With the game finally launching on a Nintendo system last year, and with protagonist Cloud being a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Final Fantasy VII has never been more popular with Nintendo fans. Perhaps you’d like to celebrate that fact with one of these lovely looking watches? Perhaps you’d also like to consider remortgaging your house?

Square Enix has revealed two watches for sale – the silver one is called the Cloud Edition, while the black one is the Sephiroth Edition – and a waiting list for both has appeared on the company’s official store. You can check them out in the images and official description below.

Square Enix is very proud to present this incredible chronograph timepiece with an automatic movement manufactured by Seiko Instruments of Japan and an all-black coating including a Black Materia inspired onyx crown to achieve a remarkable look truly inspired by Sephiroth.

In collaboration with K-uno’s artisans, amazing handcrafted detail was put into every piece that will make any FINAL FANTASY VII fan stunned! From the exposed mechanics of the all-glass back panel to the FINAL FANTASY VII logo embossed rotor, with 3D One-Winged Angel emblem and finishing with a Mako inspired mother-of-pearl central disk.

This limited edition Chronograph will be made in Japan, with a unique North American serial number and up to 77 pieces made per region. This spectacular piece includes a special case and will be the centerpiece of anyone’s collection for years to come!

So, how much should you expect to hand over for one of these? A whopping $2,500. Wowzers. You can go ahead and check them out for yourself here if you’re interested.

If our maths is correct, you can buy 156 copies of the game from the Switch eShop for that price. Why are we wasting our time working out things like this? We’ve no idea.

Destiny 2 News And Guides

• Destiny 2's Empyrean Foundation Arrives Next Week: Here's How To Prepare
• Where Is Xur Today? Destiny 2 Exotic Location, Armor, Weapon (January 31-February 4)
• Destiny 2 Bastion Exotic Quest Guide: How To Get The New Fusion Rifle

This article is all about the plus “+” symbol in Python’s re library. Study it carefully and master this important piece of knowledge once and for all!

What’s the Python Re + Quantifier?

Say, you have any regular expression A. The regular expression (regex) A+ then matches one or more occurrences of A. We call the “+” symbol the at-least-once quantifier because it requires at least one occurrence of the preceding regex. For example, the regular expression ‘yes+’ matches strings ‘yes’, ‘yess’, and ‘yesssssss’. But it does neither match the string ‘ye’, nor the empty string ” because the plus quantifier + does not apply to the whole regex ‘yes’ but only to the preceding regex ‘s’.

Let’s study some examples to help you gain a deeper understanding.

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a+b', 'aaaaaab')

['aaaaaab']

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaabb')

['abb']

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaabbbbb')

['abbbbb']

>>> re.findall('ab+?', 'aaaaaabbbbb')

['ab']

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaa')

[]

>>> re.findall('[a-z]+', 'hello world')

['hello', 'world']

Next, we’ll explain those examples one by one.

Examples 1 and 2: Greedy Plus (+) Quantifiers

Here’s the first example:

>>> re.findall('a+b', 'aaaaaab')

['aaaaaab']

You use the re.findall() method. In case you don’t know it, here’s the definition from the Finxter blog article:

The re.findall(pattern, string) method finds all occurrences of the pattern in the string and returns a list of all matching substrings.

Please consult the blog article to learn everything you need to know about this fundamental Python method.

The first argument is the regular expression pattern ‘a+b’ and the second argument is the string to be searched. In plain English, you want to find all patterns in the string that start with at least one, but possibly many, characters ‘a’, followed by the character ‘b’.

The findall() method returns the matching substring: ‘aaaaaab’. The asterisk quantifier + is greedy. This means that it tries to match as many occurrences of the preceding regex as possible. So in our case, it wants to match as many arbitrary characters as possible so that the pattern is still matched. Therefore, the regex engine “consumes” the whole sentence.

The second example is similar:

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaabb')

['abb']

You search for the character ‘a’ followed by at least one character ‘b’. As the plus (+) quantifier is greedy, it matches as many ‘b’s as it can lay its hands on.

Examples 3 and 4: Non-Greedy Plus (+) Quantifiers

But what if you want to match at least one occurrence of a regex in a non-greedy manner. In other words, you don’t want the regex engine to consume more and more as long as it can but returns as quickly as it can from the processing.

Again, here’s the example of the greedy match:

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaabbbbb')

['abbbbb']

The regex engine starts with the first character ‘a’ and finds that it’s a partial match. So, it moves on to match the second ‘a’—which violates the pattern ‘ab+’ that allows only for a single character ‘a’. So it moves on to the third character, and so on, until it reaches the last character ‘a’ in the string ‘aaaaaabbbbb’. It’s a partial match, so it moves on to the first occurrence of the character ‘b’. It realizes that the ‘b’ character can be matched by the part of the regex ‘b+’. Thus, the engine starts matching ‘b’s. And it greedily matches ‘b’s until it cannot match any further character. At this point it looks at the result and sees that it has found a matching substring which is the result of the operation.

However, it could have stopped far earlier to produce a non-greedy match after matching the first character ‘b’. Here’s an example of the non-greedy quantifier ‘+?’ (both symbols together form one regex expression).

>>> re.findall('ab+?', 'aaaaaabbbbb')

['ab']

Now, the regex engine does not greedily “consume” as many ‘b’ characters as possible. Instead, it stops as soon as the pattern is matched (non-greedy).

Examples 5 and 6

For the sake of your thorough understanding, let’s have a look at the other given example:

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaa')

[]

You can see that the plus (+) quantifier requires that at least one occurrence of the preceding regex is matched. In the example, it’s the character ‘b’ that is not partially matched. So, the result is the empty list indicating that no matching substring was found.

Another interesting example is the following:

>>> re.findall('[a-z]+', 'hello world')

['hello', 'world']

You use the plus (+) quantifier in combination with a character class that defines specifically which characters are valid matches.

Note Character Class: Within the character class, you can define character ranges. For example, the character range [a-z] matches one lowercase character in the alphabet while the character range [A-Z] matches one uppercase character in the alphabet.

The empty space is not part of the given character class [a-z], so it won’t be matched in the text. Thus, the result is the list of words that start with at least one character: ‘hello’, ‘world’.

What If You Want to Match the Plus (+) Symbol Itself?

You know that the plus quantifier matches at least one of the preceding regular expression. But what if you search for the plus (+) symbol itself? How can you search for it in a string?

The answer is simple: escape the plus symbol in your regular expression using the backslash. In particular, use ‘\+’ instead of ‘+’. Here’s an example:

>>> import re

>>> text = '2 + 2 = 4'

>>> re.findall(' + ', text)

[]

>>> re.findall(' \+ ', text)

[' + ']

>>> re.findall(' \++ ', '2 ++++ 2 = 4')

[' ++++ ']

If you want to find the ‘+’ symbol in your string, you need to escape it by using the backslash. If you don’t do this, the Python regex engine will interpret it as a normal “at-least-once” regex. Of course, you can combine the escaped plus symbol ‘\+’ with the “at-least-once” regex searching for at least one occurrences of the plus symbol.

[Collection] What Are The Different Python Re Quantifiers?

The plus quantifier—Python re +—is only one of many regex operators. If you want to use (and understand) regular expressions in practice, you’ll need to know all of them by heart!

So let’s dive into the other operators:

A regular expression is a decades-old concept in computer science. Invented in the 1950s by famous mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene, the decades of evolution brought a huge variety of operations. Collecting all operations and writing up a comprehensive list would result in a very thick and unreadable book by itself.

Fortunately, you don’t have to learn all regular expressions before you can start using them in your practical code projects. Next, you’ll get a quick and dirty overview of the most important regex operations and how to use them in Python. In follow-up chapters, you’ll then study them in detail — with many practical applications and code puzzles.

Here are the most important regex quantifiers:

Note that I gave the above operators some more meaningful names (in bold) so that you can immediately grasp the purpose of each regex. For example, the ‘^’ operator is usually denoted as the ‘caret’ operator. Those names are not descriptive so I came up with more kindergarten-like words such as the “start-of-string” operator.

We’ve already seen many examples but let’s dive into even more!

import re text = ''' Ha! let me see her: out, alas! he's cold: Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated: Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. ''' print(re.findall('.a!', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of an arbitrary character that is

followed by the character sequence 'a!'.

['Ha!'] ''' print(re.findall('is.*and', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of the word 'is',

followed by an arbitrary number of characters

and the word 'and'.

['is settled, and'] ''' print(re.findall('her:?', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',

followed by zero or one occurrences of the colon ':'.

['her:', 'her', 'her'] ''' print(re.findall('her:+', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',

followed by one or more occurrences of the colon ':'.

['her:'] ''' print(re.findall('^Ha.*', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences where the string starts with

the character sequence 'Ha', followed by an arbitrary

number of characters except for the new-line character. Can you figure out why Python doesn't find any?

[] ''' print(re.findall('n$', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences where the new-line character 'n'

occurs at the end of the string.

['n'] ''' print(re.findall('(Life|Death)', text)) '''

Finds all occurrences of either the word 'Life' or the

word 'Death'.

['Life', 'Death'] '''

In these examples, you’ve already seen the special symbol ‘n’ which denotes the new-line character in Python (and most other languages). There are many special characters, specifically designed for regular expressions. Next, we’ll discover the most important special symbols.

What’s the Difference Between Python Re + and ? Quantifiers?

You can read the Python Re A? quantifier as zero-or-one regex: the preceding regex A is matched either zero times or exactly once. But it’s not matched more often.

Analogously, you can read the Python Re A+ operator as the at-least-once regex: the preceding regex A is matched an arbitrary number of times but at least once (as the name suggests).

Here’s an example that shows the difference:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('ab?', 'abbbbbbb')

['ab']

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'abbbbbbb')

['abbbbbbb']

The regex ‘ab?’ matches the character ‘a’ in the string, followed by character ‘b’ if it exists (which it does in the code).

The regex ‘ab+’ matches the character ‘a’ in the string, followed by as many characters ‘b’ as possible (and at least one).

What’s the Difference Between Python Re * and + Quantifiers?

You can read the Python Re A* quantifier as zero-or-more regex: the preceding regex A is matched an arbitrary number of times.

Analogously, you can read the Python Re A+ operator as the at-least-once regex: the preceding regex A is matched an arbitrary number of times too—but at least once.

Here’s an example that shows the difference:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('ab*', 'aaaaaaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a']

>>> re.findall('ab+', 'aaaaaaaa')

[]

The regex ‘ab*’ matches the character ‘a’ in the string, followed by an arbitary number of occurrences of character ‘b’. The substring ‘a’ perfectly matches this formulation. Therefore, you find that the regex matches eight times in the string.

The regex ‘ab+’ matches the character ‘a’, followed by as many characters ‘b’ as possible—but at least one. However, the character ‘b’ does not exist so there’s no match.

What are Python Re *?, +?, ?? Quantifiers?

You’ve learned about the three quantifiers:

• The quantifier A* matches an arbitrary number of patterns A.
• The quantifier A+ matches at least one pattern A.
• The quantifier A? matches zero-or-one pattern A.

Those three are all greedy: they match as many occurrences of the pattern as possible. Here’s an example that shows their greediness:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a*', 'aaaaaaa')

['aaaaaaa', '']

>>> re.findall('a+', 'aaaaaaa')

['aaaaaaa']

>>> re.findall('a?', 'aaaaaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', '']

The code shows that all three quantifiers *, +, and ? match as many ‘a’ characters as possible.

So, the logical question is: how to match as few as possible? We call this non-greedy matching. You can append the question mark after the respective quantifiers to tell the regex engine that you intend to match as few patterns as possible: *?, +?, and ??.

Here’s the same example but with the non-greedy quantifiers:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a*?', 'aaaaaaa')

['', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '']

>>> re.findall('a+?', 'aaaaaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a']

>>> re.findall('a??', 'aaaaaaa')

['', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '', 'a', '']

In this case, the code shows that all three quantifiers *?, +?, and ?? match as few ‘a’ characters as possible.

Related Re Methods

There are five important regular expression methods which you should master:

• The re.findall(pattern, string) method returns a list of string matches. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.search(pattern, string) method returns a match object of the first match. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.match(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches at the beginning of the string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.fullmatch(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches the whole string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.compile(pattern) method prepares the regular expression pattern—and returns a regex object which you can use multiple times in your code. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.split(pattern, string) method returns a list of strings by matching all occurrences of the pattern in the string and dividing the string along those. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.sub(The re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0) method returns a new string where all occurrences of the pattern in the old string are replaced by repl. Read more in our blog tutorial.

These seven methods are 80% of what you need to know to get started with Python’s regular expression functionality.

Where to Go From Here?

You’ve learned everything you need to know about the asterisk quantifier * in this regex tutorial.

Summary: Regex A+ matches one or more occurrences of regex A. The “+” symbol is the at-least-once quantifier because it requires at least one occurrence of the preceding regex. The non-greedy version of the at-least-once quantifier is A+? with the trailing question mark.

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It’s felt like a very busy week – plenty of news to write-up, and I’ve been experimenting with a wider range of topics and angles to see what happens as there’s not as much to review at the moment. Got a few more things in the pipeline for February, but expect a more conservative approach from me as we approach the beginning of March as the new team will likely be in place by then and I’ll need to facilitate a formal handover.

Meanwhile, in the world of mobile games…

New App Releases

Disgaea 1 (iOS & Android)

The Disgaea series is very well regarded as far as tactical JRPGs are concerned. Over-the-top, bonkers, but also featuring some quite clever twists on the genre that has even won fans amongst western audiences. If you like Final Fantasy Tactics but felt there wasn’t enough anime in it to make it pop, then this series is for you.

Luckily, you can now travel back in time to experience the birth of this series with the complete edition of the first game, now available on iOS and Android. Buyer beware though – NIS have taken a page out of Square’s book and are charging $32.99 for the game. Hopefully you save up that pocket money this month.

Spelltower+ (iOS Universal)

I’m not even sure Pocket Tactics existed when this game was first released back in 2011, but we do have a lot of time for Zach Gage and his slightly off-kilter creations. This was a word-puzzle game, but one that involved tumbling towers of letters and modifiers and other unique elements not often seen in this genre.

If you never played this game the first time around, then now’s a great time to start with the ‘+’ edition, which is mainly about making it work better on modern devices (it has been nearly a decade, after all) but it does have 11 game modes to keep you occupied. It’s an ad-supported free-to-play game with a $5 unlock to remove them.

Top free-to-play offerings that caught our eye:

• Magic: Manastrike is a more traditional lane-based auto-battler that seems surprisingly tactical and obviously as that MtG sheen to it. Available on iOS and Android.
• Might & Magic: Chess Royale – is meant to be some kind of bizarre hybrid of Auto Chess and Battle Royale. It looks bonkers, and we’ve got someone having a proper look at it as we speak. iOS & Android.
• Dungeon Faster – the art-style reminds me of Meteorfall, and bills itself as a “fast-play” rogue-like card game. Offline mode and available on iOS and Android.

App News & Updates

We quite liked Grimvalor when we originally reviewed it, so we’re pleased to learn that the dev team are working on an update that not only localises the game into eight new languages, but also includes a New Game+ mode as well. They’re currently looking for Beta testers, and you can email them here if you want to take part. This news comes via the TouchArcade forums.

Arnold Rauers, fresh off the release of his newest Tinytouchtales creation Maze Machina, has just released a breakdown of how the first two weeks went. Some interesting insights to be gleaned here, including:

• The game was developed in about a year with a three-man team doing part-time work.
• Miracle Merchant, TTT’s last game, was released in August 2017 and the app store has changed a lot since then.
• Maze Machina has brought a revenue of $14,000 in the first two weeks, 99% of it from iOS. This is compared to Miracle Merchant’s $40,000 in the same period (~35%)
• The experience has led Rauers to the conclusion that he needs to fundamentally change the way he sells his games.

It paints a bit of a bleak picture for premium mobile games made by small developers, but we’re glad Mr. Rauers isn’t totally disillusioned by the experience. We’d hate to see him stop making great games.

While we’re talking about the business of making mobile games, PocketGamer.biz have posted an interesting breakdown of top app performers for the week January 12th – 18th. It breaks down the top ten apps by Downloads, Active Users and Consumer Spend, and it’s interesting to see which games are succeeding in which category. PUBG Mobile had the most people playing it, but the Honour of Kings player base spent the most money.

Book of Demons is a rather interesting desktop game that combines dungeon-crawling with deck-building, and it’s being brought to tablet after a year of delighting PC players. The developers are currently looking for beta testers for the Tablet Edition, if you’re interested in checking it out. Again, this news comes via the TouchArcade forums.

Last but not least, if you’re a fan of Pokemon and the Pokemon ecosystem, you might be excited to learn that Nintendo have announced the pricing and launch features for their planned Pokemon Home hub service that will in theory connect all of your Pokemon games together via the cloud. It will be coming to mobile and the Nintendo Switch, although some features will be unique to specific platforms.

There’s also a free and a ‘Premium Plan’ option, with that latter scaling from $2.99 a month up to $15.99 for the year. You can read more about it on the official website.

App Sales

It’s a bit of a dry week for app sales, although all of the Holy Potatoes! games are discounted again to their Christmas 2019 price of $1.99. This only on iOS sadly; what HP! games are on Android (which is not all of them) are still full price.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

James

I’m excited to announce experimental support for gRPC-Web with .NET. gRPC-Web allows gRPC to be called from browser-based apps like JavaScript SPAs or Blazor WebAssembly apps.

gRPC-Web for .NET promises to bring many of gRPC’s great features to browser apps:

• Strongly-typed code-generated clients
• Compact Protobuf messages
• Server streaming

What is gRPC-Web

It is impossible to implement the gRPC HTTP/2 spec in the browser because there is no browser API with enough fine-grained control over HTTP requests. gRPC-Web solves this problem by being compatible with HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.

gRPC-Web is not a new technology. There is a stable gRPC-Web JavaScript client, and a proxy for translating between gRPC and gRPC-Web for services. The new experimental packages allow an ASP.NET Core gRPC app to support gRPC-Web without a proxy, and allow the .NET Core gRPC client to call gRPC-Web services. (great for Blazor WebAssembly apps!)

New opportunites with gRPC-Web

• Call ASP.NET Core gRPC apps from the browser – Browser APIs can’t call gRPC HTTP/2. gRPC-Web offers a compatible alternative.
  
  • JavaScript SPAs
  • .NET Blazor Web Assembly apps
• Host ASP.NET Core gRPC apps in IIS and Azure App Service – Some servers, such as IIS and Azure App Service, currently can’t host gRPC services. While this is actively being worked on, gRPC-Web offers an interesting alternative that works in every environment today.
• Call gRPC from non-.NET Core platforms – Some .NET platforms HttpClient doesn’t support HTTP/2. gRPC-Web can be used to call gRPC services on these platforms (e.g. Blazor WebAssembly, Xamarin).

Note that there is a small performance cost to gRPC-Web, and two gRPC features are no longer supported: client streaming and bi-directional streaming. (server streaming is still supported!)

Server gRPC-Web instructions

If you are new to gRPC in .NET, there is a simple tutorial to get you started.

gRPC-Web does not require any changes to your services, the only modification is startup configuration. To enable gRPC-Web with an ASP.NET Core gRPC service, add a reference to the Grpc.AspNetCore.Web package. Configure the app to use gRPC-Web by adding AddGrpcWeb(...) and UseGrpcWeb() in the startup file:

Startup.cs

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)

{ services.AddGrpc();

} public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app)

{ app.UseRouting(); // Add gRPC-Web middleware after routing and before endpoints app.UseGrpcWeb(); app.UseEndpoints(endpoints => { endpoints.MapGrpcService<GreeterService>().EnableGrpcWeb(); });

}

Some additional configuration may be required to call gRPC-Web from the browser, such as configuring the app to support CORS.

Client gRPC-Web instructions

The JavaScript gRPC-Web client has instructions for setting up a gRPC-Web client to use in browser JavaScript SPAs.

Calling gRPC-Web with a .NET client is the same as regular gRPC, the only modification is how the channel is created. To enable gRPC-Web, add a reference to the Grpc.Net.Client.Web package. Configure the channel to use the GrpcWebHandler:

// Configure a channel to use gRPC-Web

var handler = new GrpcWebHandler(GrpcWebMode.GrpcWebText, new HttpClientHandler());

var channel = GrpcChannel.ForAddress("https://localhost:5001", new GrpcChannelOptions { HttpClient = new HttpClient(handler) }); var client = Greeter.GreeterClient(channel);

var response = await client.SayHelloAsync(new GreeterRequest { Name = ".NET" });

To see gRPC-Web with .NET in action, take a moment to read a great blog post written by Steve Sanderson that uses gRPC-Web in Blazor WebAssembly.

Try gRPC-Web with ASP.NET Core today

Preview packages are on NuGet:

Documentation for using gRPC-Web with .NET Core can be found here.

gRPC-Web for .NET is an experimental project, not a committed product. We want to test that our approach to implementing gRPC-Web works, and get feedback on whether this approach is useful to .NET developers compared to the traditional way of setting up gRPC-Web via a proxy. Please add your feedback here or at the https://github.com/grpc/grpc-dotnet to ensure we build something that developers like and are productive with.

Thanks!

By AppleInsider Staff
Friday, January 31, 2020, 04:42 pm PT (07:42 pm ET)

Apple recently added an option for customers to receive on-site service for certain iPhone repairs in select metropolitan cities across the U.S., with work fulfilled by Apple Authorized Service Provider Go Tech Services.

Apple’s Get Support webpage shows a new option for on-site repairs.

While repairs are not conducted by Apple itself, the new service option is a convenient and presumably expedient alternative to visiting an Apple Store or shipping a damaged device to a repair center.

Apple offers on-site repairs to enterprise customers, but until now has restricted consumer service to physical stores and mail-in service. Unlike its small business offerings, the consumer version appears limited to iPhone and is currently unavailable to owners of Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and HomePod.

The new feature can be accessed through Apple’s Get Support webpage under “Schedule a Repair.” Depending on the problem and location, Go Tech Services is listed as a viable alternative to Apple Stores and Authorized Service Providers. Clicking through sends users to Go Tech Services’ website, where they can schedule a meet time.

It is unclear if on-site service warrants an additional fee, as pricing information is not available on Apple or Go Tech Services websites.

As noted by MacRumors, which spotted the option earlier today, Go Tech Services on-site repairs are accessible in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco. Other areas might be covered, as Apple does not furnish a complete availability list. Whether the company intends to roll out the service nationwide is unknown.

It appears Go Tech Services is equipped to handle a limited range of repairs that at this point starts and ends with cracked front screens impacting recent generation iPhones. Other devices are not noted as eligible for on-site service on Apple’s website, nor does the service selection process show on-site repair availability for other issues like water damage, cracked rear glass, malfunctioning buttons or battery replacement.

If you’ve been anywhere near the internet over the past few hours, we imagine you’ve already seen the recently-announced Animal Crossing-themed Switch console. Isn’t it just the loveliest thing you’ve ever seen?

Anyway, if you can’t quite afford this latest model, or if you want to pretend you have one without having to pay for it, Nintendo seemingly has you covered. On its official Japanese site, Nintendo is offering a replica box without anything inside for 550 yen (approx. £4 / $5). As if we’ve suddenly been placed inside a weird, alternate, Ikea-based universe, you even have to assemble the thing yourself when it arrives; thankfully Nintendo provides instructions:

At first, you might find yourself wondering what on Earth has possessed Nintendo to do such a thing, but it does actually make quite a lot of sense. For collectors, owning pristine boxes to limited-edition consoles is a must – just check eBay to see how many empty boxes get sold every day – so why not cash in on that? Nintendo actually did the very same thing with Splatoon 2 in 2017.

Let’s face it, we’ll all buy pretty much anything with a Nintendo logo on it – and Nintendo knows it.

We should note that this box-only option has only been announced for Japan so far. Nintendo says that the replica box will not have any warranty info or barcodes on it, nor will it contain any of the leaflets found inside the real thing. Japanese fans will also be able to buy the console’s Joy-Con and Dock separately, which makes considerably more sense.

What a world we live in, eh?

This Week at Bungie, we had to fix the timeline.

Earlier this week, when we deployed 2.7.1, we discovered an issue causing players to lose various currencies. Our team immediately took action and brought the game down for maintenance while we worked to discover the source of the issue. We did this to minimize any further impact to players. We ended up doing the first-ever character rollback in Destiny’s history to ensure that no one lost any of their hard-earned materials. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused by the unexpected maintenance and appreciated everyone’s patience while we worked to get the game back online.

We’ll continue to improve our efforts to minimize issues and downtime. Even though some bugs are always going to crawl through the cracks, we’ll be waiting on the other side with a swatter.

Empyrean Foundation

Next week, the Empyrean Foundation rebuild effort begins. Saint-14 will ask all Guardians to contribute to building a beacon that will be a foundation for things to come next Season. The Tower Obelisk will be the focal point of this event, so make sure you have it unlocked and ready to go as it’s going to have some hefty benefits to take advantage of.

Players will need to come together and contribute resources towards a common goal. To participate, players can donate their Fractaline using the Tower Obelisk. The event will have seven stages, each requiring increasing amounts of Fractaline to progress through. There will also be a hologram at the Tower Obelisk where you’ll be able to track the community’s progress in game.

Of course we aren’t going to ask you to fork over your hard-earned Fractaline without providing some benefits. Here’s what’s in it for you:

• Contributing to the Empyrean Foundation costs 100 Polarized Fractaline.
• Contributing generates a 25% flat progression for all Timelost weapon bounties in your inventory.
• Your Tower Obelisk will generate Polarized Fractaline for you each week equivalent to its Resonance Power.
• Increase its Resonance Power by upgrading other Obelisks
• Players who donate more than 5,000 Polarized Fractaline before the end of the Season will earn a Triumph and emblem.

Everyone in the community will also receive a shader when all stages are completed. Here’s a look at community goals for the seven stages.

Stage 1: 400,000,000

Stage 2: 700,000,000

Stage 3: 1,200,000,000

Stage 4: ???

Stage 5: ???

Stage 6: ???

Stage 7: ???

Everyone is welcome to contribute. This event will be available to all Destiny 2 players and doesn’t require the Season Pass. You can start prepping this week by stockpiling Fractaline and making sure that your Tower Obelisk is powered up and ready to go.

Prime Time

Yesterday, we announced that we are teaming up with Twitch Prime to deliver in-game rewards to Destiny 2 players with an active Prime membership. We are planning to have six monthly drops, with each drop containing four rewards.

The first gear drop is live now and will be available until February 25. It includes the SUROS Regime Auto Rifle, the Coup de Main Ornament, the Skyline Flipside Exotic Ghost Shell, and the unsecured/OUTCRY Exotic ship.

Guardian Giveaways

This week, the Bungie Store is celebrating Guardians everywhere with a giveaway contest featuring curated collections of Destiny gear, including sold-out Shadowkeep Collector’s Editions signed by the Bungie team. For a limited time, a variety of discounted merchandise bundles are available on bungiestore.com and eu.bungiestore.com.

To enter, follow @BungieStore on Twitter, retweet the current giveaway post and add #GuardianGiveaways. The contest ends February 4, 2020 8:59 AM PST. Entries from EU, UK, USA, & CN only (see Rules for excluded provinces and states). 18+ to enter. Please see the Official Rules for more information.

Guardians for Australia

Our “Guardians for Australia” T-shirt is still available for pre-order on the Bungie Store and Bungie Store EU. Half of all profits generated by these T-shirt sales will be donated to NSW Rural Fire Service. The second half will be donated to WIRES, Australia’s largest wildlife rescue organization.

Purchase of the shirt also includes an exclusive Destiny 2 “Star Light, Star Bright” emblem. Thanks for helping us support Australia’s firefighting and animal rescue efforts.

Rollback to the Future

Player Support has a key role of working with the entire team to make sure you are aware of deployments and efforts to restore service during outages.

This is their report.

UPDATE 2.7.1 AND ROLLING BACK ACCOUNTS

After Update 2.7.1 went live on Tuesday, January 28, the Player Support team began noticing a trend of topics where users had lost various Destiny 2 currencies and infusion materials. After verifying this issue, it was decided by several Bungie teams to take the game down in an attempt to prevent more players from being affected.

Due to the rollback:

After the rollback completed, Destiny 2 server came back online around 7:00 PM PST. We are continuing to investigate why this issue occurred and may provide more information about it in the future.

TWITCH PRIME SUPPORT

To receive the gear drops mentioned in the Prime Time section above, players will need an active Amazon Prime account, Bungie.net account, and a Destiny 2 account. Once these accounts are linked, players can claim their drops on the Destiny 2 Twitch Prime website, then log into Destiny 2 and speak to Amanda Holliday in the Tower Hangar to claim the drops.

CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Year of the Rat Kings

You ever see a video so funny that you sprayed milk out of your nose? I haven’t, but I have a strict no-drinking-milk-while-watching-videos policy. Take a look at our winning movie this week (and careful with the milk!)

Movie of the Week: Rat Attack

Honorable Mention: Awakening

Movie of the Week winners will find a new emblem in their collections. Just make sure to put a link to your Bungie.net profile pages if you win so we know where to send them. We’ll pick our favorite video from anywhere on the safe-for-work internet where Destiny videos are posted. But if you really want that emblem, the best place to submit your video is the Community Creations page.

When you read this, I’ll be traveling to visit family in Texas and Oklahoma next week. But don’t worry, the Community team has been growing fat with strength and will have everything covered while I’m out. I won’t be fully out of action though. I’ll be contributing to the Empyrean Foundation community event from the road using Stadia.

We look forward to watching the community mobilize in force to answer our challenge. We always try to set the bar high, since you have crushed our expectations in the past. Let’s see what you got this time.

<3 Cozmo