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By LoneWolfSL
Halo: MCC Season 5 of content lands with new Halo 3 and Reach unlocks
by Pulasthi Ariyasinghe
Halo: The Master Chief Collection's journey to PC completed with the arrival of Halo 4 late last year, but 343 Industries isn't finished with updating the game across all platforms just yet. Today, the studio launched the fifth season of content for the multi-game collection, delivering a range of new cosmetic unlocks aimed at Halo 3 and Halo: Reach along with a lightweight MCC update.
Halo: MCC Season 5 is dubbed Anvil and its battle pass has 100 unique new items for customizing player armor, weapons, and nameplates. These include armor pieces from the Halo Online project finally being implemented to Halo 3 and the cut GRD helmet over to Halo: Reach. The timed seasonal challenges this time offer some interesting rewards as well, including the humorous 'Mister Chief' helmet.
The free battle pass requires Season Points for unlocking this content as usual, which can be earned from simply ranking up by playing any of the included Halo experiences, as well as completing challenges that refresh daily, weekly, and across seasons. Moreover, all content from battle passes remains a part of the collection even after a season ends, letting players go back and unlock content from previous rounds.
Today's Halo: MCC update is related to the cosmetic side as well. Players will now find a new toggle in the options menu for disabling or enabling the new skins being added to Halo 3, letting those who prefer the original experience keep it that way. The game already had a similar toggle set up for the new Halo: Combat Evolved skins.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection Season 5 Anvil is now available for all PC (Steam and Microsoft Store), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S players. The size of the update will be around 258MB on Steam, 6.3GB on the Microsoft Store PC version, and up to 9.9GB for Xbox consoles.
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By silverscholar
Xbox Live now has 100 million active monthly users, Game Pass has 18 million subscribers
by Sylvester Addo
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the earnings for the second quarter of the firm's 2021 fiscal year today, which show that the company brought in $43.1 billion in revenue spurred by gaming, office and the cloud.
The demand for gaming saw Xbox earnings go up by 51 percent. This also includes Xbox content and services such as Xbox Live and Xbox Game Pass, which saw an increase of 40 percent in revenue. The company also recorded a few firsts; exceeding $2 billion in revenue from third-party titles and surpassing $5 billion in gaming revenue for the first time.
Microsoft also shared that the Xbox Series X and Series S launch was the most successful in its history, with "the most devices ever sold in a launch month".
Nadella announced that Xbox Live now has more than 100 million monthly active users and Xbox Game Pass has 18 million subscribers. This shows Xbox Game Pass growing by about eight million subscribers in under a year with the company announcing it had over 10 million subscribers in April last year.
The growth can be attributed to the company's transformation of gameplay with cloud gaming being an example. Another significant factor is the ongoing COVID-19 situation in which people have found themselves spending more time at home, relying on digital forms of entertainment.
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By Steven P.
Xbox Deals with Gold feature Need for Speed Payback, Darksiders, and more
by Steven Parker
Every week, Microsoft and select publishers discount a number of titles for weekly Deals with Gold, Spotlight, and Publisher sales. This week, games from A Plague Tale, Need for Speed Payback, Darksiders and other franchises are available for substantially less.
Below, you'll find the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 games with their respective discounts. Xbox Live Gold members receive additional discounts on a number of titles through the paid subscription which is denoted with an asterisk.
Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One
Xbox 360
Many of the Xbox 360 games appear to be backward compatible so you'll be able to play them on your Xbox One and the Xbox Series X|S. Microsoft also included a bunch of Xbox One backward compatible titles so that they can be enjoyed on the Xbox Series X|S consoles.
Which titles are you interested in? Did you pick any up? Let us know in the comments below.
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By Sszecret
Microsoft Weekly: Price fluctuations, Win32 reloaded, and hardware availability
by Florin Bodnarescu
This last week has brought a bit of indecisiveness from Microsoft in regards to Xbox Live Gold pricing, a commitment to Win32, and an expansion in hardware availability. You can find info about that, as well as much more below, in your Microsoft digest for the week of January 17 – 23.
Price fluctuations
On Friday, Microsoft caused a bit of a reaction from its player base as it decided to unceremoniously – and rather randomly – bump up the price for Xbox Live Gold. The monthly membership was increased by $1 to $10.99, the three-month price by $5 to $29.99, and the six-month membership was bumped up to $59.99. The latter price is the same the service used to cost for an entire year, which means that in effect, Microsoft doubled the price for Gold at the yearly level.
Not surprisingly, the reaction was swift and angry, at which point the company thankfully backpedaled on this decision, further stating that pricing will remain that same, and that free-to-play multiplayer games will not require a subscription.
It is however very possible that the company was trying to make Xbox Game Pass Ultimate a no-brainer deal at $180 per year, versus the (previously new) $120 per year for Xbox Live Gold. In case you had any doubts that Microsoft really wants folks to adopt Game Pass, you get 12 months of Game Pass Ultimate and a Razer Kishi Controller when buying a Galaxy S21 from the UK’s EE wireless carrier.
And speaking of such things, the Games with Gold for February have been revealed, and they include Gears 5, Resident Evil, Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, as well as Lost Planet 2.
For folks that do however prefer Game Pass, Remedy’s Control is now available to play as part of the subscription, along with a slew of other titles like The Medium, Desperados III, and many more. For the full lineup of titles, as well as games leaving the subscription, be sure to check out this link.
Finally, in more app news than anything else, the YouTube app on Xbox now has HDR support for videos.
Win32 reloaded
As you’d imagine, Microsoft was busy handing out Insider preview builds this week as well, with build 21296 making its way to the Dev channel. Don’t get too excited though, as it includes two minor changes to the Clipboard and Storage Spaces, as well as a laundry list of fixes, but even more known issues. The vast majority of known issues are related to the newly introduced news and interests feature from the taskbar.
There’s also build 20285 for folks previewing Server builds, a build which currently has no changelog attached to it.
In other Insider news, build 19042.782 made its way to testers in the Beta and Release Preview channels, bringing about a substantial number of fixes, despite it being a mere cumulative update. On a somewhat related note, there are reports that Microsoft may start testing Windows 10 21H1 beginning with build 19043. To the surprise of few, this will most likely be an enablement package, just like 1909 and 20H2.
And speaking of those, Microsoft did also release some out of band updates for at least one of those versions, namely 1909. The Knowledge Base number for this update is KB4598298, and bumps the build number up to 18363.1350. There are a lot of fixes included, but the bug related to system and user certificates is still present. For its part, 1809 got KB4598296, which brings the build number up to 17763.1728 with the singular known issue listed as being the “0x800f0982 – PSFX_E_MATCHING_COMPONENT_NOT_FOUND” message related to Asian language packs.
Finally, we’ll end with the story that’s hinted at in the title of this section, namely the Redmond firm’s commitment to Win32. It would appear that indeed, reports of its demise were greatly exaggerated, despite Microsoft’s best efforts to supplant it via Windows 8’s Metro UI and companion WinRT toolset, or Windows 10’s UWP approach. There’s also Project Reunion which aims to unify all of the disparate libraries and APIs, as well as Windows 10X which is still yet to prove itself – as it hasn’t even come out.
To aid with the transitionary period though, there’s now a toolset called win32metadata, which allows devs to more easily wrap Win32 APIs in order to take advantage of them for apps not written in C or C++. As to how successful this will be, remains to be seen
Hardware availability
Folks following the company closely may know that it recently released its Surface Pro 7+ hardware refresh, but it’s worth noting that the “previous” generation is still up for grabs. Specifically, there’s now a Surface Pro 7 + Type Cover (with Fingerprint ID) which would normally cost $2,059.98 being sold for $1,699.98. If you’re in the market for such a device, this bundle will save you about $360.
Moving on to the more traditional laptop form factor, the Laptop Go is now available in India, while the Laptop 3 may soon receive another variant, as it’s been spotted passing through Bluetooth certification.
In terms of the education market, Microsoft has also released five new inexpensive options from partners, all of which support 4G LTE and range in price from $185 to $329. There’s also the Classroom Pen 2, which is now being sold for $19.99.
Dev channel
Microsoft, Cruise, and GM have teamed up to commercialize self-driving vehicles. Microsoft Lists is now available for iOS. An event centered on Azure SQL and Data Factory will kick off on February 3. The Redmond giant will hold a free Azure Quantum Dev Workshop on February 2. You can now receive notifications from Yammer communities in Teams. Microsoft To Do’s web app now supports AI-based task suggestions. Windows Terminal is set to gain a settings UI in its next version. Teams will be integrated into SAP solutions. Microsoft has stopped PAC donations. Logging off
We’re at the edge of this weekly column, so how else would we end, other than talking about Microsoft’s eponymous browser.
Kicking things off with some Insider news, folks in possession of a HoloLens 2 can now test out the brand-new version of Edge inside the AR environment, joining testers who’ve had access to it on other platforms for quite a while.
For example, Edge Dev’s build 89.0.767.0 is now out, adding minor autofill improvements, with the stable channel getting Edge 88 complete with history sync, sidebar search, and more. Also part of this release is Password Monitor, a built-in tool that lets you know whether your passwords have been compromised.
And lastly, if you find the default look of the browser a tad boring, there’s always the option to change things up a bit via custom themes. Yes, the browser has been able to add Chrome themes for a while, but now custom ones, based on Microsoft properties like Ori and the Will of Wisps have been added to Edge’s add-on store.
Missed any of the previous columns? Be sure to have a look right here.
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By Usama Jawad96
Microsoft backpedals on Xbox Live Gold pricing, free-to-play games won't require subscription
by Usama Jawad
A few hours ago, Microsoft received massive backlash for increasing the price of its Xbox Live Gold program for new customers. It announced that the price of a one-month subscription is increasing by $1 to $10.99, and price of a three-month membership is increasing by $5 to $29.99, and a six-month membership is now $59.99 - which was previously the cost of its annual membership.
Following feedback from users of the service, Microsoft has now backpedaled on the decision.
In a statement on the original blog post, the firm has announced that it will not be implementing the new price model, and that the price of Xbox Live Gold membership will remain the same. It stated that:
A notable change coming to the program is that you will not require a subscription to play free-to-play games like Fortnite or Call of Duty: Warzone. This will make the service more in line with Sony's competing PlayStation Plus program. However, this modification to the program is not immediately available and Microsoft will be working to deliver it "in the coming months".
When Microsoft announced the new pricing model a few hours ago, many believed that it was designed to push gamers to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is arguably a better value proposition, but at $14.99/month. However, the price hike was considered to be in bad optics considering that the company is not adding any new features to the service, and free-to-play games still require a premium membership unlike Sony's PlayStation Plus. With the subscription model now reverted to the original and now packing a major improvement, it remains to be seen how the firm will entice users to join the Game Pass Ultimate program.
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