Microsoft’s monthly Inside Xbox live show is still ongoing, and the company has just announced a batch of new backward compatible games that are now enhanced for the Xbox One X. Ninja Gaiden II is becoming backward compatible today and will run better on Xbox One X, but Microsoft is also giving the same enhanced treatment to five existing backward compatible games, including three Tom Clancy’s games and two Fable games.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double agent, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist, and Fable 2 and Fable 3 are now Xbox One X enhanced. This means that these games will now run in 4K on the high-end console, and Microsoft and its team of Xbox engineers are improving the pixel count on these titles without doing changes to the game’s code. This is a great way to breathe new life into old-gen games, and the list of Xbox 360 titles enhanced for the Xbox One One X already includes several classics such as Fallout 3, Halo 3, Gears of Wars 2, or Final Fantasy XIII.

Microsoft regularly markets the Xbox One X as the best console to play games from the past, present and future, and Sony has apparently been paying attention. We got the first official details about the PlayStation 5 earlier today, and the next-gen console will be able to run all existing PlayStation 4 games thanks to its x86 architecture.

It’s official, Microsoft is launching a discless version of its Xbox One S console on May 7. The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition was previously revealed in multiple leaks, and the information we had so far was accurate: This is just a 1TB Xbox One S without the disc drive, and it comes with three games: Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 3.

The Xbox One S All Digital Edition will be priced at $249.99, which is quite expensive considering that it’s not too difficult to find cheaper Xbox One S bundles right now. The standard Xbox One S also remains one of the cheapest 4K Blu Ray players you can find on the market today, and the disc drive also gives gamers access to the used games market.

“The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition was created for those who prefer to find and play their games digitally and are looking for the most affordable way to play Xbox games,” Microsoft said in today’s announcement. “The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition is $50 USD less than Xbox One S, and we expect to maintain at least that price difference between the two consoles going forward.”

The new console is available to pre-order on the Microsoft Store starting today, and it will also be available at select retailers worldwide including Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon.com starting on May 7. Sound off in the comments if you think this discless version will resonate with consumers.

Microsoft’s Inside Xbox monthly live show will air later today at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m, and those of you who watch it on Mixer will get another free “MixPot.” This time, the digital rewards will include an Xbox avatar item from the upcoming game Rage 2, as well as the Ebon Flintlock in-game accessory for Sea of Thieves.

Claim your exclusive #SeaOfThieves and #RAGE2 MixPot content tomorrow at 2 PM PT!

Only on @WatchMixer: https://t.co/dyRlrnqsQT pic.twitter.com/8jNqjw12hZ

— Xbox (@Xbox) April 15, 2019

Today’s episode should be quite interesting as we expect Microsoft to finally announce the new Xbox One S All Digital Edition console, and the company may also unveil a new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that combines Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold in a $15/month bundle.

There are many other things on today’s agenda including some “exciting Xbox Game Pass news,” as well as new backward compatible games to play on Xbox One. Rod Fergusson, Studio Head of The Coalition will also be here to talk about new Gears of War game, including the new Gears Pop! mobile game that is now available in closed beta on iOS (we just got our invite today!).

If you haven’t done it yet, make sure to link your Mixer account to your Microsoft account, and don’t miss today’s episode at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m on mixer.com/xbox.

When Microsoft announced that it was going to drop its development of EdgeHTML and begin work on a Chromium-based alternative, some fans and users feared that all the beneficial engineering done for Edge on Windows 10 would be lost.

Thankfully, as early developer and Insider builds are revealing, the Edge team has been able to port some of the features users have come to enjoy and rely on such as stored passwords, extensions, and Edge scrolling.

However, perfecting Edge’s scrolling dynamics on the Chromium-based browser has proven to be a bit of a task as other Chromium-based browsers do not leverage the unique Windows 10 and EdgeHMTL off-thread scrollbar engineering.

In an attempt to optimize scrolling on the Chromium-based Edge, the developers pushed out a Canary build last week that was causing some browsers to crash when attempting to scroll.

The latest Canary build (75.0.130.0) is live. A big thank you to the community for identifying an issue over the weekend that caused Canary to crash while two-fingered touch pad scrolling. While this update should fix this, please let us know if you continue to have any issues. pic.twitter.com/rVMu6sza2B

— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) April 15, 2019

Earlier this week Microsoft acknowledged and put out a fix for ‘Canary’ Insiders and developers who were reporting issues with the way the Chromium Edge browser handled scrolling with the browser often crashing when applying two-finger touchpad gestures or just after page loads.

As by the very nature of Canary software development, Microsoft’s expeditiousness on the matter is expected but the company has made it a priority to port its arguably superior scrolling technology to the new Chromium Edge browser as well as the open source project itself.

In a world of diminishing differentiators between general web browsing experiences, smoothing scrolling is something Microsoft cannot afford to leave by the wayside as it continues to build its replacement browser and industry alternative.

Microsoft has always put security as a focus in its Edge web browser. The upcoming Chromium remake is no exception to this rule, as the new browser will soon begin warning those who run it in Administrator Mode (via BleepingComputer).

While the event in which a user runs Edge in such a way sounds unlikely, it’s always possible for it to be done unintentionally. This could happen when another application in Administrator Mode opens the browser with the same privileges. If another program is launched from Edge running this mode, the app retains the same privileges, which leaves the computer vulnerable to attack if the software proves to be malicious.

The warning titled “Administrator Mode Detected” will alert users in this instance, telling him or her to “close Microsoft Edge and relaunch in non-administrator mode for best performance.” By closing the browser and reopening it without Administrator privileges, an application won’t be able to run in the same mode without the user’s prior consent.

Microsoft continues to push out refinements to its Edge Insider builds, and those wishing to give it a try can download either the Dev or Canary versions for Windows 10 to see how it fairs. The company also plans to bring its browser to older versions or Windows and macOS soon, for those who might be interested.

As E3 2019 is now less than two months away, Microsoft has just shared its plans for the event and they’re consistent with Xbox’s head Phil Spencer previous statement about “going big” this year. “From our briefing to our fan events, the Xbox Experience to the Xbox Official Gear Shop, this will be our biggest E3 presence ever,” the company said today.

First of all, Microsoft’s E3 press briefing will be on Sunday, June 9 at 1 p.m. PDT. Just like last year, Microsoft will offer free “MixPot” digital rewards to those who watch the event live on the company’s Mixer service. “During the briefing, you’ll have a chance to check out everything from trailers for unannounced titles coming in 2019 and beyond to in-depth looks at previously announced games,” the company said today. We expect to learn more about Project xCloud, Gears 5, Halo Infinite, as well as the new RPG that Forza Horizon 4 developer Playground Games is currently working on.

In addition to the E3 press conference on Sunday, there will also be an special Inside Xbox Episode on Monday, June 10 at 3 p.m. PDT. Microsoft is teasing “exclusive announcements, game demos, interviews, and more” during the show, and this should guarantee that Xbox will remain part of the conversation during the annual trade show.

E3 2019 will be open to the public from Tuesday through Thursday, and attendees will be able to enjoy The Xbox Experience at The Microsoft Theater and the Xbox Plaza at LA Live. Microsoft announced 100 gameplay stations, a “massive” Xbox Official Gear Shop, as well as a Mixer Dome for game streaming enthusiasts. Xbox FanFest will also make a come back at E3, and Microsoft will share more details during Inside Xbox later today. Tune in to the livestream at 2 p.m. PDT on Mixer if you want learn more earn another exclusive MixPot.

A new Twitter thread is making the rounds today, with investor Garry Tan (who conveniently pushes his small startup investing strategies over big companies like Microsoft), reminisces about Microsoft and their many failings over the last 20 years:

Every major battle: iPod, iPhone, iOS, iMessage, Slack, Dropbox Completely dropped the ball. Total capitulation through just mismanagement. Much infighting.

Here’s the thread (click through for all 5 tweets):

It also makes me excited to fund great engineers, designers and product people who are ready to throw their chains off. There is magic in running hard in a direction with smart people and no pointy headed bosses.

If you are ready, the water is warm.

— Garry Tan (@garrytan) April 15, 2019

While Tan’s viewpoint may be a bit self-serving, the message is clear, Microsoft’s toxic infighting allowed other companies like Apple, Google, Dropbox and Slack to move in and innovate while Microsoft floundered. At the time, Microsoft was bent on competing in the consumer space, but hampered by both having to uphold Windows and Office while also, yes, being slow to move on what turned out to be important trends like the move to mobile computing and the evolution of messaging to include co-working.

There just isn’t any question that Microsoft dropped the ball with mobile, a loss that could continue to hurt the company for years to come. CEO Satya Nadella is making a valient effort to make the company’s products cross-platform and mobile friendly, but it just isn’t the same. In other areas, Microsoft is making far more money in the enterprise space with SharePoint and Office 365 than it probably ever could competing as a pure consumer play with OneDrive and Teams, so is “losing” the consumer space while winning in the more lucrative enterprise really losing?

Microsoft to its credit did continue to build out infrastructure for Bing, Xbox, and Online Services that turned out to become Azure, turning out to be quite a big win in the same span of time that Tan calls “total capitulation.” It also pivoted from Office to Office 365, is moving Windows to a new generation with “Windows Lite” (although we’re yet to see how that plays out), and is trading at record levels with a near trillion dollar market cap, so all isn’t quite lost yet.

Did Microsoft “lose” in the consumer space? Does it matter?

A host of new avatar items based on popular properties have recently gone live within the Microsoft Store for Xbox gamers to customize their Xbox avatars with.

What’s particularly cool is that all of these new items are completely free due to them being more about brand promotion than actually earning individuals or companies a profit. Among the new items worth checking out are the Jon Snow and Daenerys costumes from Game of Thrones, a pet Viserion from the same series, a Shazam costume, a new Borderlands 3 mask, Warframe outfits and helmets, Mortal Kombat 11 cap and t-shirt, and a Sekiro t-shirt.

All of these free Xbox avatar items can be viewed and claimed here.

Microsoft completely revamped the Xbox avatar system last year. This revamp resulted in the trashing of all of the digital items for the old avatars but new items made for the new system, such as the ones mentioned above, have since begun to repopulate the online storefront.

Xbox avatars are digital representations of players which can be used on Xbox One consoles and on Windows 10 devices. While they can be used in some video games, they’re primarily used to represent gamers within the friends list on the Xbox One’s dashboard and within the Xbox apps.

Do you like to customize your Xbox avatar and will you try any of these free items? Let us know which ones in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

Microsoft’s Outlook.com service has been the subject of a pretty serious hack in recent weeks. Microsoft first confirmed to Techcrunch that its email service has been compromised for months, with hackers being able to access subject lines of emails and names of people within conversations in select Outlook.com accounts.

However, following a new report from Vice’s Motherboard website revealing that hackers were actually able to read the content of emails, Microsoft has been forced to change its stance.

Microsoft undersold scale and severity of breach in its initial statements, which said email content wasn’t compromised. We confirmed email content was readable and that it was abused and used for SIM swapping

— Jason Koebler (@jason_koebler) April 14, 2019

Microsoft confirmed to Motherboard that it sent breach notification emails to Outlook.com users who had their emails read by hackers, and the company added that this was just 6% of users affected by the hack. “We addressed this scheme, which affected a limited subset of consumer accounts, by disabling the compromised credentials and blocking the perpetrators’ access,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement.

The hack is apparently the consequence of hackers gaining access to customer support account for Outlook.com, a tool that does give support agents full access to Outlook.com emails. “Microsoft, like many other tech giants, does have the ability to scan or read user’s messages. In 2014, Microsoft looked into the email account of a French blogger to identify a Windows 8 leaker,” highlighted the Motherboard report.

According to Motherboard’s source, hackers had access to this compromised support tool for at least six months, until Microsoft spotted the hack at the end of March. The Redmond giant disputes this claim, saying that the breach took place from 1st January 2019 to 28th March 2019. Anyway, this isn’t a good look for Microsoft and the email service considered as one of the best alternatives to Google’s Gmail.

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.

ARM64 version of Firefox browser begins beta testing

Mozilla has begun testing of its Firefox web browser on ARM64 devices. It is available for users running Windows 10 PCs with Snapdragon processors.

Sling TV adds support for the Microsoft Edge web browser

Microsoft Edge users can now use Sling TV to play media, making it easier to watch content and not have to switch to a different browser, or in some cases, an app.

Microsoft makes Edge Chromium Insider preview available for download, get Dev or Canary channel builds now!

Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is now available for users to test on Windows 10. Through a new website, users can download a copy of Microsoft’s new web browser to give it a whirl and see how it works for them.

Chromium-based Microsoft Edge now lets you switch search engines on the Canary channel

Following the launch of Microsoft’s new Edge browser for testing, the company has already released an update to the Canary channel. This update allows users to change their search engine from Bing to either Google, DuckDuckGo or Yahoo.

That’s it for this week – we’ll be back next week with more Windows 10 news!

If you or someone you contact via e-mail uses Microsoft’s webmail services, such as Outlook.com, then it is possible that you have been involved in a data breach.

Microsoft confirmed to TechCrunch this week that the firm’s webmail services have been a victim of a data breach. Data on customers was left exposed through a support agent’s credentials which were compromised, which cybercriminals used to access the data.

Of the data affected, Microsoft noted that the following information was left exposed:

• Email addresses
• Subject lines of emails
• Names of people within conversations
• Custom folder names

Microsoft noted that it doesn’t know which data has been viewed, or the reasons why, but that users may experience increasing phishing or spam emails as a result of the breach, therefore, it advises users to be more vigilant when checking their emails.

The breach took place over a long period of time, from 1st January 2019 to 28th March 2019. It isn’t clear how many people have been affected, but it says it was a “limited” number of people. The company did confirm that enterprise users have not been affected.

Microsoft has disabled the compromised account of the support agent to prevent more data being accessed.

In an email letter sent out to affected users, Microsoft said:

Dear Customer

Microsoft is committed to providing our customers with transparency. As part of maintaining this trust and commitment to you, we are informing you of a recent event that affected your Microsoft-managed email account.

We have identified that a Microsoft support agent’s credentials were compromised, enabling individuals outside Microsoft to access information within your Microsoft email account. This unauthorized access could have allowed unauthorized parties to access and/or view information related to your email account (such as your e-mail address, folder names, the subject lines of e-mails, and the names of other e-mail addresses you communicate with), but not the content of any e-mails or attachments, between January 1^st 2019 and March 28^th 2019.

Upon awareness of this issue, Microsoft immediately disabled the compromised credentials, prohibiting their use for any further unauthorized access. Our data indicates that account-related information (but not the content of any e-mails) could have been viewed, but Microsoft has no indication why that information was viewed or how it may have been used. As a result, you may receive phishing emails or other spam mails. You should be careful when receiving any e-mails from any misleading domain name, any e-mail that requests personal information or payment, or any unsolicited request from an untrusted source (you can read more about phishing attacks at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/intelligence/phishing).

It is important to note that your email login credentials were not directly impacted by this incident. However, out of caution, you should reset your password for your account.

If you require further assistance, or have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to our Incident Response Team at [email protected]. If you are a citizen of European Union, you may also contact Microsoft’s Data Protection Officer at:

EU Data Protection Officer
Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd
One Microsoft Place,
South County Business Park,
Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland
[email protected]

Microsoft regrets any inconvenience caused by this issue. Please be assured that Microsoft takes data protection very seriously and has engaged its internal security and privacy teams in the investigation and resolution of the issue, as well as additional hardening of systems and processes to prevent such recurrence.

It is advised to check both your inbox and spam email folders for an email from Microsoft. Some reports suggest Microsoft’s email, ironically, is ending up in spam folders for some users.

Microsoft is usually pretty good at keeping Xbox secrets, but we now have a good picture of what the upcoming Xbox One S All Digital console will look like. Windows Central previously shared a mockup of the official packaging, but Roland Quandt from the German blog Winfuture.de published two pictures of the retail box today.

This is the #Xbox One S All Digital: https://t.co/CqYYEkJEjl pic.twitter.com/hVWjkT1D3d

— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) April 13, 2019

This latest leak also confirms the May 7 release date we’ve heard before, but there’s also some exclusive pricing information. The Xbox One S All Digital console will be reportedly be priced at €229.99 in Europe, which roughly equals $260. If true, that’s a bit expensive for a console with no disc-drive, especially since the standard Xbox One S with its 4K Blu Ray player can often be found at $250 or less when it’s on sale.

This new report also confirms what we knew about this disc-less version of the Xbox One S. The design of the console will be pretty much unchanged except the missing Blu Ray player, and it will also come with a 1TB hard drive. The console will also ship with three games, Sea of Thieves, Minecraft and Forza Horizon 3.

Microsoft is expected to officially unveil its Xbox One S All Digital console on April 16 during the Inside Xbox livestream, and the company may also use this opportunity to unveil a new Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that will combine the game subscription service with Xbox Live Gold.

Microsoft is looking for ways to make the Wish List feature on the Xbox Store more useful for Xbox users. The company has started testing sending Xbox Live notifications to users when Xbox games in their Wish List are currently on sale.

Reddit user xektor17 shared the following screenshot of an Xbox Live notification informing him that the Red Dead Redemption 2 game he added in his wish list was being discounted during the current Xbox Spring Sale (via Windows Central). Xbox’s Major Nelson confirmed in the Reddit thread that the Xbox team was “testing this out with a small group of folks.”

Xbox just notified me that a game on my wishlist is on sale! from xboxone

Microsoft is already using Xbox Live notifications to notify Xbox gamers about new Xbox Game Pass releases or share other Xbox-related news. The good thing is that these notifications can be seen in the Xbox app for Windows 10, iOS and Android, so users can see them when they’re away from their consoles.

Do you have many games in your Xbox Store Wish List, and would you like to get personalized notifications when they’re on sale? Sound off in the comments below.