Author: Microsoft Stories

EA has finally opened its doors to its EA Access service that allows Xbox One owners to access popular EA Xbox titles for less. The service allows subscribers access to a list of popular titles that keep on changing from time to time.

After meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Communications and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said the company is looking forward to partner with the Digital India and Make in India programmes of the government. He said, “I have an aspiration that in this mobile and cloud world, we can empower every individual citizen of India and every business organisation and institution in India to be able to try with new technology.”

Since he took over as CEO, Nadella was able to leverage the company’s massive cloud infrastructure to create the most compelling services for consumers. This has been one space where Microsoft has been able to compete and arguably surpass similar offerings from Apple and Google. In 2014, Office 365 became Microsoft’s most valuable software product surpassing even Windows. Microsoft also began releasing a lot of its services as Android and iOS apps. For the first time in its history, it was embracing rival platforms, services, and even open source software to improve its own offerings.

Microsoft’s Lumia Icon is definitely one of the phones on this list! The manual controls in Lumia phones are unmatched, allowing users to control shutter speed, light sensitivity, white balance and other settings you typically only get with an SLR. It’s the camera for taking professional-looking photos.

Microsoft has integrated Skype into its Office Online platform for Web, starting with Office Online Word and Office Online PowerPoint. Users will now be able to participate in Skype chats, while editing an Office Online Word document or Office Online PowerPoint presentation. They will also be able to create group chats with Skype contacts within these two Office Online apps.

In addition to the use of AES encryption on the Azure Media cloud services, Microsoft has added another option to encrypt all that content which media companies choose to live-stream over the Internet. Further, customers can access the Microsoft-developed PlayReady encryption technology. Mingfei Yan, product manager , Azure media services, noted on the company’s blog post, “Microsoft PlayReady is an extensive, studio approved encryption technology that protects your content from piracy, and it is supported on a wide range of the most popular devices today.

Microsoft has announced that those users who have been experiencing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on the Xbox 360 en route to enjoying their swanky Xbox One on Christmas Day can upgrade their digital copy of the game to the Xbox One version. If you upgrade your digital version of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on the Xbox 360 before March 31, 2015, not only will you be able to carry over all DLC and progress but you won’t be charged anything.

Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft India, says, in 2015, organizations will adopt a mobile-first and cloud-first strategy to get ahead of competition. He says, “The biggest opportunity for us in 2015 is to unlock the potential of public cloud services by leveraging our local cloud datacenters. This will help us address the needs of BFSI, government, and state-owned enterprises among others, enabling newer business models in the country.”

Wearable technology company GOQii has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to bundle its fitness band with the purchase of three Lumia models. The company is offering a free GOQii band and a three-month subscription plan worth Rs. 3,999, along with new Lumia 830, Lumia 930 and Lumia 1320 devices. “We recognize personal fitness as a rapidly evolving segment and are committed to bring the best innovations and services to our consumers,” said Navdeep Manaktala, Head-Developer Experience, Nokia India Sales Pvt Ltd (a subsidiary of Microsoft Mobile Oy).

Provident Housing, a subsidiary of real estate major Puravankara Projects, has managed to increase the conversion rate of business leads it gets by around 30 per cent with the use of Microsoft’s customer relationship management (CRM) solution to support its sales, marketing and customer management functions.