Recent News

Beginning April, Microsoft will end support for its decade long software development platform, Visual Studio 2005. Eric Zajac, Senior Program Manager, Visual Studio, Microsoft said, “In line with our support policy, starting April 12, 2016, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, technical support, or hotfixes, for all Visual Studio 2005 products and the redistributable components and runtimes included with them,” he said. Zajac advises developers to upgrade to the latest versions of Visual Studio, “A lot has happened in software development since 2005, we’re looking at you, C++ 11, TypeScript, .Net 4.6, Cordova, Roslyn, and UWP (Universal Windows Platform).

Microsoft has almost doubled the price of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 PCs. The game was priced at Rs. 729 when launched but now is available for Rs. 1,480. It will be interesting to see if this is just the beginning of price hikes for games across the Windows Store.

Amway India Enterprises Pvt launched its first digitally-enabled experience center in Bengaluru. Amway partnered with Microsoft to conceptualize and design the store with an aim to transform the consumer as well as distributor experience. Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft India, said, “We are pleased to partner with Amway to create an experience which blends digital engagement with physical products and spaces. Amway’s digital transformation is centered on the consumer and we are creating experiences which excite them in whole new ways. This is made possible by understanding customer’s behaviors captured through various sensors, Internet of things and natural user interface like touch and gestures.”

Chris Charla, Director of ID@Xbox announced the cross-platform multiplayer option, saying, “In addition to natively supporting cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 games that use Xbox Live, we’re enabling developers to support cross-network play as well. This means players on Xbox One and Windows 10 using Xbox Live will be able to play with players on different online multiplayer networks – including other console and PC networks.”

Fallout 4 will be receiving its first DLC Automatron later this month and users will finally get a look at the gameplay footage. Releasing on March 22nd, Automatron will be available for Xbox One PS4 and PC at $9.99 in North America. It will be the first DLC for Fallout 4 as the official modding tools and Wasteland Workshop comes in April and an entirely new landmass with Far Harbour in May.

Skype for Web gets more useful as it adds new features to bring it at par with the desktop apps. One can now call cellphones and landlines right from the web app. Also watching YouTube videos right from conversation is now possible. The video links are now embedded into user’s IMs along with the URL, so users no longer have to open a new tab to watch them.

Office2016PromoCode.com, a website dedicated to Microsoft products, recently announced the addition of Microsoft Office 2016 to its offerings. Microsoft Office 2016 that includes applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and Access, is said to make work faster, easier, and productive for all types of users.

The idea behind Microsoft’s acquisition of Mojang in 2014 was to break into mobile gaming with the developer’s massively popular title, Minecraft. Now, researchers at Microsoft are using a new platform called AIX to train an artificial intelligence agent to learn how to climb a hill in the open-world game. The team is using Minecraft, because unlike simpler games that have traditionally been used to train AI, it offers more opportunities and flexibility for agents and allows researchers to collaborate on complex experiments within its virtual world.

The article presents the review of the game ‘Far Cry Primal’ which is available on Xbox One. Far Cry Primal claims to innovate the ageing franchise by taking things back to the Stone Age, to 10000 BC, when the only thing between user and certain death was a stick of sharpened wood. The game starts with an impressive set piece where users and their tribe are mammoth hunting when tragedy strikes and thanks to a particularly ill-tempered sabretooth tiger, user’s entire group gets mauled to death. The voice acting is great, the use of the unknown language is an awesome touch and the characters themselves are quirky and fun, but it all falls apart as none of it is memorable.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 tablet just got a discount of Rs 15,000 in India. The tablet, priced at Rs 73,990, is selling at Rs 58,990 on Amazon. However, this is not a permanent price cut but a limited-period offer. The company’s Surface Pro 4 tablet is priced at Rs 89,990. Both the tablets are exclusively available on Amazon.