Among the things we saw this week were the figures for Microsoft’s first quarter of FY2021, vertical tab support in Edge, and yes, and Xbox fridge. Find out more in our overview below.
The week brought us not only the revenue figures for Microsoft’s first quarter of its 2021 fiscal year, but also an Xbox fridge, and even vertical tabs in Edge. You can find info about that, as well as much more below, in your Microsoft digest for the week of October 25 – 31. With the next generation of Xbox consoles mere days away, Microsoft has announced that there will be a live-stream event for the Series X| S launch on November 10, set to kick off at 2PM ET. However, that’s not all the company announced this week. Ever since its reveal at The Game Awards in December of last year, the Xbox Series X has been memed up and down. Among said memes, the most popular compared the console to a fridge. Not to be one-upped, Microsoft decided to not let the memes be dreams, and actually made a Series X fridge. Not only is this real, but it also plays the same Series X boot-up sound when you open the door, and comes complete with green LEDs on the inside. And yes, you can win one if you retweet the announcement tweet by November 4. Needless to say, with the launch so close, Microsoft was eager to reiterate that the Series X and S will leverage “full” RDNA 2 capabilities, stating that it “chose to wait for the most advanced technology” from AMD before finalizing its next console. In not so great news, Halo Infinite head Chris Lee has stepped down, leaving series veterans Joseph Staten and Pierre Hintze in charge of the next Master Chief-centered title. If all goes well, Infinite should land sometime in 2021 on the Xbox One and Xbox Series families of consoles, as well as PC. As far as a Halo game that is coming to PC much earlier, the Halo 4 Insider session has been extended, simultaneously gaining Halo Reach multiplayer for cross-play tests. Continuing the not-so-great news, Microsoft will be pulling the plug on the Gears Pop! mobile game, less than two years after launch. According to the company, the reason why the game is being shut down is because it’s no longer feasible to keep developing it. More first-party news came through by way of Asobo, with the fifth patch for Flight Simulator seeing a brief delay, but arriving a mere three days later than expected and fixing a bunch of bugs, but also adding some known issues. The fixes included cover everything from the planes, UI, installation manager, Marketplace, and much more. Sea of Thieves got its Fate of the Damned update with spooky voyages, gameplay changes, and more skeleton pets. Updates were also headed to the Xbox Game Bar on Windows 10, in the form of new widgets and a new entry under Settings > Gaming features, which allows you to see if your PC supports DirectX 12 Ultimate. Finally, this would all be pointless without some actual games to play, including Aragami: Shadow Edition, Full Spectrum Warrior, LEGO Indiana Jones, and Swimsanity!, all of which can be claimed for free this month as part of the November wave of Games with Gold.
