Nintendo partners up for a money-printing mobile RPG

With all eyes on the Switch and the console’s new Labo cardboard peripherals, it’s easy to forget Nintendo is now very much a mobile game developer, too. In Nintendo’s latest financials, however, its mobile games received only a passing mention, and Mario Kart Tour is still a ways off. But it turns out Nintendo has other mobile titles in the pipeline. It’s been working with developer Cygames on Dragalia Lost, a Japanese-style action RPG. You may know Cygames as the company behind the digital card game Shadowverse, but otherwise it typically makes titles aimed squarely at the Japanese market, like the hugely popular Granblue Fantasy.

Beyond the trailer showing off a few snippets of gameplay and the cute anime characters that inhabit the world of Dragalia Lost, we don’t know a great deal about it. It will be free-to-play, though, with an in-game currency used to unlock new characters and such.

Nintendo has been pretty diverse in its mobile launches to date, with mixed success. Its first foray into mobile, the quirky social network-esque Miitomo, has already reached the end of the road, and Nintendo has admitted Super Mario Run didn’t prove as profitable as the company would have liked.

Nintendo’s third mobile release, Fire Emblem Heroes, was a free-to-play game based on the company’s tactical RPG series, and it turned into a money-spinner. Even a year after release, it still comfortably pulls in over $1 million per month for Nintendo, as players buy virtual currency at exorbitant prices in the hope of pulling their favorite characters from the game’s slot machine — the hallmark of a gacha game. Despite Heroes’ success, Nintendo’s most recent launch, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, was a less predatory affair, relying on more traditional currency and stamina mechanics to make money, instead of gambling.

Given Cygames’ background as a gacha specialist, it’s likely Dragalia Lost will have similar gambling-style mechanics to Fire Emblem Heroes. As part of the Dragalia deal, Nintendo is taking a 5-percent stake in Cygames, which signals the company’s intent to continue to pursue the gacha market as part of its mobile strategy. The mobile gaming company DeNA, which Nintendo also has a stake in, already owns a quarter of Cygames.

Dragalia Lost will launch this summer in Japan and some other Asian markets, and Nintendo has also committed to a release in North America and Europe. That’s cool and all, but what we really want to hear about next is the rumored Zelda mobile game, because after Breath of the Wild, the adventures of Link are the only thing that really matters.

Aaron Souppouris contributed to this report.

Via: Kotaku

Source: Cygames, Nintendo

Windows 10’s next major update arrives on April 30th

Windows 10 has seen two major updates since its initial release. The next — the snappily-titled Windows 10 April 2018 Update — will be available on April 30, and includes a bunch of features designed to make your screen time more efficient.

The update’s headline addition is Timeline, which lets you go back in time up to 30 days to find the things you’ve been working on. It works across devices, as long as you’re signed into your Microsoft account, so you could do some research on your phone while you’re out and about, then pick it up on your desktop at a later date.

Another key feature is Focus Assist, designed to eliminate the zillions of web-based distractions that get in the way of productivity. Turn it on and it’ll block emails, updates and notifications, turn it off and it’ll give you a summary of what you missed. It’s customizable, though, so if you’re waiting on a specific email you can choose which stuff can break through.

Other notable features include tweaks to Microsoft Edge, such as tab muting and autofill on web payment forms, and updates to Dictation. Instead of seeking out the voice input app, you’ll now be able to capture spoken word in any text field simply by pressing Win+H. You’ll also be able to use voice features to manage your smart home from your PC, if you’ve got a compatible thermostat.

Other additions include simplified IT management tools for enterprise customers, new photo, 3D and Mixed Reality experiences, safety improvements and gaming enhancements. The update will be available for free as a download on Monday April 30.

In ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider,’ Lara Croft has the skills to survive

2013’s Tomb Raider redrew the beginnings of Lara Croft. Pretty much a teenager, she learned what she needed to survive. Two years later, in Rise of the Tomb Raider, her skills were refined and she seemed more in control, less hunted.The games did a good job of conveying this through the story and cutscenes and, crucially, the game itself, with skills being unlocked and earned as you progressed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, then, is where Lara Croft embodies the powerful adventurer of decades past. I played through an early 45-minute preview and while it didn’t touch too much on how Lara will grow this time around, she’s at least found help in unusual places.

I got 45 minutes to play through an early part of the game and started by tracking a man through a busy South American village celebrating the Day of the Dead. It’s notable to see Lara walking through a place populated with people, and not having to draw her bow or climbing ax. The village is teeming with people, detail and music — it’s alive. It also feels different to the bleak introductions we’ve seen in games past. Lara looks slightly more polished in this third outing, despite the early preview build I played on the Xbox One.

There are some heavy Keira Knightley vibes and she’s still unmistakably British, in that she doesn’t seem to speak a single word of Spanish. She mumbles ‘sorry’ as she bumps into people, talks at children and the rest of it. Lara can decipher ruins of ancient Mayan civilizations, but ‘disculpo’ seems beyond her.

While the story does follow on from the two early games, you could join the series at this point and get up to speed pretty quickly. It’s typical action movie stuff. The big bad is Trinity: They killed your father and are seeking out an apocalyptic… thing. Lara’s hunting for it too, just to ensure the evil organization doesn’t get to it. Thus, we’re tomb raiding.

Following the stranger soon leads to an excavation site, armed guards and well, trouble. I shoot off two stealth kills (quick-time event style), which are well sign-posted, slick and effective. Quick time events, like in the rest of the trilogy, appear at heated points. You’ll want to remember where the ‘tool’ button is, because that’s going to save you from tricky moments scaling cliffs and jumping across chasms.

One of the criticisms of the second game is how you seem to shed all the hard-earned skills from the first game. The games’ creators are stressing how these titles act as an origin story, but they still wiped the slate clean on each iteration. While the demo wasn’t complete (no tool creation or experience points to assign), right from the outset Lara was wielding rope arrows, Molotov cocktails, several (!) guns and more. Hopefully this is a sign that Lara will start Shadow with the skills becoming of the tomb raider from decades past. She’s been through enough in the first two games.

It’s also good to see that there are indeed tombs, even in this short demo. Once you’ve traversed cliffs and had a particularly tense underwater dash, you’re faced with a beautiful view of your next challenge: a Mayan pyramid. I found the puzzles challenging but achievable — most of my struggles came from forgetting the Xbox button layout and plummeting off cliffs or into spikes. I didn’t manage to finish the demo, but I might have if I was using a DualShock. (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.)

Later in the demo, I tested out more stealth kills, weapons and well, more trying not to die. Picking off guards one by one is still your best strategy: I was able to take out three guys in a firefight, but was soon felled by countless other guards.

Lara can decipher ruins of ancient Mayan civilizations, but ‘disculpo’ seems beyond her.

So yes, while this still isn’t Uncharted, the demo offers a glimpse at a busier world for Tomb Raider’s remake trilogy. Slightly more dramatic camera angles (and a pretty hectic fight towards the end of my demo) suggest things could get dicey and a bit more action-packed more often in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Uncharted series has managed to overshadow the recent exploits of Lara Croft, but the two series take different approaches to the Indiana Jones schtick. The third origin story might close the gap in approach, while holding onto both the survival aspects that make the rebooted Tomb Raider series arguably more rewarding games to play.

Square Enix

The last two games in the series were made by Crystal Dynamics, but Shadow of the Tomb Raider is being developed by Eidos Montreal (which had previously worked on the Deus Ex series). More action could be one of the consequences to this swap, but I’ll have to play the full game to confirm my suspicions.

Leaks ahead of today’s reveal suggest old allies will reappear, and during a preview event in London, the team behind the game said cryptically that meeting people, and Lara’s social skills, would play an important part in this finale. I’d like to know more about that.

Your most important ally remains the environment around you: large parts of the game will take place in the jungle, with rivers, trees and, apparently, mud offering Lara new ways to stay ahead of Trinity and its countless gun-toting henchmen. At this juncture, however, Croft appears to have everything she needs to overcome them.

‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider’ arrives on PS4, Xbox One and PC on September 14th.

Windows 10’s Timeline is the star of its latest update

When Microsoft launched Windows 10 three years ago, the company proudly said it was focusing on productivity. That might not sound very exciting, but it was a noble goal nonetheless — one that made it clear Microsoft was paying attention to its more dedicated users. So it’s not too surprising that the most interesting aspect of Windows 10’s spring update (which launches on April 30th) is once again productivity, and more specifically: Timeline. It’s practically an inevitable feature, one that ties together what you’re working on across all of your devices. And yes, it’ll even be helpful for iPhone and Android users.

Jump in the Timeline

Microsoft unveiled Timeline a year ago at its Build developer conference, and it was initially expected for last fall’s Creator’s Update. Well, the company obviously missed that deadline, choosing instead to focus on Mixed Reality for that release. At its most basic, the feature is an interactive log of everything you’re working on, similar to your web browser history. What makes it truly interesting, though, is that it’s tied to your Microsoft account. That means it can track your progress across multiple machines, be it your home and work PCs, as well as your smartphone.

On Windows 10, you can access the Timeline by hitting the Windows and Tab keys together, or by clicking on the icon in the taskbar. Previously, that key combination unlocked a slightly prettier version of the Alt + Tab task switcher. At the top of the Timeline, you’ll find all of your open apps — scroll down, though, and you’ll find everything you were previously working on. The feature also lets you see what you’re browsing on Edge on your iPhone or Android device, or continue on documents from Office 365 apps.

Timeline will track your progress for up to 30 days, and you also have full control of the feature in a new “Activity History” section in Control Panel. You can wipe out your Timeline progress at any time, or choose to stop tracking activity from your machine entirely. If you use multiple Microsoft accounts in Windows 10 (for example, if you’re juggling work and personal logins), you can also select which one Timeline can track.

It’s a feature that many Windows users likely won’t notice at first, but after testing it for a few weeks, it’s something I can’t live without. Timeline was helpful whenever I needed to quickly find a document I was working on, but couldn’t quite remember the name. It also helped me get back up and running quickly whenever I needed to reboot my laptop. Browsing through weeks worth of activities was a cinch, though it would sometimes take a fraction of a second for icons to pop up if I scrolled too quickly. I didn’t have a chance to test it on multiple Windows 10 PCs, unfortunately, but I’d imagine it’ll be even more useful when I bounce from my home desktop rig to laptops for work.

Focus Assist cuts out the noise

Microsoft

In another bid towards increasing productivity, Microsoft is introducing “Focus Assist,” a new feature that’ll mute notifications and other distractions. It has a priority mode, which lets you choose specific people and apps to let through your filter, as well as an “Alarms only” mode that blocks everything. You can also create a schedule to automatically turn on the priority mode, as well as choose to enable it whenever you’re playing a game, duplicating your display, or when you’re away from home. Once you’re out of Focus Assist, all of your delayed notifications will appear in the Action Center.

Given that we’re all bombarded with notifications these days, and we’re far more productive when focusing on a single task instead of multitasking (it’s science!), Focus Assist seems like a wise addition to Windows 10. While it’s not really a complex feature, it’s one that shows Microsoft is thinking deeply about the problems its users encounter daily. I appreciated being able to turn it on and mute Slack notifications when I was working hard on reviews, and I’ve also set up a nightly schedule to avoid distractions when I’m working late.

Finally, simple Dictation in Windows

Microsoft has had a speech recognition feature in Windows since Vista, but it’s always been a bit tough to take advantage of. The company is aiming to fix that with the spring Windows 10 update. You’ll still need to enable the feature manually in your Speech settings, but once you do that and go through a short training sequence, you’ll be able to dictate text simply by hitting the Windows key and H together. You can optimize it for headset, desktop or specialized microphones (like laptops that have an array of several mics built-in).

Based on my testing, the dictation feature isn’t exactly a replacement for professional speech recognition software like Dragon, but it seems faster and more accurate than in previous versions of Windows. And I really appreciate being able to enable dictation quickly with a hotkey — it was invaluable as I was jotting down thoughts for several reviews.

Odds and ends

Microsoft

• Edge has a few notable upgrades: You can now mute tabs; view PDFs and documents in full screen; and save and recall your credit card information.
• A new “Nearby Sharing” feature will let you quickly trade files with other Windows 10 machines (think of it like Microsoft’s AirDrop).
• Photos now supports 3D effects.

Wrap-up

While the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update was relatively ho-hum, this latest release could fundamentally change how many people use Windows. Timeline, in particular, seems like something PC users have needed for some time now. It’s heartening to see that Microsoft is also making good on one of its original goals with Windows 10: to improve over time to make users more productive.

SpaceX price hikes will make ISS cargo missions more costly

NASA said it will pay $400 million more for cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) starting in 2020, thanks in part to a 50 percent price increase from supplier SpaceX. On top of that, the ISS will receive six fewer tons of cargo, so on a cost-per-pound basis, prices will rise by 14 percent for the second phase of commercial resupply (CRS-2) missions between 2020 and 2024. The information comes from a new NASA audit, and reveals new details about the 2016 bidding for CRS-2 missions.

For the first ISS resupply phase, between 2012 and 2020, NASA estimates it will fly 31 missions, with SpaceX doing 20 and Orbital ATK 11. SpaceX’s launch price was considerably cheaper than its rival– $152.1 million per mission versus $262.6 million. Starting in 2020, however, NASA said SpaceX’s prices will rise by 50 percent, would be $228 million for each flight, by my calculations. Orbital ATK’s rate will drop by 15 percent to around $223 million, so SpaceX will effectively be losing its cost advantage.

One reason for that, the report said, is that SpaceX redesigned the Dragon 2 capsule to increase cargo volume by 30 percent, run longer missions and give NASA quicker access to scientific samples returning to Earth. It also seems that SpaceX may have been undercharging for its services. “They also indicated that their CRS-2 pricing reflected a better understanding of the costs involved after several years of experience with cargo resupply missions,” the report stated.

SpaceX isn’t the only reason ISS resupply costs are going up. NASA decided to use three contractors instead of two for CRS-2, with Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser set to fly missions by 2020. That will give NASA greater capacity to carry pressurized cargo, in turn reducing the number of needed flights. It will also give the agency more redundancy and reduce astronaut workloads.

Despite the higher costs for CRS-2, NASA had no regrets about using private companies for ISS resupply missions. “NASA officials reviewed past launch pricing and found the cost for a basic Atlas V configuration decreased by roughly $20 million per launch after the Falcon 9 became eligible in 2013 to compete for launch services contracts through the agency’s Launch Services Program,” the report stated.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: NASA (PDF)

Apple Music Continues to Offer Free Extra Month to Previous Trial Customers Who Never Subscribed

Apple is encouraging customers who have previously trialed Apple Music, but were not convinced to pay for the service, to try it again.

For several months, some users who have already taken advantage of Apple Music’s initial free three-month trial period, but do not currently have a subscription, have been offered an additional month of complimentary access.

Apple has been alerting users to the offer at random with push notifications and emails in several countries, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. It’s unclear what the exact parameters are to qualify, but it may be limited to users who trialed Apple Music prior to its iOS 10 redesign.

“Come see what you’ve been missing in the new Apple Music, like a simpler design that makes finding what you want, and discovering new music, easier than ever,” says Apple’s email, which contains a unique code to redeem the offer.

For users who are alerted about the offer via push notification, tapping on it brings them to a landing page with steps to redeem the code.

Apple Music offer via Reddit user ashindn1l3
Apple has been carrying out this promotion for at least six months, but the only way to take advantage of the offer appears to be by waiting and hoping for the push notification or email to arrive. It’s unclear if the offer extends to customers who used the three-month trial, paid for a period of time, and later canceled.

Apple Music has around 40 million paid subscribers across 115 countries, plus around eight million people enrolled in a trial, according to Apple.

Tag: Apple Music
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Amazon will install a full smart home security system for you

Amazon has been beefing up its home security business for quite some time now; earlier this year, it even purchased smart doorbell company Ring to take Google-owned Nest head on. Now, TechCrunch has discovered a portal on the company’s Smart Home Services section offering full smart home packages. The five packages’ prices cover in-home visits from experts, the smart home devices you want to install and their installation fee. Based on the information on the portal — Amazon hasn’t formally announced the service yet — you’ll only have to pay once. It has no monthly service fees some other providers charge.

The cheapest package on offer will set you back $240 and include an Echo Dot and an indoor and outdoor lighting system designed to make it look like you’re home. If you’re willing to shell out $840, you can get the biggest package, which includes an Echo Dot, a smart siren, motion, door and window sensors, a Ring video doorbell, an Amazon Cloud Cam, a wireless speaker you can program to play sounds of dog barking or other sounds that make it seem like you’re home, an air quality monitor, a smart home hub, motion-detecting solar lights, motion-detecting spotlights and a smart flood and leak sensor.

If you take a look at the reviews on the portal, it looks like Amazon has been offering the service since at least December. The packages seem like a great way to get a full smart home installation in one go if you’d rather not buy devices one by one and install them yourself. That is, if you’re willing to trust Amazon to install your home security system. Unfortunately, it’s unclear if the service is available nationwide or only in select areas for now — we’ve reached out to Amazon for more info and will update you once we hear back.

Source: Amazon Smart Home Security, TechCrunch

Website builder Weebly to be snapped up by payments service Square

Mobile payments company Square announced on Thursday it’s buying website builder Weebly for $365 million in a mix of cash and stock.

Square, which is led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, will use the acquisition to expand the company’s services beyond its current offerings, giving small businesses the tools to create websites and online stores to build and promote their services. Weebly, with millions of customers around the world — more than 625,000 of them subscribers — looks set to boost Square’s customer base, especially overseas.

Among its services, Square offers merchants a credit card reader that enables a smartphone or tablet to act as a payment terminal, providing a cost-effective way for small-business owners to process credit card transactions. The system is popular with many brick-and-mortar merchants, and Square will now aim to show its users online opportunities for business expansion with support from Weebly.

Weebly customers, meanwhile, will be encouraged to access Square’s ecosystem of managed payments, hardware, and software, which complement its own services, among them free website hosting, premium website design and hosting, online store setup, and a range of marketing tools.

In a blog post, Weebly reassured its customers that nothing will change regarding their Weebly experience, with the company promising to continue with work on new features. It also stated that its customer service setup will remain unchanged, saying, “We’re just a phone call, chat, or email away.”

Square’s Alyssa Henry said in a release that “running a business is complex, and entrepreneurs around the world want powerful and intuitive tools. Whether they’re an artist, a winemaker, or a hairdresser, with Square and Weebly sellers will have one cohesive solution to build their business.”

Weebly CEO David Rusenko noted how Weebly has created technology “that helps people bring their business idea to life online,” adding that it’s now in a position to expand its vision “to help entrepreneurs succeed beyond their website.”

Dorsey, for his part, said Square and Weebly “share a passion for empowering and celebrating entrepreneurs,” adding, “Square began its journey with in-person solutions while Weebly began its journey online. Since then, we’ve both been building services to bridge these channels, and we can go even further and faster together.”

The deal is expected to be completed by the end of June following regulatory approvals.

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Pinterest is testing a way to search pins by skin tone

It can be hard to find the right makeup or outfit color combination ideas in a vast sea of Pinterest pins — especially if you’re not white. Since 70 percent of its users go on the website to discover and save looks and styles to try (that’s according to a study the company conducted), Pinterest has launched an experimental feature that gives you a way to filter pins according to skin tone. When you search for terms wherein skin tone may be relevant — “makeup,” “peach blush” or “fuchsia lipstick,” for instance — you’ll see four icons representing different skin tones on the upper left-hand corner of the results.

According to Wired, the idea of diversifying search results came about when Pinterest’s first head of diversity and inclusion Candice Morgan used the website’s search engine to look for hair ideas. While the platform learned from her saved pins and showed recommendations that point to hair tutorials for black hair, searching for “hair ideas” showed her lots of beachy waves and updos that don’t suit 4c (tightly coiled) curls. “We were thinking,” she said, “how we can look at our database of pins and make sure we were in some way matching and labeling content across different groups of people?”

As Pinterest discovered, though, it’s not easy developing a technology that can detect skin tones. The company worked with ModiFace, the L’Oreal-owned augmented reality beauty app maker, to create an algorithm that can accurately detect the skin color of people in images. The team used ModiFace’s third-party Face AI library and fed it more and more examples until it’s no longer getting tripped up by highlights and shadows.

Pinterest admits that the algorithm is still far from perfect, so it keeps feeding it new pins to learn from. Unfortunately, the company has only rolled it out to a select number of users as part of its beta testing period. If you happen to have access to it — and you’ll only know that you do if you try to search relevant queries — Pinterest says you don’t have to worry about your privacy. It won’t save your preference and won’t serve you ads based on the skin tone icon you clicked.

Via: The Verge

Source: Pinterest

China’s smartphone market sees its largest drop in five years

There’s no question that China’s smartphone industry is in a tough spot, but it’s apparently worse than expected. Canalys has estimated that smartphone shipments in the country plummeted 21 percent year-over year in the first quarter of 2018 — the steepest drop since 2013. Almost everyone saw their shipments go down, with Oppo and Vivo (both owned by BBK) taking the worst hit with a 10 percent drop. Gionee, Meizu and Samsung shipped less than half as many devices. Even Huawei, the clear frontrunner, grew by a mere 2 percent.

The only company to defy the trend was Xiaomi, whose shipments surged 37 percent. That’s not completely surprising: it was the only one in the top five to cater to the very entry level (under $160), and it tackled the high end by launching both the Mi Mix 2S and Mi 6X.

As for the reason? If you ask Canalys, it’s simple: there’s a “sense of fatigue.” The fierce competition in China has led companies to mimic each other’s phone lineups and launch strategies, but only the largest companies can handle that. Smaller companies might not survive in the long run.

Canalys is expecting China to bounce back in the second quarter, especially now that flagships like Huawei’s P20 series are available. With that said, the analyst group acknowledges that it might be looking through rose-tinted glasses: it’s warning about a possible stagnant period where companies double down on R&D instead of focusing on all-out marketing campaigns. When worldwide smartphone shipments dropped for the first time ever this fall, it’s clear that the status quo isn’t enough. The phone market is rapidly saturating, and there may not be much companies can do to avoid difficult times.

Via: The Verge

Source: Canalys