It wouldn't be a stretch to say that when Blizzard announced the mobile game Diablo: Immortal back in 2018 the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. A room full of Diablo fans (along with Warcraft, Starcraft and Hearthstone fans as well) had been expecting some kind of news about a follow-up to the hugely popular Diablo III. Instead they got some rehashed mobile game made by the third party NetEase and spawning the meme “Do you guys not have phones?”


Things have felt pretty quiet since then for Diablo: Immortal and last year Blizzard did finally announce Diablo IV but now a new gameplay trailer has appeared for the mobile game from ChinaJoy 2020. (Not that China is bringing a lot of joy this year?)


The graphics still don't look amazing, but they have been improved and this is still a mobile game, but are there mobile devices available today where it will run smoothly? Hopefully Blizzard are taking the time to release something special that won't be riddled with microtransactions, something not unheard of in the mobile space.

At least we can still look forward to Diablo IV, check the source for comparisons between 2018 and 2020 along with some more translated information from the Chinese website.

Source    New Diablo Immortal Trailer - Baal, Polished Models, Improved UI, Gameplay Footage | Wowhead

Outed by an Irish toy website, Smyths, there was briefly an apparent reference to Halo Infinite - one of sixteen Xbox Series X launch titles, being free-to-play.


On first reading this I thought it meant that Xbox Live Gold wouldn't be required, but it doesn't exactly clarify that, more likely it sounds like parts of the online experience of the game itself will not require purchase at all.

It wouldn't be that surprising really, if it was just that, many games these days such as Call of Duty and Fortnite have a free online component and Microsoft certainly has the room to give amazing perks as we have seen with Gears of War 5 and the extremely economic Game Pass that will replace Gold soon enough.

We will have wait and see, although I don't think I will get a series X myself as I barely use my Xbox One X and I am not sure the vertical monster will fit in my cupboard.


Source    Leak suggests 'Halo Infinite' multiplayer will be free-to-play | Engadget

Neowin has posted a great retrospective on Windows 10 which turned 5 years old this week, or yesterday specifically.

That is actually a long time, if you also consider that Windows 8 was only released 7 years ago (tomorrow) and even then wasn't something I switched to until the release of 8.1 a year later - very content with Windows 7 which is now considered end of life by Microsoft and soon if not already by many popular applications.

You could argue not much has changed in terms of the looks, Windows 10 has a very unmistakable style over both Windows 7 and 8 but there have been many new versions given silly seasonal names with a huge number of iterations via the Insider program.


Give the article a read and you will actually see how much has actually changed, with nearly every part of the operating system getting some attention at some time or another. Members of the product team have never been more accessible on reddit or Twitter either so it is always a shame when releases are tarnished by the smallest of bugs, especially when those bugs lead to blocks and serious problems for users.

Source    Windows 10 is five years old - here's how it's evolved | Neowin

It seems Microsoft is getting into a routine of releasing development builds on Wednesdays.

As eluded to previously, Microsoft doesn't consider development builds to be the release after the current beta anymore and instead just adds the latest checked in features which may or may not make it into the current beta builds. (With the third 'ring' now acting as an early release preview of what will eventually come with the stable builds a few weeks later.

There isn't any particular new feature to test with this release, but there are some notes, fixes and a regularly updated list of what is broken.

You can grab it from Windows Update on Windows 10 by joining the dev channel of the Windows Insider program.

Source    Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20180

Microsoft has released a new build to Windows Insiders on the beta program and it contains a few new features from the development channel, notably the long teased Start Menu revisions that adjust icons backgrounds depending on your theme as shown in a lovely animation here:
It is only a recent change to the flights that now see the development builds test new features and then once approved make their way to the beta, so I look forward to seeing what other features come before the final release of this particular version of Windows 10 in the second half of 2020.

Check the source for additional changes in this new cumulative update below.

Source    Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19042.421 (20H2) | Windows Experience Blog