Open source repository GitHub has announced the hire of former Google Cloud Platform product management director Shanku Niyogi as its head of product development.

Niyogi, who spent the past the last year working on Google’s Cloud product development, is essentially returning to Microsoft in a different capacity. Prior to his year at Google, Niyogi spent a twenty-year chunk of his career working for Microsoft as a general manager and director for Visual Studios.

Now that Microsoft has become the parent company of GitHub, Niyogi’s hire seems a like match made in heaven as his relationships with the IDE community of Visual Studios may help him integrate needed bridges to the open source development community he’ll now be advocating for.

“At GitHub, we want to be the home for all developers. Over the years, I’ve had a chance to work on a number of developer products- including Visual Studio Code, Typescript, .NET, Kubernetes, Go, and Chef. None of those would have had the impact they did without passionate developer teams, strong open source communities, and the homes they had on GitHub.”

Microsoft has already done some of the heavy lifting in attempting to merge the two historically opposing worlds of open source and Windows development by putting Visual Studio Code on GitHub and open sourcing that project.

However, as Microsoft’s reliance on Windows continues to dwindle, it seems Niyogi’s future may be more of spurring Microsoft-friendly enterprise development and specific tools for the company’s new revenue hoarder, Azure cloud.

“Businesses of every size are becoming software organizations and finding that they have to innovate faster than ever. Doing so doesn’t just require the right tools-companies also need the right talent. With GitHub, every enterprise has the potential to connect with a community of more than 31 million developers, their code, and their software practices, securely and effectively.”

GitHub and Microsoft’s future ambitions appear to be on parallel tracks and it seems as though its only a matter of time before they converge fully.

Microsoft posted a video online which is expected to run during the Super Bowl this Sunday (via MSPU). The commercial featured differently-abled children as they struggle to use traditional Xbox wireless controllers. In the commercial, one of the boys says that “I never thought that it was unfair, I just thought this was the way it is, and it’s not going to change.”

However it’s hard not to feel the heartwarming message when Microsoft gives these children their Xbox Adaptive Controller, allowing them to play just as competitively as others. It shows the company’s commitment to support all gamers, no matter their ability. You have to see for yourself in the video:

The Xbox Adaptive Controller was released last fall to support people who don’t sport the same mobility as the rest of us. In addition to its programable touchpads, the controller supports additional switches, buttons, joysticks, and mounts to support additional accessibility.

Xbox Game Pass is starting to pay off for Microsoft, at least that’s according to a report by gamesindustry.biz. As noted in the report, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that this is the “largest gaming revenue quarter” in Microsoft’s history, as part of yesterday’s earnings call.

In a three-month period that ended on December 31, 2018, Microsoft earned revenue in the amount of $4.23 billion from its Xbox games, which is a 8% increase in revenue from last year. Most of the revenue increase came from Microsoft software and services, including a 31% increase in sales revenue from third-party games sales, Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold subscribers.

Nadella commented on the revenue increase in represented “the highest number of mobile and PC users to date.” Nadella added that Microsoft sees a positive outlook for gaming on Xbox and other platforms.

“Our investments in content community and cloud services across every endpoint drove both record user engagement and record average revenue per user and contributed to our largest gaming revenue quarter ever, driven by software and services. Xbox Game Pass subscribers and Mixer engagement also hit new all-time highs.”

Also in the second quarter, Microsoft bought two more game studios, Obsidian Entertainment, and inXile Entertainment. In all, Microsoft now has 13 internal game development studios. In the last six months, Microsoft more than doubled its first-party game content capacity for Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs. Since Sony will not be attending E3 2019, Microsoft hopes to continue to gain revenue in the next year with gaming on Xbox and Windows 10. Stay tuned.

Microsoft India has announced plans to increase investments in the eight north-eastern states of India. The company aims to leverage the power of its AI and cloud technologies to partner the region in its digital transformation.

The company will focus on the education sector, enhancing transportation and utilities, and enabling better citizen services in the North East by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and cloud technologies.

Microsoft has also signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Sikkim today to revamp the educational system in the state. Under the MoU, Microsoft will support the state of Sikkim to build new age tech capacity among students and faculty in government schools in the state. The company will integrate IT content in the state board curriculum for grades 6 to 10 to build student capacity and build teacher capacity through the Microsoft Educator Network and Innovative Educator Program.

As part of the Microsoft Innovative Schools Program, the company will adopt two schools nominated by the government to train their teachers and students on Microsoft’s curriculum on creative coding and gaming through apps, robotics, entrepreneurship and tools for collaboration, creativity, and communication.

As part of its Innovative Educator Program, Microsoft will train all educators of primary, secondary, vocational and tertiary education to help them use ICT effectively and innovatively in the classroom.

To enhance digital literacy and digital citizenship, Microsoft will train a batch of 20 District Education officers (DEO) and Principals of the Government Schools nominated by the government on Microsoft Digital Literacy Curriculum & Certification who will go on to further train other schools within their district. Microsoft shall share an online platform to undertake a digital literacy certification after successful completion of the course.

Microsoft, the only provider of services across all three clouds in the country – private, public, and hybrid cloud, was the first global public cloud service provider to be accredited by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and has three datacenters within the country – in Pune, Mumbai, and Chennai.

Microsoft cloud currently powers close to 150 government departments and State Owned Enterprises countrywide and has also recently been empaneled by the Government of Punjab for its cloud services.

The official Windows 10 Line app updated today with a similar feature present in Facebook that activates special animations when certain words are used in chat. This update also added a new option for adjusting video playback speed and fixed the usual ambiguous bugs and glitches.

Here’s the official release notes for the Version 5.13.0 Line update:

• Added fun chat background effects for special occasions or when certain keywords are used.
• Playback speed can now be adjusted in the video player.
• Minor bug fixes and other small improvements

Line is one of the most-popular chat apps right now though most of its userbase is located in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. It’s had an official app on Windows 10 for a while now that’s mostly been ignored but it’s recently been getting a significantly higher level of support with more frequent updates and new functionality being added.

Recent Windows 10 Line updates added Timeline post and chat translations, markdown support for chats, native Windows 10 notifications, new report options, and paid emoji.

Do you use Line on your Windows 10 device? Let us know in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Windows 10 app content.

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February’s Games With Gold video games are now available to claim and download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers on the Xbox One one day early.

The first game is Assassin’s Creed Rogue which originally launched on the Xbox 360 back in 2014. It eventually got a remastered re-release for the Xbox One so it’s important to note that the one being given away today isn’t that one but the original Xbox 360 version.

The second game is Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, an Xbox One title that just came out in mid-2018. It’s a 2D action-platformer that draws heavily from retro arcade games such as Castlevania. Given that it usually sells for just $9.99, this free giveaway isn’t too exciting but free is free and it is an Xbox One game that not many would have played.

Are you happy with February’s first Games With Gold titles? Let us know why or why not in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

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Assassin’s Creed® Rogue

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Ubisoft

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$29.99

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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Developer:
INTI CREATES

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Microsoft has just released its earnings report for its second fiscal quarter ending December 2018 and as many predicted, the company’s numbers are up on the whole.

THREAD: $MSFT Q2 EARNINGS
Revenue: $32.5 billion ⬆️ 12%
Operating income $10.3 billion ⬆️18 %
Net Income: $8.4 billion
EPS: $1.08 pic.twitter.com/6HqptySb9S

— Microsoft (@Microsoft) January 30, 2019

As for the actual earnings details, once again Microsoft’s Azure cloud is the tide that is figuratively lifting all of the company’s other boats this quarter.

Intelligent Cloud

Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud division which houses its server products and cloud services including Azure saw 20% revenue growth in year over year comparisons for the quarter. More specifically, Azure revenue saw a 76% revenue spike this year while other server products and cloud servers saw a modest 24% increase.

Another underreported area of growth for Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business is its Enterprise Mobility install base which also saw significant growth to the tune of 94 million seats in total or 57% growth.

Productivity and Business Processes

The move to a subscription-based Office offering in Office 365 continues to pay off with the Office Commerical still growing revenue by 11% for the quarter as well as Microsoft Dynamics growing its revenue stream by 17%.

However, the consumer side of Office was hit by a softening PC market and only manage to grow its revenue by a modest 1%. On the flip side, Office 365 consumer base has risen to 33.3 million users which is an increase from its 32.5 million last quarter.

More Personal Computing

Perhaps the more volatile of Microsoft’s business divisions and subsequently the most entertaining to report on saw an overall 7% growth in revenue from its Surface and Gaming efforts. Weighing down the division’s numbers is its Windows OEM Pro revenue that saw a 5% decline for the quarter which matches the decline PC manufacturers are also seeing in the market. Complicating things even further are the numbers for Windows OEM non-Pro revenue which tumbled 11% in revenue earnings and Microsoft was forced to admit that entry-level category devices (presumably Chromebooks) are sapping the businesses momentum.

On a brighter note, Microsoft’s Surface line is no threat of being canned anytime soon, as some writers have alluded to over time. The Surface brand and division post close to $2 billion in revenue earned for the quarter. A successful holiday line that included an updated Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop, Surface Headphones, Surface Studio and Surface Laptop 2 made for a profitable quarter for Microsoft proving that demand for the brand continues to be strong.

On the gaming side of things, Xbox Live monthly active users have increased from 57 million in the previous quarter to 64 million in Q2. The increase in Live subscriptions helps lead the division to a 31% increase in gaming revenue for Xbox software and services.

Honorable mentions go out to Microsoft Search advertising with revenue growth of 14% with an asterisk, excluding traffic acquisition costs. The other notable Microsoft business earning highlight comes from the recent acquisition of LinkedIn which grew its revenue by 29% and has shown record levels of engagement, according to Microsoft’s report.

Xbox Live outages are an unfortunate reality of the gaming community, to the Xbox servers credit, they are an infrequent occurrence for the most part and have relatively minimal impact on most gamers days.

However, the latest Xbox Live outage has been a bit more crippling for owners of Xbox One consoles. Rather than simply negating the use of some online aspects of the platform such as multiplayer games or game broadcasting and streaming, the latest outage has effectively render consoles unusable from a navigation standpoint.

xbox servers is down on the coldest day in history.

I've never wanted a girlfriend more than today.

— Sebagstian Telfar (@KingThelonious) January 30, 2019

According to an Xbox One subreddit that’s growing with complaints, users of the Xbox One console hardware are experiencing issues that range from issues signing into accounts to complete black screens immediately after boot up.

Fortunately, the issues appear to be tied to the Xbox Live software and not hardware related. Some people in the Xbox One Reddit thread have come up with homespun solutions such as disconnecting ethernet cords or doing a series of settings adjustments to reestablish normal Xbox One behavior.

Over the past hour or so, the Xbox team has officially addressed the outage and offered their own rather simple workaround.

If you reboot you should be ok, or will be in a few minutes. Sorry for the issue – deployment error. https://t.co/JnBcOP4QUs

— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) January 30, 2019

The support team is still looking into the matter and we expect Microsoft to offer reasoning to this rather severe outage today.

We are aware of reports of Xbox One console startup, title update and sign-in errors. We will keep everyone informed once we have more information to share. Thank you all for your patience.

— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) January 30, 2019

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is once again ringing the bell of platform cultivation for the company’s many software services and his new highlight is the “Power Platform.”

Unfortunately for comic book fans, Nadella isn’t talking about some collection of superheroes, but instead about how Microsoft’s Power BI, PowerApps and Flow all come together to help build a platform atop the company’s Azure cloud services.

Fortunately, other Microsoft executives have taken up the mantle of further pitching the virtues of the company’s Power Platform and corporate vice president of business applications group James Phillips helps lay out Microsoft’s vision for the platform as well as the specifics of how each individual application can be applied to strengthen the whole.

Our vision for the Power Platform started from the recognition that data is increasingly flowing from everything, and a belief that organizations that harness their data – to gain insights then used to drive intelligent business processes – will outperform those that don’t.

Of the three applications, PowerBI may be the most well known and used as it has become a self-service businesses intelligence visualization solutions for tens of thousands of companies. Supporting 43 languages in over 18,000 cities across the world, PowerBI holds nearly 10 petabytes of data from various sources that include tried and true Excel docs, Oracle databases, SAP or Salesforce applications and hundreds of proprietary technologies.

Next up are PowerApps which is best described as a ‘citizen application development platform.’ PowerApps tie into PowerBI data to help produce web and mobile apps catered to the specific data collected and processed. With a closed-loop development cycle between PowerApps and PowerBI, businesses can continually analyze and redistribute data from the cloud to apps.

Last but not least is Flow which a product that was developed to cater to the growing interest of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which allows employers to automate workloads. Simple automation has a growing an interest in businesses as they look to optimize simple tasks to lower expense costs.

When combined, the Power Platform will allow businesses to unlock insights and intelligence that many can then convert to intelligible action plans across the web and mobile applications while simultaneously identifying areas of streamlined opportunity through automation, creating what Philips refers to as a “powerful system of continuous improvement.”

Microsoft is planning a Virtual Launch Even that is open to whoever is interested in the company’s developing Power Platform. The Power Platform launch event is scheduled for April 2, 2019, with more details to be announced over the coming months.

As the United States and China enter their 9 straight months of trade warfare that include tariff disputes, some US-based tech companies are begin forced to confront the realities of stalled negotiations as they report earnings to investors each quarter.

A primary example has been the readjusted earnings outlook Apple was forced to inform investors about in late 2018, and as Microsoft steps to the earnings stage, it’ll be interesting to see how their fiscal quarter has been affected, if at all.

NASDAQ.com has issued an early assessment of expected earnings of $1.09 a share on revenue of 32.49 billion for the quarter ending in December 2018 for Microsoft.

Putting things in perspective, a quarter for quarter comparison puts Microsoft’s assessed share price at an increased $.013 a share as well as an increased $5.57 billion in revenue for the quarter. Microsoft’s 2nd quarter earnings call, coming this afternoon, is shaping up to be another great one. 

Unlike Apple, Microsoft has effectively ousted out China through Windows copyright infringements and hasn’t been as reliant on the country as a growth sector for its pivot to the cloud. Reflecting that regional independence has been the three-week-long 13% share price increase from bullish Wall Street investors.

As noted by the NASDAQ assessment, part of the long term confidence from investors comes from the clear, diversified and growth portfolio of businesses Microsoft undertakes.

Microsoft is now more balanced and diversified than ever before, especially when factoring LinkedIn revenue, which is now tied to CEO Satya Nadella’s compensation.

All told, having expanded its reach over the years beyond software and personal computing, Microsoft is posting strong revenue and profit growth and seemingly operating on all cylinders. The company has fully transitioned towards faster-growing businesses

While Microsoft may continue to see growth on its current path, on the horizon competition and a saturated market may squeeze the company’s portfolio.

With the company’s cloud business growth marked at a 24% growth from year over year quarterly comparison in 2017 and 2018, competitors such as Amazon, IBM, Google and Alibaba will be sure to cut into that level of growth as more data points from Intel’s recent earnings reports indicate a leveling off of data center sales demand.
Microsoft is still set to accelerate its cloud growth throughout the rest of 2019 as it continues to sign big name retail brands, government contracts and scientific partnerships around the world.

Microsoft is preparing to premier its second season of Inside Xbox show next week. As noted by the Xbox team, the new episodic series will feature “exclusive news, content, reveals, interviews and footage,” for fans of the company’s gaming systems.

You must be at least this hype to watch the newest episode of #InsideXbox:

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Tune in Feb 5 at 5 PM ET / 2 PM PT: https://t.co/5TCIgZEQWP pic.twitter.com/3mTH2nck1F

— Xbox (@Xbox) January 29, 2019

The series will air live on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and of course, Microsoft’s own Mixer streaming service. In fact, for those who use the tech giant’s streaming service over Amazon’s (that’s Twitch, for those of you who might not know), the company will be giving away free goodies via their “MixPot” reward system, plus additional behind-the-scenes video not found anywhere else for those who log into the streaming service.

As far as what will be on the main show, the creative director of Crackdown 3, Joseph Staten will be on the show to discuss details of the new game mode landing on the game, which has yet to be released on February 15 on Xbox Game Pass. Plus additional details of what’s to come on other titles such as Mortal Kombat 11, Sea of Thieves, and Metro Exodus will me mentioned in the livestreams, as well.

The show will begin live at 2 P.M. Redmond-time next Tuesday for those interested, and Microsoft encourages those who don’t yet have a Mixer account to create one now if they want the free goodies from their giveaway. In the mean time, you can always watch the teaser trailer above, and let us know your thoughts below.

Microsoft is getting ready to officially end support for Internet Explorer 10, which will no longer receive security updates after next year. To speed up the process of moving all users to the newer Internet Explorer 11, the company will be providing users of Windows Server 2012 and Windows Embedded 8 systems with the option to run IE11 in either test environments or pilot rings, so they can make sure everything works in the new and more secure web browser.

Microsoft has stated that Internet Explorer 11 will be the last version of the company’s older web browser. As such, any version before that will stop receiving updates, and the company will push users to use either IE11 or the newer Edge web browser.

Users will have until January 2020 to make the change to IE11 if they wish to keep receiving free security updates. Additionally, with Microsoft bringing Chromium’s Blink browser engine over to Edge, it seems it won’t be long until the total desolation of the company’s legacy web browser.

According to Microsoft, anyone who wishes to upgrade to the newer browser can do so via the Microsoft Update Catalog or in Windows Update, and will later also be able to do so via Windows Update and WSUS as well. Additionally, companies will be able to use Enterprise Mode in IE11, which will allow IE10 dependent web apps to run in the newer version of Internet Explorer until they are updated to support IE11 or another browser.

Nearly two weeks ago, Microsoft finally kicked off the “phased rollout” of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update. This means that the major release should be available to download for all users who manually check for updates in Windows Update, assuming there are no hardware of software incompatibilities.

After a slow start, the propagation of the Windows 10 October 2018 should finally accelerate, but it’s not that obvious when you take a look at AdDuplex’s latest data. The ad network for Windows Store apps and games has just published new data for the month of January, and this time only 12.4% of more than 100,000 surveyed PCs are running the October 2018 Update (up 5,8% points).

“While this number is almost double of what we’ve seen last month, it’s still far away from the dominating April 2018 Update (80.2%), noted AdDuplex. “With only a few months to go until the next Windows 10 update is supposed to go mainstream, it is unclear if some PCs may have to install two major updates within a short period of time or go straight from A18U to 19H1.”

Considering that AdDuplex’s pool of surveyed PCs only represents a blip in the sea of 700 million Windows 10 PCs, we always prefer to take the company’s data with some extra caution. Still, the company did insist this month on the fact that the rollout of the October 2018 Update “needs to accelerate in February or be scrapped altogether in favor of going straight to 19H1.” And as you can see in the image below, what the company has been seeing with the October 2018 update is pretty unique in the history of Windows 10 updates.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t share hard data about the different versions of Windows 10 still in use, so there’s no way to tell if the October 2018 Update really crossed a double digit market share. We really wish Microsoft took a page from Google’s playbook, as the latter regularly shares information about the relative number of devices running a given version of Android. In the meantime, we’re going to ask you directly if you have already received the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, please tell us in the Twitter poll below and feel free to share more details in the comments section.

Poll: Have you been upgraded to Windows 10 October 2018 Update (1809)?

— OnMSFT.com (@onmsft) January 29, 2019

Shortly after its bungled Xbox One announcement, Microsoft’s Xbox division quickly course corrected and began putting an emphasis on its more gamer-centric decisions within the company.

From enabling backward compatibility with older Xbox 360 titles and platform flexibility with Play Anywhere to the introduction of its relatively successful Game Pass subscription service, the Xbox One team has been making its games and its gaming experience a priority.

While the aforementioned feats have all laid a solid foundational starting point for next-generation gaming experiences, actual coveted game titles are still something the Xbox One team is struggling with, but they may be getting some veteran help with that soon.

Damon Baker, the former head of partner management at Nintendo America announced his departure from the business and is now the head of portfolio for Xbox.

According to a recent Twitter post, Baker will be overseeing 2nd and 3rd party content for the Xbox One platform.

Hey all, overdue news to share. Been soaking up knowledge this last month as the new Head of Portfolio for #Xbox! Honored and excited to help evaluate all 2nd/3rd party content towards our strategy. Big thanks to @iocat @aarongreenberg @XboxP3 and team. The future looks amazing! pic.twitter.com/isqylqnBGk

— Damon Baker (@DWBakes) January 28, 2019

While acquisitions such as these are never a 1:1 exchange of impact, Bakers expertise and vision should help foster and cultivate a Nintendo like-community of 2nd and 3rd party gaming experiences possibly coming from the Xbox divisions newly acquired Obsidian Entertainment and Ninja Theory studios among others.

Taco Bell may no longer be giving away their exclusive platinum Xbox One X consoles anymore, but that doesn’t mean you’re completely out of luck. If you enjoy Oreo cookies, than Nabisco has a sweet deal for you. The company will be giving away 10 custom-designed Oreo Xbox One X consoles to lucky customers who buy a pack of their iconic sandwich cookies, plus they’re also giving away plenty of free trials of Xbox Game Pass as well, so you’re odds of getting at lease something is pretty decent.

The giveaway is part of their “Stuf Inside” promotion, which is also offering other prices as well including a new Jeep vehicle or some Oreo-branded headphones, with a different prize being given out each day. However as Xbox fans ourselves, we thought this particular one was the most interesting.

To participate in the giveaway, you must scan the code provided on your eligible Oreo package at their promotional website, or you can head over there to see how you can enter for free (and to read the fine print). It starts on February 4th and runs for just 30 days, which puts March 6 as the last day to enter. However, only one of those 30 days will be offering the limited Xbox console, and the company wasn’t ready to reveal the exact date.

It’s certainly a worthwhile promotion for people who are fans of the cookies and Xbox gaming. Is this something you’re interested in? Let us know in the comment area below.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to head to the nearest convenience store a purchase a pack or Oreos.

The Department of Governance Reform of Punjab, a state in northern India, has entered in agreements for offering cloud services in the state. Microsoft is the first global cloud service provider to get empaneled for offering cloud services in the state for a period of three years.

The department has empaneled four Microsoft partners in its Cloud Services Directory, allowing government departments and agencies in Punjab to choose Microsoft Cloud to advance their digital transformation and optimize IT operations.

The state’s Land Records Information System and E-Sewa (previously called SUWIDHA – Single User-Friendly Windows Disposal & Helpline for applicants) will soon migrate onto the Microsoft Azure platform.

Microsoft played a key role in the enhancement and efficient delivery of citizenship services in the state and also supports the State Data Center of Punjab.

Microsoft, the only provider of services across all three clouds in the country – private, public, and hybrid cloud, was the first global public cloud service provider to be accredited by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) and has three datacenters within the country – in Pune, Mumbai, and Chennai.

According to Parminder Pal Singh, PCS, Director of Governance Reforms, Punjab, the next step of growth will be to move beyond just the Internet and leverage the power of the cloud and hopes Microsoft’s cloud technology will provide transformational e-governance services and financial inclusion opportunities to lakhs of people across Punjab.

The week’s update to the beta versions of the iOS and Android Xbox apps added two new features relating to Xbox One video game screenshots and video clips; the ability to share directly to social media from within the app and the ability to download media locally to an iOS or Android smart device.

Currently, clips can only be shared to the Xbox activity feed or sent as an Xbox Live message to other users and the ability to actually download clips with the app has never been a possibility even though it has frequently been one of the most-requested features.

• Share game captures with friends. In response to your feedback, we’ve added the ability to share game captures with friends and across social media
• Easily save to phone. Save your game clips and screenshots to your phone
• From your Captures page, click the existing share button to view these new options

The Xbox beta apps are used to test new features for bugs and glitches with a smaller audience before rolling them out to the general userbase with the regular iOS and Android Xbox apps. With testing of these features having now begun, it’s likely they’ll come to the public apps sometime over the next few months.

The ability to download apps is already possible within the Windows 10 Xbox app. As is social sharing, though only to Twitter.

Are you excited for these new features or is there something else you’ve been waiting for? Let us know in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

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The long-awaited third video game in the Kingdom Hearts trilogy, Kingdom Hearts III, is now live on the Xbox One family of consoles.

Kingdom Hearts III is the first game in the franchise to launch on the current generation of consoles and as a result features a significant graphical upgrade compared to previous entries. The game is enhanced for Xbox One X consoles and will feature two options that can prioritize either visuals or framerate while playing.

Here’s the official game description and gameplay trailer:

The latest entry in the KINGDOM HEARTS series. Having learned that all their struggles thus far were engineered by Master Xehanort in his plot to start another Keyblade War, Sora and his friends continue their search for seven guardians of light capable of standing against the coming darkness. King Mickey and Riku seek out Keyblade veterans from the past, while Sora, Donald, and Goofy begin a new odyssey across Disney worlds to claim the “power of waking.”

Wiser from his many adventures, Sora is about to face his greatest challenge yet. For the first time in KINGDOM HEARTS III, Sora will travel across Pixar and other exciting new Disney worlds that lend the story a grander scale than ever before seen in the series. The battle system reaches new heights as well with thrilling action, rideable theme park attractions, and spectacular team-up moves with Disney’s beloved characters. KINGDOM HEARTS inspires and entertains unlike anything else out there. Don’t miss this brand new installment.

Have you been waiting to play Kingdom Hearts III? Let us know if you’re happy with the final product in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest for more Xbox gaming content.

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Microsoft has just announced a new “Multiplan” feature for Planner, its Trello competitor for Office 365 customers. With Multiplan, it’s finally possible to create multiple Plans inside the same Office 365 Group (previously, creating a new plan created a new Office 365 Group).

To get started, you’ll just have to create a new Plan from Planner and then click the “Add to an existing Office 365 group” button, right below the field for the Plan name. You can see how it works in the video below:

The “Multiplan” name for the feature may well be some sort of an inside joke, as “Multiplan” was the name of a pre-Excel spreadsheet that Microsoft developed in the eighties. Anyway, creating multiple plans per group was one of the top requested features from Planner users, and it should definitely help preventing the multiplication of Planner-related Office 365 groups.

There are many more new features in the pipeline for Planner, including Plan Templates, integrations with Outlook Tasks/Microsoft To-Do, and much more. You can learn more about upcoming new features and share your feedback with the team on the dedicated Uservoice website.

The Windows Insider team has taken a liking to its interactive Mixer webcasts over the past year and are looking to continue the tradition for this year’s #bugbash event.

Starting From 10 a.m. PST/ 6 p.m. UTC fans can watch a live stream of unadulterated Windows 10 Insider madness, covering all things past, present and future about the company’s latest OS offering while addressing bugs in real-time.

Hello #WindowsInsiders! If you haven't marked your calendar, now's a good time to do it! Our #BugBash webcast will be live tomorrow at 10am PST / 6pm UTC on https://t.co/gKWNaQ5FcM! We'll talk BugBash and our guests will talk about some changes we've made in Windows! pic.twitter.com/cqSfD8BWGm

— Windows Insider (@windowsinsider) January 28, 2019

Tomorrow, January 29, 2019, may be a good time to tune as the Windows team is set to make its leap from the current development branch of Windows 10 Insider development to the next big one that’s rumored to include a more modular approach to Windows 10 and introduce testing of new features planned to accompany folding devices later this year.

As presumed, Microsoft will be taking advantage of Sony’s decision to pull out of E3 2019 and leverage the company’s lack of presence by going “big” this year.

According to an interview with the director of programming for Microsoft Larry Hryb, Xbox executive VP of gaming Phil Spencer explained that the company’s presence at this years E3 will be anything but a mediocre event.

“This is going to be a fun E3 for us … we had a discussion internally. Should we go big? Should we save some money? No, we’re going to do our thing and we’re going to go and be as big at E3 as we’ve ever been.”

While Hryb and Spencer do not discuss the details of Xbox’s ‘big’ and ‘fun’ presence at E3 2019, the mere fact that its largest competition in the sector will not be in attendance will afford Microsoft a chance to dictate its own narrative rather than losing its messaging through comparison. You can listen to the interview here:

With Sony volunteering the stage, Microsoft will be free to possibly introduce its gaming vision that could include new hardware and a bevy of gaming titles under the Xbox brand such as a new Fables game, Gears 5 news, the next installment of Forza, and demos of Halo Infinite.

Beyond the tried and true games and hardware schtick, Microsoft can also take this opportunity to push its cross-platform pitch as well as an unadulterated message of its software and services ambitions for gamers utilizing Xbox One consoles as well as PCs.

With Sony abdicating its traditional follow-up presence at this years E3, the messaging for the rest of 2019 and into 2020 is Microsoft’s to lose.

Microsoft kicked off yesterday a limited-time sale on select Xbox One bundles, and you have until February 2 to save $50 on seven Xbox One X bundles and five Xbox One S bundles. If you’re looking to upgrade to the Xbox One X, the brand new Metro Saga bundle including the upcoming Metro: Exodus game is included in the list, and you can get it for just $449.

If you prefer a more original console, please note that the Xbox One X Gold Rush Special Edition Battlefield V bundle and the Xbox One X Robot White Special Edition Fallout 76 bundle are also being discounted. The latter should probably appeal to those of you who love their white Xbox One S.

Even though it’s getting hard to recommend purchasing an Xbox One S at the end of this console generation, the console remains great value at just $249. The different Xbox One S 1TB bundles on sale include the Fortnite bundle, the Forza Horizon 4 bundle, or the Starter bundle which comes with no games but 3 months of Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold. You can check out all the discounted Xbox One bundles on this page.