Microsoft news recap: Bing Maps lets you build your own travel itineraries, $99/year Xbox Game Pass appears on Microsoft Store, and more

Microsoft news recap is a weekly feature highlighting the top Microsoft news stories of the past week. Sit back, grab some coffee, and enjoy the read!

Build your own custom travel itineraries with Bing Maps

Bing Maps now lets you build out your own travel itineraries. Through conversational actions, you can create a new itinerary and add/remove activities from it. Below are some of the features included:

• Add the attractions you want to visit
• Remove or re-order attractions to optimize your day
• Add or remove days to fit your schedule
• Save your itinerary to My Places for future editing
• Share your itinerary with friends and family
• Take your itinerary on the go – view it on your mobile phone

New $99/year Xbox Games Pass subscription appears on the Microsoft Store

Those of you interested in Xbox Game Pass, it looks as though Microsoft has added a new subscription length, a yearly subscription, at $99/year. No more worrying about monthly payments for Microsoft’s game subscription service. The annual pass provides a small saving compared to if you were to pay monthly.

I am not sure when they did it but Xbox Game Pass can now be purchased for a year at $99.00 instead of the monthly price of $9.99 which equals $119.88 a year. This is a great move by MS and gives subscribers incentive to go with an annual option now. pic.twitter.com/dsYNqqmovC

— Richard Hay (@WinObs) July 31, 2018

Xbox One’s new Sport White Controller is now available to buy

Featuring a custom design and rubberised grip, Microsoft’s new Sport White Controller for the Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs is now available to purchase, offering a spectacular-looking white design.

Microsoft awards grants to expand rural broadband access in five states

This years winners of Microsoft’s Airband Grant Fund have been announced. The fund aims to expand rural broadband, this time across five states.New York, West Virginia, California, Maine, and Texas all won funding.

That’s it for this week. We’ll be back next week with more Microsoft news.