Tag Archives: microsoft

Microsoft's creative director of important technology like the Kinect camera and HoloLens augmented reality headset, Kudo Tsunoda, is being moved and promoted to head of new vision and experience development for Xbox, making him in charge of a number of internal developers like Lionhead, Rare, Press Play and Decisive Games. …

Microsoft has announced plans to bring plenty of its Xbox Live features over to the PC with Windows 10. While console gamers have to pay for many of these features, like multiplayer gaming, Microsoft does not expect the PC crowd to do the same thing. Microsoft has no plans to …

Early this week Advanced Micro Devices advised game developers to use Khronos Group’s Vulkan and Microsoft Corp.’s DirectX 12 application programming interfaces instead of its own Mantle API. Later on, the chip developer made further clarification: Vulkan has absorbed the key features of Mantle, but it is not proprietary. While this …

Elite: Dangerous is making its console debut on the Xbox One but despite Microsoft's recent attempts to unify PC and Xbox gaming, the space sim won't be featuring cross-play. However, there is a pretty good reason for it that many PC gamers will actually appreciate. There are a few planned …

Microsoft had another presentation today, this time at the Game Developers Conference, revealing some more on its plans for the future of Xbox and PC gaming. One of the bigger announcements to come out was cross-buy support for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC titles. Phil Spencer took to the …

Khronos Group on Tuesday introduced what was originally known as the next-generation OpenGL initiative, a brand-new application programming interface called Vulkan. The new API is designed to replace OpenGL in the long-term future and will address loads of markets and platform. The Vulkan is a new low-overhead/high-throughput API that provides …

Microsoft's upcoming Spartan browser is due to take over from Internet Explorer in the Windows 10 Operating System. It was first revealed back in January but now we have a closer look at the new browser thanks to a leaked video, going over some new features. Microsoft provided a demonstration …

AMD’s Mantle application programming interface was the first low-overhead/high-throughput graphics API to reach the market. The emergence of Mantle has made Microsoft and many other companies in the industry to redesign their APIs, including DirectX and OpenGL. While Mantle will continue to be AMD’s graphics innovation platform, the company now advices …

Virtual reality has been a part of sci-fi movies and books for decades, but in the recent years the technology started moving towards commercial market and this year we are going to see actual VR gear in stores. Initially, virtual reality technology will be used solely for gaming, but Facebook …

A couple of weeks after Apple started to offer its iWork productivity web applications for free to everyone, Microsoft Corp. decided to propose an even better deal and provide its Office 365 suite free worldwide, but even to students and teachers. Starting today, millions of students and teachers around the …

The Bing prediction engine has been busy this last week getting to grips with the Oscars and trying to predict the winners for each category. While it didn't get all 24 predictions correct, it did manage to get 20 correct giving it an 84% success rate. At last year's Oscars …

Advanced Micro Devices is hiring a microprocessor performance engineer to optimize its Catalyst drivers for graphics cards. The programmer will help to optimize AMD drivers to boost performance of Radeon graphics adapters in cases where CPU is a major performance-limiting factor. The CPU performance engineer will have to analyze CPU bound …

Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games and one of the best experts in computer graphics and video games in the world, believes that virtual reality will have dramatic influence on gaming. Moreover, rapid development of VR will mean that 10 years from now it will be impossible to distinguish …

A new report from Strategy Analytics claims that the PlayStation 4 will maintain its strong lead over the Xbox One, outselling Microsoft's console by 40 per cent by 2019. The results of the study were released this week, predicting sales figures for both consoles over the next four years. According …

Microsoft had a pretty decent E3 presentation in 2014, one of the games to be teased at the show was a reboot of Phantom Dust, which was being developed by Darkside Games. Unfortunately, the independent studio has now shut down after Microsoft decided to take the game in another direction. …

More details surrounding the Xbox One's integration in to the Windows 10 ecosystem have come to light, showing that the upcoming universal applications will be able to run in the background, bringing a higher level of multi-tasking to the console. Additionally, Microsoft may finally be bringing the option to turn …

Microsoft is now the first major cloud provider to make use of the ISO/IEC 27018 international standard for cloud privacy. From now on, Microsoft Azure and Office 365 customers will be notified when a government data request is received, allowing for more transparency. The standard was published by the International …

Microsoft has launched the ultimate game sale on Xbox Live, bringing discounts on many Xbox One and Xbox 360 titles, giving Xbox gamers the chance to save up to 85 per cent on some games. Those who have an Xbox Live Gold subscription will get an extra 10 per cent …

On average, us flesh sacks can recognise stuff in pictures pretty well, with an error rate of around 5.1% according to a recent study. Previously computers could come pretty close to that, getting around 6.66% of objects wrong. Now however, a new computer vision system from Microsoft Research is actually managing to …

Google's Project Zero was announced last year as a new way to help improve online security by identifying vulnerabilities in software and services. Upon finding a vulnerability, it is reported directly to the company in charge of the software or service affected, the developers then have a certain amount of …

Minecraft is likely one of the last games you would expect to come under fire for violent content but that is exactly what has happened over in Turkey. The country's Family and Policies Minister, Aysenur Islam, has launched an investigation in to the game under the impression that it promotes …

Perhaps, new generation game consoles are considerably less powerful than the majority of gaming PCs; perhaps, they are not going to stay on the market for a really long time, like their predecessors. But here is a fact: Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 are selling dramatically faster than …

In a move to help protect American online businesses and help them coordinate with US authorities, Obama has signed an executive order that will make federal agencies set up a way of sharing data between technicians in these businesses and federal agents. This information sharing will go both ways, with companies tipping …

A few hours ago Microsoft opened up the Windows 10 Technical Preview, to a few models of Lumia phones that are currently running Windows Phone 8.1. While on the surface this upgrade isn't a massive change for Windows phone 8.1 users, underneath the covers big changes have been made, to allow …

Microsoft might be looking to launch the final RTM version of its Windows 10 operating system in some form, sooner than initially anticipated. The release to manufacturer (RTM) version would allow vendors to make changes to the software and have it ready for the ‘back to school' season. This is …

Although Microsoft Corp. decided not to promote its second-generation Kinect motion sensing accessory last year, it looks like the company wants give it another try. The software giant has slashed the price of its Xbox One with Kinect to $449 in the U.S. For two weeks, starting Sunday, the 8th …

Microsoft Corp. will try to make sure that its next-generation Windows 10 operating system is available for systems that will ship during the back-to-school (BTS) season, according to a media report. If the information is correct, then it is completely logical for the software giant to roll-out its new OS …

Microsoft and Samsung have settled their patent dispute over royalty payments, which became an issue once Microsoft bought Nokia. Samsung had previously declined to pay Microsoft a patent fee and share sensitive commercial smartphone information after the company bought Nokia. The firm argued that the acquisition of Nokia would invalidate a …

When Microsoft releases its Windows 10 operating system later this year, the company will offer a software-as-a-service version of the OS. Last month the company filed an application with the U.S. patent and trademark office for the “Windows 365” brand name, which potentially confirms plan to introduce a subscription-based model …

Microsoft is currently working on bringing its digital assistant, Cortana, to Microsoft Office. The company is currently testing a “Work Assistant” app that is designed to use Cortana to open up, edit and share documents using voice commands. The application is just a prototype right now, but sources familiar with …