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88% of PC players use a browser while gaming to get help, track their progress, or even listen to music or chat with friends¹. These actions require you to pull out your phone or Alt-Tab to the desktop on your PC, taking you out of your game. Unless you have multiple monitors, you also can't see what's happening in the game while you're in the browser or reference a guide while you play. We believe there's a better way. Today, we're excited to introduce Microsoft Edge Game Assist (Preview), the first in-game browser that delivers a rich gaming-centric browsing experience—including access to your browser data from your PC and mobile devices. Game Assist is a special version of Microsoft Edge that's optimized for PC gaming and can appear on top of your game in Game Bar. It's game-aware and will suggest tips and guides for what you're playing. It also shares the same browser data with Edge on your PC so the information you care about is always accessible while you play—including your favorites, history, cookies, form fills, and more. This means you don't need to log into sites again, and it's easy to get to what you care about. You can even quickly access your favorite services like Discord, Twitch, Spotify, or any other page or site in the sidebar. And, like other Game Bar widgets, you can pin Game Assist above your game so you can reference a guide or watch a video while you play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZadyqM7Gxs Game Assist (Preview) is accessed via Game Bar, a gaming overlay that allows you to use in-game widgets including Xbox Social for connecting with friends and tracking your achievements, Spotify, Teams, and game utilities for capturing screenshots and game clips, fine-tuning your audio settings, and monitoring your system performance. Game Assist (Preview) is available starting today on Windows 11 with Microsoft Edge Beta 132. Setting it up is simple, and it's easily accessible from within Game Bar (Win+G). Continue reading to learn more about Game Assist (Preview) and how to get started.

Browse the web without leaving your game

Game Assist helps you get the most out of your game by bringing the full power of the web to Game Bar. Simply press Win+G at any time to open the Game Bar overlay. The game is always visible in the background for peace of mind, making it easy to quickly glance at a guide and then continue on with your game. Game Assist is designed to take up as little screen real estate as possible, but you can resize or move it to fit your needs. Game Assist shares the same browser profile as Edge on PC, so you always have access to your data. Your favorites and history will appear in the address bar, saved passwords and form fills can be quickly entered on pages, and you'll already be logged into the same sites as on PC. We've also optimized Game Assist to display a unique set of gaming tabs and sidebar apps for a gaming-centric experience and the best performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_uEt9aRr5E

Game-aware new tab page

Based on our research, 40% of PC players look up tips, guides, and other help while they play¹. Game Assist makes this easier than ever by highlighting helpful resources for your game whenever you open a new tab. The initial preview is localized in English and supports a selection of popular PC games while we optimize the experience based on your feedback. Here are some of the games you can try today:

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Diablo IV
• Fortnite
• Hellblade II: Senua's Saga
• League of Legends
• Minecraft
• Overwatch 2
• Roblox
• Valorant

Don't see your favorite game on the list? Stay tuned! We'll add tips and guides for more popular games throughout the preview and over time. In the meantime, you can still browse to your favorite guides in any game.

View Game Assist while you play

Ever needed to follow along with a guide or watch a video while you play? Now you can with Game Assist! Click the pin button in the top-right corner of Game Assist to display the widget above your game while you play. You can even adjust the transparency in the Game Bar settings under Personalization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwml_KaUoKQ Watching a video? Click on the video player's full screen button to automatically resize Game Assist to fit the video! Click it again to return Game Assist to the original size. Picture-in-picture makes it easy to watch your favorite guide, live stream, or even TV show while you play. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oz8M0GY_KQ

Your favorite apps at your fingertips

Chat with friends on Discord, watch a live stream on Twitch, listen to music with Spotify, and more. Add your favorite sites or services to the sidebar for instant access without leaving your game. The sidebar makes it easy to find the services that matter most without having to dig through your tabs; they're always just a click away! Game Assist also lets you reorder, remove, or add new apps to your sidebar so you're always in control.

Try Game Assist today!

We're excited to bring Microsoft Edge Game Assist to PC players and it's just the start of our journey. We're initially releasing Game Assist as an opt-in public preview while we gather your feedback on what you love and what might need to be improved. We want your help to shape the final experience, so please install Game Assist (Preview) and start sending us feedback. You can share your feedback in Game Assist by going to Settings and more ("...") > Send feedback. You can also vote on which features you want to see added to Game Assist using the new Game Assist Community feedback portal, and we'll be monitoring feedback on r/MicrosoftEdge, X, and other social channels as well.

Getting started

Ready to try Game Assist (Preview)? Here's how to get started:

1. Make sure Windows 11 and Game Bar are up to date.
2. Game Assist requires the Beta or Preview channel of Microsoft Edge. If you're running Windows Insider builds on your PC or have opted into Edge Preview, you already have Edge Preview and can skip to Step 3. Otherwise:
   1. Install the Microsoft Edge Insider Beta channel (you can also use the Dev channel for the latest updates, but things may be slightly less stable).
   2. Set Edge Beta as your default browser: go to Windows Settings > Apps > Default apps, search for Edge and, at the top of the page, click Edge Beta > Set as default.
3. To opt-into Game Assist (Preview) and install the Game Bar widget, in Edge, go to Settings and more ("...") > Settings, then search for Game Assist in the search box, find the Game Assist option (above the Page zoom setting), and select Install widget.
   1. If you haven't used Edge Beta/Preview before, in Edge, go to Settings and more ("...") > Close Microsoft Edge, and then re-open the browser. You may have to repeat this step a few times for the Game Assist option to appear.

You can now use Game Assist (Preview) by opening Game Bar with Win+G. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Known issues

• The Game Assist widget is automatically closed after a period of inactivity. (Please share feedback about this!)
• Open tabs are restored when Game Assist is re-opened, but prior navigation history is not yet retained.
• You can't right-click on links, images, or the page.
• Some keyboard shortcuts are not yet supported.

FAQ

Does Game Assist work with any game and/or alongside other overlays? Yes! Game Bar and the Game Assist widget work above any game, and you can use it alongside other overlays. For the initial preview, the game-aware new tab page supports a selection of popular PC games while we optimize the experience based on your feedback. Why do I have to set Edge as my default browser? Game Assist shares data with the full Edge browser on your PC. This is typically Edge Stable, but if you have another channel of Edge set as your default browser it will prefer that channel instead. Edge Stable does not yet support Game Assist, so in the interim you'll need to set your default browser to Edge Beta for Game Assist to work. If you have Edge Preview (the default version of Edge on Windows Insider builds), you already have the necessary updates for Game Assist and do not need to install Edge Beta or set it as your default browser. Which versions of Windows does Game Assist support? Game Assist supports Windows 11 24H2, 23H2, 22H2, and all Windows Insider channels. Please make sure you've installed the latest mandatory updates. How does Game Assist know which game I'm playing? Game context is provided to all Game Bar widgets. You can control which widgets have access to this data in the Game Bar settings. Does Game Assist support Compact Mode or gamepad input? The initial preview of Game Assist is optimized for mouse and keyboard. Support for Compact Mode in Game Bar, handhelds, and gamepad input will be added in the future.

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¹ Based on internal Microsoft research.

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Two things can be true at the same time.

In the case of AI, it is absolutely true that the industry is moving incredibly fast and evolving quickly. It’s also true that hundreds of thousands of customers are using Microsoft AI technology today and, by making early bets on the platform, are seeing big benefits now and future-proofing their ability to benefit from the next big wave of AI improvements.

Microsoft Ignite is our annual event that spotlights the updates and creations that enable customers, partners and developers to unleash the full potential of Microsoft’s technology and change the way we approach work.

This year, we are announcing about 80 new products and features, including new capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot, additions to the Copilot + AI stack and new Copilot+ devices offerings. Underpinning each of these innovations is our commitment to security. Since launching our Secure Future Initiative (SFI) one year ago, we have made security the No. 1 job of every employee at Microsoft, dedicated 34,000 engineers to this focus and, at Ignite, we will announce innovations that are rooted in our SFI principles: secure by design, secure by default and secure operations.

More than 200,000 people have registered to join us for this year’s Ignite, with more than 14,000 attendees at our in-person events in Chicago. Attendees can choose from more than 800 sessions, demos and expert-led labs from Microsoft and our partners. Most of the Ignite content will be available on demand for those who can’t attend the live event.

Copilot momentum

Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work, and we have seen the momentum grow as more organizations are moving to Copilot and deploying it to great success. All up, nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot.

That echoes an industry trend: A recent IDC study showed that generative AI is on the rise, with 75% adoption among companies surveyed in 2024. In addition, for every $1 invested, companies are realizing a return of $3.70, and leaders are saying they are realizing as much as a $10 return, according to the study.

The investments that Microsoft has made in Copilot are paying dividends for our customers.

We recently highlighted some of the more than 200 customer stories of accelerated AI Transformation, with Copilot helping many of them spark innovation and transform their organization for the better. Several examples include:

• Intelligent power management company Eaton leveraged Microsoft 365 Copilot to help streamline and automate operations, improve data access, centralize knowledge and empower teams to focus on higher-value tasks. One immediate challenge addressed through Copilot focused on the manual, time-consuming documentation process in Eaton’s Finance operations. Copilot helped Eaton document over 9,000 standard operating procedures (SOPs), resulting in an 83% time savings for each SOP.
• Consulting firm McKinsey & Company is creating an agent to speed up the client onboarding process. The pilot showed lead time could be reduced by 90% and administrative work reduced by 30%. The agent automates complex processes, such as identifying the right expert capabilities and staffing teams and acts as a single place where colleagues can ask questions and request follow-ups. By streamlining tasks and reducing manual inputs, this agent could potentially save consultants many hours, allowing them to spend more time with clients.

Boosting productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft is continuing to supercharge productivity with new capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot designed to help simplify the workday.

Copilot Actions, now in private preview, enable anyone to automate everyday tasks with simple, fill-in-the-blank prompts, whether it’s getting a daily summary of meeting actions in Microsoft Teams, compiling weekly reports or getting an email upon return from vacation that summarizes missed meetings, chats and emails.

Anyone can easily set up Actions right in their Microsoft 365 app, allowing users to focus on more impactful work, save time and boost productivity.

New agents in Microsoft 365 are designed to help scale individual impact and transform business process. At Ignite we will introduce:

• Agents in SharePoint: These natural language AI assistants are grounded on relevant SharePoint sites, files and folders to make it easy to find answers from that content, and to make quicker decisions as a result. Now generally available, every SharePoint site will include an agent tailored to its content. Users can also create customized agents scoped to select SharePoint files, folders or sites with as little as one click.
• Interpreter: This agent in Teams helps users overcome language barriers by enabling real-time, speech-to-speech interpretation in meetings. Available in public preview in early 2025, meeting participants will also have the option to have the agent simulate their personal voice.
• The Employee Self-Service Agent: An agent available in private preview in Business Chat expedites answers for the most common policy-related questions and simplifies action-taking on key HR and IT-related tasks — like helping employees understand their benefits or request a new laptop. It can be customized in Copilot Studio to meet an organization’s unique needs.
• Other agents in public preview take real-time meeting notes in Teams and automate project management from start to finish in Planner.

Copilot + AI Stack

The Copilot stack empowers users to build more ambitious products by leveraging advanced technology at each layer of the stack. To create a unified experience where customers can design, customize and manage AI applications and agents, we are introducing Azure AI Foundry, which gives customers access to all existing Azure AI services and tooling, plus new capabilities like:

• Azure AI Foundry SDK, now available in preview, provides a unified toolchain for designing, customizing and managing AI apps and agents with enterprise-grade control and customization. With tools that help organizations responsibly scale their applications, Foundry also provides 25 prebuilt app templates and a simplified coding experience they can access from familiar tools like GitHub, Visual Studio and Copilot Studio.
• Azure AI Foundry portal (formerly Azure AI Studio), now available in preview, is a comprehensive visual user interface to help developers discover AI models, services and tools. With a new management center experience that brings essential subscription information into a single dashboard, the portal also helps IT admins, operations and compliance teams manage AI applications at scale.
• Azure AI Agent Service, coming soon to preview, will enable professional developers to orchestrate, deploy and scale enterprise-ready agents to automate business processes.

We also continue to back up our Trustworthy AI commitments with new tools. Today we’re announcing AI reports and risk and safety evaluations for images to help organizations ensure AI applications are safe and compliant. AI reports will help organizations improve observability, collaboration and governance for AI apps and fine-tuned models, while evaluations for image content will help customers assess the frequency and severity of harmful content in their app’s AI-generated outputs.

Copilot+ devices

As organizations move more workloads to the cloud to enhance security and flexibility, Microsoft is expanding its Cloud PC solution by introducing the first in a new class of devices purpose-built to connect securely to Windows 365 in seconds.

Windows 365 Link is the simple, secure, purpose-built device for Windows 365. It is in preview now and will become generally available for purchase starting in April 2025 in select markets with an MSRP of $349, allowing users to work securely in a familiar Windows desktop in the Microsoft Cloud with responsive, high-fidelity experiences.

Windows 365 Link is secure by design. The device has no local data, no local apps and admin-less users so corporate data stays protected within the Microsoft Cloud.

Other new capabilities for Copilot+ PCs for commercial customers include harnessing the power of inbuilt native processing units (NPUs) to deliver local AI. With improved Windows Search, and the new Recall experience (preview), finding what you need on your PC is easier than ever by just describing what you are looking for. These features are releasing first to our Windows Insider community on Copilot+ PCs before rolling out more broadly to our customers.

BlackRock momentum

Four years ago, BlackRock, one of the world’s pre-eminent asset management firms, formed a strategic alliance with Microsoft to move its Aladdin platform to Microsoft Azure. With this foundation on Azure, BlackRock rolled out generative AI tools for global clients with Aladdin Copilot. Through generative AI, Aladdin Copilot serves to strengthen the connective tissue across the platform, leveraging Microsoft technology to help users receive answers instantly to unlock new efficiencies and discover important business insights even faster. Aladdin Copilot makes BlackRock’s Aladdin platform even more intelligent and responsive. That results in enhanced productivity, enables scale and keeps users more informed.

BlackRock’s move to Azure and launch of Aladdin Copilot are just two of the many ongoing milestones in a long-term partnership that also includes an enterprise-wide deal for 24,000 seats of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Today, about 60% of BlackRock’s Copilot user population is leveraging Copilot on a weekly basis. Additionally, BlackRock also recently made the choice to move its on-prem CRM solution to the cloud with Dynamics 365, citing its native integration with Teams and Outlook as one of its primary decision-making factors.

Strength in security

We know that the threat landscape is rapidly evolving, and it’s imperative that we stay ahead of bad actors. At Microsoft we believe that security is a team sport, and we are stronger when we partner as a security community to share information, collaborate and stop bad actors.

In that spirit, and as part of our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), at Ignite we are announcing the largest public security research event in history: the Zero Day Quest. This event, which focuses on AI and cloud security, will offer the largest award pool in the industry at $4 million, in addition to our existing $16 million annual bounty program. This competition aims to attract the world’s best security minds to tackle high-impact scenarios critical to our customers’ security, with award multipliers, starting today.

As the threat landscape has changed, we have seen rapid evolution in the way attackers exploit weaknesses within systems — particularly by navigating graph relationships between identities, files and devices to uncover attack paths. Attackers thinking in graphs cause wider damage from the first point of intrusion. Traditional security products, with limited visibility into these graph relationships, are often better suited to protect specific devices or mediums — like laptops or inboxes — rather than the full scope of potential attack surface.

Today’s Microsoft Security Exposure Management launch is a pivotal step in transforming cybersecurity with savvy data and AI-based strategies. The power of incorporating Microsoft graph data, in context with data from customers’ other third-party security tools, creates a powerful single pane of glass to visualize attack paths before threat actors do. With computing power and cloud-scale performance to distill powerful real-time mapping of assets and evolving risks, Exposure Management assists security teams in preventing intrusions and provides IT, operations and risk leaders with real-time data to support cyber risk decision-making.

This is only a small section of the many exciting features and updates we will be announcing at Ignite. As a reminder, you can view keynote sessions from Microsoft executives including Satya Nadella, Rajesh Jha, Scott Guthrie, Charlie Bell and Vasu Jakkal, live or on-demand.

Plus, you can get more on all these announcements by exploring the Book of News, the official compendium of all today’s news.

 

The post Ignite 2024: Why nearly 70% of the Fortune 500 now use Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.

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