “Patch Tuesday” updates. Again, it’s not clear if these issues are affecting a lot users right now, but in the meantime it might be a good idea to wait before installing the latest Patch Tuesday, or roll back to the previous build if you encounter the random reboots issue.

Despite an industry trend of slowing PC sales over the past few years, Lenovo is posting its eighth consecutive quarter of revenue growth as its personal computer division has become responsible for much of the heavy lifting in sales.

In a letter to investors, Lenovo announced that for its FY19/20 quarter the company reached $12.5 billion in revenue with a pre-tax income that more than doubled is year-over-year growth totaling $240 million and $162 million in net income. With returns doubling for the year, investors are should see earnings per share increase $1.37.

“This fiscal year kicked off to an excellent start. Once again, this quarter’s strong results provided solid evidence that Lenovo’s Intelligent Transformation is enabling the company to drive sustainable, profitable growth in today’s dynamic and changing world. Our persistent execution and operational efficiency allow us to bring our vision to life and deliver smarter technology for all,” said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Chairman and CEO.

As mentioned earlier, Lenovo’s growth seems largely propelled by the company’s PC efforts, to which the company makes a note in its investor’s letter.

In PCs, volume outgrew the market, which as a whole is experiencing a recovery, by over 13 points, and the group hit an all-time record PC market share of 24.9%. This means one in every four PCs built in the world is a Lenovo PC – cementing Lenovo’s position as the worldwide number one in PCs.

Lenovo is also slowly making inroads with both its Mobile Business Group (MBG) and Intelligent Devices Group both seeing pre-tax income growth to the tune of $100 million and $524 million respectively. Even though it seems as if Lenovo has all but given up on smartphones in the US, the company also highlights that the MBG division “will continue to maintain profitability and seek opportunities to drive profitable growth in new markets and new innovated products.”

Perhaps, in preparation of the looming trade wars the US has engaged in with several countries, Lenovo also bookended its investors call with a warning of increased prices on PC, smartphones and various IoT devices resulting in negative effects on the investors, the extent wasn’t clarified but presumably a hike in prices will undoubtedly slow down the company’s current growth.

Halo developer 343 Industries announced yesterday they’re sunsetting the Halo app for Windows 10, effective today, August 16. The app will no longer be updated with new content related to Halo and HCS news, though the team noted that Halo Wars 2 game starts will continue to appear in the app until February 16, 2020.

As we look to the future and future projects, we have to say goodbye to some existing ones. Today, we are letting you know of plans to officially sunset the Halo App for Windows PC beginning August 16. Read more: https://t.co/MJAh1ynqCS pic.twitter.com/HKH4hqHQsx

— Halo (@Halo) August 15, 2019

If you ignored that Microsoft had released a Halo app on the Microsoft Store, you’re probably not alone. In addition to providing news, videos, tutorials, and more, the app also served as a launcher for the few Halo games available on Windows 10 such as Halo Wars 2, Halo: Spartan Strike, and Halo 5: Forge.

It’s worth noting that this Halo app is not to be confused with the Halo Channel app, which is a companion app for Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The latter is still available on Windows 10, Xbox One, as well as iOS and Android, and it’s not being discontinued for now.

343 Industries is currently hard at work on bringing Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC, as well as the next episode named Halo: Infinite. Earlier this week, the Halo developer also announced that the RTS game Halo Wars 2 won’t receive any new updates as 343 Industries is now fully focused on the two aforementioned projects.

Download
QR-Code

Halo Channel

Developer:
Microsoft Studios

Price:
Free

Earlier today, the Plex Media Player app was completely removed from the Windows 10 Microsoft Store app store and it was announced that support for it would completely end by January of next year.

This doesn’t mean that Plex’s support for Windows 10 devices is ending though. On the contrary, this removal was part of a renewed focus on the platform that also includes the launch of a brand new Plex app designed for desktop.

“It’s been a little broken for a while now,” the announcement on the official Plex blog explains. “Back when we first started developing Windows apps, it made a ton of sense to embrace the ecosystem, but over time (???? Windows Phone ????) it made less and less sense to keep investing dedicated development resources to the Metro [sic] platform. We’d much rather invest the effort on a cross-platform app with a best-in-class player engine under the hood, so as of today we’re taking our Windows app out of the store.”

Essentially, Windows 10 users will still be able to use the Plex service. They’ll just need to download the new app (here) going forward.

The new Plex desktop app contains almost all of the functionality of the Microsoft Store app though the TV layout option has been abandoned. They reason behind this decision, according to the announcement, was basically just to encourage more users to use the native Plex apps designed for smart TVs and streaming boxes which they claim work better than mirroring a PC on a TV screen.

None of this news affects the Xbox One Plex app, which is completely separate from the Windows 10 one. The launch of this new desktop app also doesn’t mean that Plex has abandoned the Microsoft Store platform either.

“We don’t have any immediate plans to bring the new app to the Microsoft Store,” the official statement reads. “That said, we’ve also definitely not ruled out that possibility.”

Are you disappointed by the death of the old app? Share your thoughts with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter for more Windows news.