Recent News

One week after launching worldwide, “Halo 5: Guardians” has made history as the biggest Halo launch and fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive game to date, with more than $400 million in global sales of “Halo 5: Guardians” games and hardware, pushing the franchise to over $5 billion lifetime. With the highest week one attach rate for a Microsoft first-party title on Xbox One, the game was the most played of any game on Xbox One, as well as the most played on Xbox Live.

The Xbox One Elite bundle, which comes with the highly sought after Elite controller, as well as 1TB of on board storage, coming in the form of a solid state hybrid drive (because of which it can boot up 20% faster), is now out. For players still looking to jump in on Microsoft’s vision of the next generation of gaming, this SKU represents the single best variant of the Xbox One that is currently available.

Red Hat and Microsoft have unveiled a partnership that the two companies say will make it easier for customers to accelerate the shift to cloud computing.”We both see our mission as helping customers succeed in today’s cloud-connected world,” Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s president of products and technologies, said. The partnership will provide “greater choice and flexibility” by enabling businesses to deploy Red Hat software on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform, according to the companies.

Telecom and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will meet Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in Mumbai on Thursday to discuss the company’s plan to provide broadband connectivity in villages, sources said. Microsoft has invited the minister to participate in its event to be held in Mumbai titled ‘Microsoft’s Future Unleashed’, the biggest event the technology giant has ever organised in India, where the minister is likely to address the gathering followed by a meeting with Nadella.

As the second-fastest growing and third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world, India is moving at a frenetic pace. Zooming from 3,100 start-ups in 2014 to an expected 11500 start-ups by 2020, they are estimated to raise $3.5 billion in the first half of 2015 alone and are set to surpass the total number of deals done in 2014, says a report by Microsoft Ventures and Venture Intelligence, which captures this data in the form of a periodic table. Funding raised was the primary parameter and kept at a cut-off of $15-20 million, with a few expectations. Indian unicorns, the report notes, now account for nearly 10% of the global unicorn club and the list is only going to get longer.

Microsoft chief Satya Nadella will meet industry leaders like Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra, Axis Bank head Shikha Sharma and Tata Starbucks CEO Avani Davda during his one-day visit to India on November 5. The India-born CEO will also deliver a keynote address at ‘Microsoft’s Future Unleashed’ event here that will bring together 3,000 industry thought leaders, enterprise heads, developers and entrepreneurs.

PMC-Sierra, the semiconductor and software solutions innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store big data, today announced it has joined the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance partner program. “Expanding our relationship with Microsoft to include the Cloud Alliance is a natural fit with PMC’s goal to address the expanding requirements of data center and enterprise storage connectivity,” said Pete Hazen, vice president of PMC’s Scalable Solutions Group.

Microsoft has been pushing hard for the Xbox One this season and for good reason. Not only does it have a very strong line-up for the holidays but it’s also gaining momentum on the PlayStation, which has outsold it worldwide thus far. According to Xbox marketing team lead Aaron Greenberg, “If you’re buying a console for games, you’re buying an Xbox. Xbox is the platform with the most games, the most exclusives, and probably the most anticipated game of the year in Halo 5. It’s the greatest Halo ever made. It’s stunning. It’s worth the investment. That game alone is worth the investment.”

Microsoft has been pushing hard for the Xbox One this season and for good reason. Not only does it have a very strong line-up for the holidays but it’s also gaining momentum on the PlayStation, which has outsold it worldwide thus far. According to Xbox marketing team lead Aaron Greenberg, “If you’re buying a console for games, you’re buying an Xbox. Xbox is the platform with the most games, the most exclusives, and probably the most anticipated game of the year in Halo 5. It’s the greatest Halo ever made. It’s stunning. It’s worth the investment. That game alone is worth the investment.”