Microsoft is always adding more games to the Xbox One Backward Compatibility catalog, and today three more titles have entered the fray. Joining the list are Assault Heroes 2, Commanders: Attack, and TimeShift. As always, we’re including download links, descriptions, and trailers for these titles for you below.

Assault Heroes 2: ($4.99)

Re-imagined for a more intense arcade shooter experience, Assault Heroes 2 explodes with additional combat vehicles, more powerful weaponry, hijack-able enemy units, extensive on-foot skirmishes and enhanced co-op. Battle alone or with a friend in dramatic environments like space and the rainforest as you hijack the stealth helicopter, armored tank or mechanical walker from the enemy base. Reign destruction on the sinister alien force with a superior arsenal of weapons including the newly designed sub-zero freezing ice cannon, homing missiles, rocket launcher and upgraded firearms. Survive on-foot warfare in underground areas and environments fully equipped with all your weapons. Unlock the full game now to save mankind before it’s too late!

Commanders: Attack: ($4.99)

Deploy, Engage, Win!!! Utilize many diverse units including Tanks, Scouts, Infantry, etc. alongside your powerful Commander unit to cripple the enemy and defend your territory.

TimeShift: ($29.99)

The megalomaniacal Dr. Krone has created a disturbing alternate reality. Armed with the experimental Beta Suit, you alone can SLOW, STOP, and REVERSE the flow of time itself. Perfect this ability to end Krone’s madness. Join the battle for survival and lead the uprising to victory.

Just five days ago, five other games headed to the backward compatible catalog, including  3D Ultra Minigolf, Golf: Tee It Up!, Gin Rummy, Contra and RoboBlitz. And, before that, Call of Duty: Black Ops II was finally released for Xbox One via Backward Compatibility. Let us know your thoughts on these latest additions by dropping us a comment below.

Microsoft may not be in the phone business anymore, but that is not a problem for its investors. The Redmond, Washington-based company is continuing to break record stock prices on Wall Street in New York City right as the NASDAQ hit the 6,000 mark for the first time ever (via Barrons.)

While momentous, Microsoft and other tech stocks (which make up about half of the NASDAQ) are all up in general. Microsoft is seeing morning high shares of $68, which is above yesterday’s all-time high of $67.66. The company’s rival Apple, meanwhile, is seeing shares of $144.15, which is very close to their all-time high of $145.46.

Similarly, Alphabet (Google) is seeing a $884.35 high this morning, which surpasses yesterday’s within the day high of $879.96. Social media giant Facebook also reached a new morning high of $146.35, and Amazon reached to $909.84, justs short of their all-time high of $923.72.

Just four weeks ago, Microsoft stocks were stocks trading at all-time highs, so things can only be trending upward for the tech giant, especially with a big Microsoft Press event coming up on May 2nd. This latest stock booms, though, comes as US President Donald Trump promised “big tax reform” before he hit his 100-day mark in office, and as the first round results from the French presidential election become official.

Microsoft India has announced the India winners of Imagine Cup 2017, after concluding the national finals held in New Delhi. More than 15,000 students registered from 1600 schools and colleges across the country this year.

Now in its 15th edition, Imagine Cup is the company’s premier technology program and competition providing opportunities for student technologists, developers, and aspiring entrepreneurs from all academic backgrounds to collaborate, develop a technology application, create a business plan, and gain a keen understanding of what is needed to bring a concept to market.

Over the past fourteen years, more than 1.7 million students from more than 120 countries have participated in the Imagine Cup. The competition begins with local, regional and online contests, followed by screening of best projects from each country and with winners from these legs participating in the global finals.

Amongst the 27 finalist teams, Content Holmes (BITS Pilani) team emerged as the winner with the vision of a one-click AI-based online parenting solution that helps to keep children secure from cyber-bullying. The team will now represent India at the upcoming worldwide finals in July in Seattle to compete among global teams for a USD 100,000 prize.

“Imagine Cup is all about innovation, transformation and what comes next. This year, we complete 15 years of Imagine Cup and we continue to cultivate a spirit of social and technological entrepreneurship, empowering students to use their creativity to address real societal problems through technology. Participants have shown remarkable effort and enthusiasm to develop cutting-edge technology solutions to help resolve some of the world’s issues and challenges. At Microsoft, we are committed to empowering student community and young developers build their skills to realize their true potential and transform their ideas into reality.”

– Narendra Bhandari, General Manager – Developer Experience and Evangelism, Microsoft India

Imagine Cup aims to transform skill development, nurture budding technologists and foster collaborative and innovative spirit and the global technology competition has seen several success stories emerging from the competition through the years.

This morning, Microsoft released a Fast Ring Insider update to Windows 10 Mobile. The build bumps the version number to 15207 and makes only one change, adding a new privacy page experience to make it easier to set and understand privacy controls on Windows 10 Mobile.

The build drop came with a twist, though, in that there was no “teaser,” no cryptic Twitter message from Windows Insider chief Dona Sarkar that a build was incoming. It’s become quite a tradition for Sarkar and the Windows Insider team to hide build numbers in images tweeted by Sarkar, giving users (and tech writers!) a hint about what’s to come.

Rich Woods from Neowin quizzed Sarkar via Twitter on the lack of a teaser, which prompted this rather unsettling response:

Who knows—we might be teaser-less from now on FOREVER!

— Dona Sarkar (@donasarkar) April 24, 2017

Now, it’s certainly possible that Sarkar is teasing Woods with her tease on the end of teasing, but with no wink emoticon, we’re a bit scared, frankly.

If the Windows Insider program does end the tradition, well we’ll adjust (we’re constantly searching Twitter and other sources for the latest news to pass on to you, anyway), but to be honest it’s been kind of fun to find the build number needle in the haystack.

What do you think? Do you watch Dona’s Twitter feed as closely as we do? Will you be saddened by the end of these teases? Or is Dona Sarkar just having a bit of fun with Woods?

As April is soon coming to a close, the Office team has once again published its monthly recap of all the new features that shipped to Office 365 users this month, and the list is pretty big. The most important release may well be Microsoft To-Do, Microsoft’s new task management app that is expected to replace Wunderlist in the near future. The app is now available in preview on the web, Windows 10, iOS and Android, but it’s already pretty solid.

Windows 10 users also saw the Skype UWP finally go out of preview this month. The latest version now uses the Compact Overlay windows that are now available for UWP apps in the Windows 10 Creators Update, but the app definitely remains a work in progress. It ships with Windows 10 (and Windows 10 Mobile), but power users may need to keep using the legacy Skype desktop app for now, which is more versatile.

In other Skype related news, Skype Translator added Japanese speech translation support this month, and Skype users can also learn how to cook with the brand new “Heston bot” inspired by legendary Chef Heston Blumenthal. Who said that Skype was just a messaging app?

Some people may still find it difficult to consider iPads as productivity devices, but Microsoft obviously does: the Office iOS apps work great on the iPad, and this month Powerpoint users may have seen that Designer is now available in the mobile presentation app. “Now when you’re on the go with your iPad, you can get professional design options for slides with images and certain types of text,” shared the Office team.

Moving now to new features restricted to Office 365 commercial customers: the first important addition this month was Outlook Customer Manager, which is now rolling out to all Office 365 Business Premium subscribers. This new feature is available in Outlook on Windows desktops, iOS and the web, and gives you automatic reminders about customer inquiries, suggested company information from Bing as well as integration with Microsoft Flow.

Outlook users will also be pleased to learn that Office 365 Groups are now supported in Outlook for Mac, iOS and Android. “Now you can view your groups list, read and respond to group conversations, add group events to your calendar and more in Outlook on every platform,” explained the Office team. The new Groups integration is currently rolling out to these new platforms, but we remind you that it was already available on the web and the Outlook desktop app on Windows.

Another new feature worth mentioning is the integration of Office 365 groups in the Office desktop apps on Windows, making it easier than ever to edit documents in your frequently used groups. You can see how it works in the image below:

As for new security features, the Office team announced this month several security and compliance updates for Office 365 customers:

• Office 365 Threat Intelligence is now generally available, helping customers identify cyber security threats by leveraging the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph.
• Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Safe Links is now available in Word, Excel and PowerPoint to protect users from clicking malicious links.
• A new Data Loss Protection (DLP) policy management page also provides easy access to app permissions, device security policies and content protection policies.

Last but not least, Microsoft announced earlier this month an expansion of the Office 365 Enterprise K1 Plan, which will now provide better value to frontline workers. The new plan includes additional products such as StaffHub, Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business and remains at $4 per user per month. The new capabilities will begin rolling out to customers in the next several weeks, Microsoft said.

Seattle, WA bus routes are being shaken up with a new pilot program testing the efficiency of privately owned transits. The trial period birthed between employees at Microsoft and the Children’s Hospital will be going on for the next six months.

According to a report by The Urbanist, Microsoft’s personal employee transit during the pilot will use seven public bus stops. After paying an undisclosed permit fee, shuttles for these companies will be marked with a new and unique sign to indicate the private bus route throughout Seattle.

While residents might find the new system to be interruptive, there are also a list of ‘benefits’ to the program and are subject to scrutiny:

• Employers seeking to use existing and new transit facilities could ultimately have to cost-share in the maintenance and upgrades to the stops, which could result in better quality stops overall (e.g., more shelters, better lighting, and additional seating);
• Employees using shuttle buses can more easily and directly transfer to and from the public bus network;
• Formal loading and unloading areas make the dwelling process safer for all users of the right-of-way;
• Existing transit facilities will have higher overall utilization and increase the important of pedestrian-oriented investments nearby; and
• Sharing facilities means that less pressure is put on limited curb space that could be allocated to other uses.

For now, the program is extremely limited for its trial. The Seattle Department of Transit (SDOT) intends to monitor the use of these private buses during the extent of the trial to review if the plans are useful for the city or not. It’s worth noting that if the program is declared successful, there might be plans to expand it to other employers in the future.

Today, Microsoft announced new efforts to integrate Microsoft tools with LinkedIn. With the new integration of Dynamics 365 for Sales and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Microsoft hopes to “help salespeople deliver better outcomes using insights from LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn’s 500 million professionals.” The company also hopes that Sales Navigation combined with Dynamics 365 will increase the effectiveness of salespeople by “tapping into their professional networks and relationships.” Other key ways in which the integration will improve the outlook for salespeople can be seen below.

• Leveraging signals across email, CRM and LinkedIn to get contextual recommendations for the next best action within Dynamics 365 for Sales, facilitating introductions directly through the company’s network, and sending InMail, messages and customized connection requests.
• Engaging buyers with tailored content throughout the account lifecycle, and getting account and lead updates including news mentions and job changes.
• Building strong relationships with existing contacts through access to LinkedIn profile details including photos, current roles and work history.

The enhancements will be available in July as a single offer for half the half the cost of competitive solutions in the market. Noted by LinkedIn in a separate post, the integrations will be sold as “Microsoft Relationship Sales Solution” and will be starting at $135 per seat per month before volume discounts. LinkedIn highlights the following enhancements.

• Displaying Sales Navigator person and company information on every Dynamics lead, contact, account and opportunity page.
• Daily updates between systems so the accounts and contacts sales reps are actively working on in Dynamics 365 are automatically saved to Sales Navigator. In addition, sales reps can see in Sales Navigator what people and companies are already saved in Dynamics, and vice-versa.
• With a single click, the ability to write select Sales Navigator activities (InMails, messages, notes and call logs) to Dynamics 365.

Ever since introduction last July, companies such as HP, AccuWeather, Ecolab, Helsana and the Renault Sports Formula One Team have transformed their businesses using Dynamics 365. You can read up on the full announcement by checking here, and join the Microsoft Business Forward Webcast On Wednesday, May 3, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time to learn more about Dynamics 365 and these new solutions.

Welcome back to our Windows 10 news recap. We are continuing the trend of our weekly “Windows 10 news recap” series where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s flagship operating system.

Focused Inbox, more coming to Gmail accounts in Windows 10 Mail and Calendar

The built-in Windows 10 Mail and Calendar app is adding additional features for Gmail account holders. Gmail users, currently in the Windows Insider program, are now able to use Focused Inbox, as well as track packages and travel, as well as improved inbox search.

Windows 10 “Cloudbook” minimum specs leaked

Microsoft is working on a competitor to Google’s Chromebooks, known as Windows 10 Cloudbook’s for now. Now, the minimum specs for these new Windows 10 devices have been leaked, showing that they’ll be slower than Google’s equivalent.

Dropbox UWP app gets Project Neon redesign on Windows 10

With Project Neon design flowing through apps such as Groove Music, Dropbox has now brought the new design language to its UWP app.

Dropbox 4.7 is out with Neon UI on w10 Creators Update (blurry&transparent menu) +a lot of performance improvements! https://t.co/XtWtZPBlFl pic.twitter.com/O2Jt8zSMFn

— Rudy Huyn (@RudyHuyn) April 21, 2017

Redstone 3 coming in September; Microsoft commits to Windows 10, Office releases twice a year

Microsoft has announced that Redstone 3, the next major iteration of Windows 10, is to arrive in September. In addition to this, the company has committed itself to 2 major releases of Windows 10 and Office per year, arriving in March and September of each consecutive year.

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

Welcome to our weekly Xbox news recap series, where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Xbox. Let’s get started.

Possible Project Scorpio price leaked by retailer

Spanish retailer Xtralife.es may have leaked the price of Project Scorpio – and it’s a whole lot lower than expected. Microsoft has been telling us that Scorpio is “Premium console” – something that’s going to be pumped full of strong hardware to give gamers the absolute best performance – and we were expecting some serious pricing to reflect that kind of power. The projected price tag give to us by the leak was just about $420 USD, which is actually pretty reasonable compared to the average launch price of a console. We’ll see if this number holds up.

Como esto sea cierto…, pónganme 4, señores de @xtralife_es ? pic.twitter.com/cTXP7yliRg

— DesiXS (@desixbl) April 19, 2017

Xbox Game Pass launches later this Spring

The Xbox Game Pass is ending its testing phase on April 28th, giving Insiders about another week to test it out and enjoy some of the games that are on offer. In the announcement that the test session is ending, it was mentioned that they’re “getting close to launch” and that the Xbox Game Pass will be available “later this Spring.”

Beam partnership standards raising

As Beam gains popularity as a streaming service, tnhe requirements to get partnered are going to be raising quite a bit. The first change happened this week, as Beam raised the standards for prospective partners’ follower count and active viewers. The change shouldn’t make a huge difference for people who are already serious about streaming on Beam, but it should help to keep out some of the people who get partnered before making a meaningful commitment to their channel, and to Beam as a whole.

ID@Xbox releases its 500th game

ID@Xbox was a risky move when it launched so many years ago. It was an attempt to give indie developers a way to stay independent while still getting access to the sorts of premium tools that are necessary to really get a project moving. This week, the ID@Xbox program celebrated its 500th release, and put out a few videos to commemorate it. If you love indie games as much as we do, you should really go take a look at them.

Battlefront 2 won’t have a Season Pass

Gamers tend to not approve of the Season Pass model of DLC sales, and for good reason. Potentially, they’re exceptionally predatory and ask consumers to buy something they don’t even know about yet. In response to the negative response of Battlefront’s Season Pass model, the team at DICE has confirmed that no Season Pass will be coming for the sequel.

Thanks for joining us. To keep up to date with all the latest Xbox news, keep a close eye on our Xbox One news hub.

Microsoft’s ID@Xbox program, which allows Indie developers to get support from Microsoft in developing their game, as well as the opportunity to publish on the Xbox and Windows 10 platforms, has hit a milestone of releasing its 500th title since the program’s inception.

In the video below, some of the Xbox team members, such as Larry Hryb (aka, Major Nelson) take a look at some of their favourite titles:

Billions of hours have been spent playing ID@Xbox titles on Xbox One and Windows 10, showing the interest in title’s released through the program. Many great games have come to fruitition as a result, both those in the video above, but also many more fan-favourites. As the program continues to expand, we expect to see more great titles arising from Indie developers around the world looking to publish their game on one of the largest gaming platforms.

What’s your favourite ID@Xbox title? Let us know below!

A couple of months ago, rumors came through the grapevine about Microsoft using its recently released Desktop App Converter tool for its own Office suite. According to reports, the tech giant wanted to produce the ever classic Microsoft Word, Excel, and more on its Universal Windows Platform via the Windows Store.

Today, WalkingCat may have uncovered the first visible steps of this transition.

https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/855468598881431552

The well-known enthusiast pointed out some peculiarly named apps on Windows Store available from Microsoft Corporation. Introducing, Microsoft Soup and Microsoft Sandwich (links only work(ed) in Edge).

These deliciously named apps only have images of multiple Office suite software including OneNote, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Both pages note that they are “currently not available” yet oddly had a couple of generic comments.

Unfortunately, not long after I snapped the screenshots the app pages disappeared from the store.

While there isn’t any official source about these mysterious applications from Microsoft, it’s safe to say that Office could very well be looking to make a home on the Windows Store. Now, it’s time for a lunch break.

Next month, Microsoft will hold its annual Build developer conference in Seattle, and this year’s edition should be pretty special for Windows developers. Indeed, the company has just announced on its developer blog that it will present the first-ever Windows Developer Awards, which will celebrate the creativity of UWP developers who released “exciting UWP apps” on the Windows Store last year.

The awards will be given in four main categories:

• App Creator of the Year: this first category will honor apps that leverage the latest Windows 10 features such as Windows Ink, Dial, Cortana and more in innovative ways.
• Game Creator of the Year: this one will be restricted to first-time publishers that released “innovative, engaging and magical games” on the Windows Store
• Reality Mixer of the Year: As you can expect, this category will recognize the best mixed reality apps for Microsoft’s new Windows Mixed Reality platfrom.
• Core Maker of the Year: this award will honor “those who go beyond the traditional software interface to integrate Windows in drones, PIs, gardens, and robots to get stuff done,” explained Microsoft.

Last but not least, Microsoft also created a special Ninja Cat of the Year award that will “celebrate the developer or experience that we believe most reflects what Windows is all about, empowering people of action to do great things.” This one will be selected by Microsoft’s Windows team, but all other awards will be chosen by the community: the company has just set up a dedicated awards website where developers will be able to pick the winners through Thursday, April 27. Microsoft’s Build conference is all about developers, so it’s great to see that the company will put them under the spotlight this year.

Earlier this week, Microsoft invited Xbox fans to register to win one of 400 tickets for the E3 Xbox FanFest, which will run from Sunday, June 11 through June 13. Unfortunately, after opening registrations on Wednesday, the company discovered that an error caused the system to accept more registrants than the number of tickets.

As a consequence, Xbox’s Major Nelson explained today that “voiding all of Wednesday’s registrations and wiping the slate clean would help make things as fair as possible for all fans.” In other words, everyone who previously registered (including the lucky ones who won a ticket) will have to do it again next week.

If you’re still interested in the event, get ready to submit your new registration on Wednesday, April 26 at 9AM PST. Major Nelson shared the following details:

To streamline our approach after yesterday’s error, all 400 tickets will be available, all at once, starting at 9am PT.  Tickets remain first-come, first-serve, one ticket per-person.  Additionally, all requirements (21+ years old, credit card required to hold) remain exactly the same.  Stay glued to @Xbox, @MajorNelson and #XboxFanFest on Twitter for when the link to the registration site becomes available on Wednesday, April 26th at 9am PT.

As a reminder, the company has also kept 100 other tickets that will be distributed through a variety of other promotions/giveaways. “Xbox FanFest will give 500 lucky fans a one-of-a-kind, up-close-and-personal experience to the gaming industry’s biggest showcase,” teased the Xbox team earlier this week, so let us know in the comments if you’re ready to register again next week

It’s been a little more than a week since Microsoft released the last major update to Windows 10 (aka the Creators Update), but next month should bring much more interesting news to Windows enthusiasts. Indeed, Microsoft will kick off its annual Build developer conference on May 10, but the company will also hold a much-anticipated Education event on May 2 in NYC.

We’ll be attending the event, but we already have a good idea of what it will be about: Microsoft is expected to introduce Windows 10 Cloud, a new Windows 10 SKU which will be tarteget at the education market. From what we’ve learned, the new OS is a locked down version of Windows 10 that can only run Windows Store apps, including Win32 apps that have been ported with Microsoft’s Desktop App Converter. More importantly, Windows 10 Cloud will be able to be upgraded to Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro, for users that want full access to Win32 apps and other power user features.

Overall, Windows 10 Cloud, is expected to be Microsoft’s most serious response to Chromebooks, which are becoming increasingly popular in the US Education market.

It’s not clear yet if Microsoft or its OEM partners will introduce new hardware running Windows 10 Cloud at the May 2 event, but today a new report from Windows Central gave us more details about the minimum recommended specs for the new OS. And according to the following internal document, Microsoft made it clear that Chromebooks are the real target:

As you can see, the minimum recommend specs for Windows 10 Cloud are quite low: a quad core Celeron processor, 4GB or RAM and 32GB of storage (fast eMMC or SSD) should be enough to have a good experience. However, it’s worth noting that according to Microsoft, Chromebooks will still have an edge in certain areas such as battery life and the time from cold boot to Login Screen.

Windows Central also reported that Windows 10 Cloud may actually be named “Windows 10 S” (maybe a nod to “School,” who knows?) which certainly sounds less confusing. But now, the “Cloudbook” question still remains: does it make sense for Microsoft to release first-party hardware running Windows 10 Cloud, or will the company let its OEM partners bring the first new devices to the market? Windows 10 Cloud could make sense for a successor to the Surface 3, though Microsoft seems much more interested in high-end hardware like the Surface Studio these days.

We’ll see what happens on May 2, but one thing is already clear: Microsoft is really serious about the education market, and the company wants Windows 10 devices to match the strengths of Chromebooks, which are cheap, secure and fast PCs. And Windows 10 Cloud may well be a success if Microsoft and its OEM partners market it better than the now deprecated Windows RT.

If many members of your family use Outlook.com as their main account for emails, contact and calendars, you may know that Microsoft has introduced some useful family features to manage your kids’ activity. By configuring a family on account.microsoft.com/family, parents can manage screen time on kid’s devices, web browsing activity, Windows Store purchases and more.

However, if you always wanted to configure a shared calendar with other family members, you’ll be pleased to learn that this feature is currently rolling to all users who have set up a Microsoft family (via MSPoweruser). Microsoft MVP Ian Dixon tweeted the following email from Microsoft announcing the new feature:

Just had this from Microsoft about a family calendar is this new? pic.twitter.com/wHylr7YHwU

— Ian Dixon #WIMVP (@isdixon) April 21, 2017

Microsoft has already updated its Microsoft Family FAQ to detail how Family Calendars work:

• It’s an Outlook calendar for your Microsoft family.
• Everyone in your family gets automatic access to it, and can view and setup events.
• Access the shared family calendar on any device (Windows, iOS, Android) when you add your Microsoft account to that device.
• If you don’t see a family calendar just yet, sit tight. We’re still rolling out this new experience, and we’ll send you an email once we create your family calendar.

We just tried to create a Microsoft Family with a personal Outlook.com account, and the new Family Calendar appeared immediately. You can check this calendar on Outlook.com or any Outlook app, and this looks like a very welcome feature overall. As Microsoft explained, users who already created a Microsoft Family will receive an email when their Family Calendar is ready to use.