Twitch Prime Rewards are now available in Destiny 2!
Bungie has teamed up with Twitch Prime to deliver in-game rewards to any player with an active Twitch Prime membership. Once you have your membership (if not, start your free trial here), visit this page and link your Bungie.net account to start receiving your six monthly gear drops. Each drop will contain four rewards, including Exotic weapons, Ghosts, ships, Sparrows, emotes, and weapon ornaments from previous Seasons.
The first gear drop will run from now until February 25 and will include the SUROS Regime, the Coup de Main Ornament, the Skyline Flipside Exotic Ghost Shell, and the unsecured/OUTCRY Exotic ship.
When a gear drop is available, eligible players can claim the rewards here. Once claimed, follow a visual indicator to Amanda Holliday in the Tower’s hangar. Amanda will have the rewards available in her inventory. As long as you claim the rewards on the Twitch Prime page by 10:00 AM on the last day of the drop, the gear will still be available from Amanda after the deadline.
Still have questions? We have a Help article with more details on how everything works.
Grab Your Gear for The Third Annual Artistic Adventure Sale
Whether you are in the midst of winter storms or celebrating the fact that you are avoiding them by staying in and playing games, we have you covered. Each year our Artistic Adventure Sale is a fan favorite so we have brought it back for a third year in a row. From now through January 27 you can save up to 75% on 75 beautiful adventure games. Get your travel cloak ready and hop on the couch to play some of these award winning adventure games.
Outer Wilds
(25% off) Nominated for multiple awards and winner of the 2019 Golden
Joystick Award for best Indie Game. Outer Wilds is an open world
mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop. You’re the newest
recruit of Outer Wilds Ventures, a fledgling space program searching for
answers in a strange, constantly evolving solar system. What lurks in the heart
of the ominous Dark Bramble? Who built the alien ruins on the Moon? Can the
endless time loop be stopped? Answers await you in the most dangerous reaches
of space.
Return
of the Obra Dinn (25% off) Another critically acclaimed game, Return
of the Obra Dinn won Best
Art Direction at The Game Awards in 2018 and it was well earned. This
beautiful game perfectly exemplifies an artistic adventure with minimal color.
In 1802, the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with
over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn’t met its rendezvous
point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea. Early in the
morning of October 14, 1807, the Obra Dinn drifted into port at Falmouth with
damaged sails and no visible crew. As an insurance investigator for the East
India Company’s London Office you are dispatched immediately to find means to
board the ship and prepare an assessment of damages. Return of the Obra Dinn
is a first-person mystery adventure based on exploration and logical deduction.
Inside
(67% off) I’m on a roll with award winners so let’s include the game that is
often included on best indie of all time lists. Just to name a few awards, Inside
won Best Indie Game at The Game Awards and The Game Critics Awards in 2016 and
Best Art Direction at The Game Awards and D.I.C.E. Awards in 2016. Hunted and
alone, a boy finds himself drawn into the center of a dark project. The
attention to detail the developers put into this game is beautiful and without
any spoilers the ending is something that’s still talked about around the
office to this day.
Creature in the Well (25% off) Unlock the power of an ancient facility and face the ominous, all-seeing creature in this unique pinball-inspired hack and slash! Creature in the Well is a top-down, pinball-inspired, hack-and-slash dungeon crawler. As the last remaining BOT-C unit, venture deep into a desert mountain to restore power to an ancient facility, haunted by a desperate creature. Uncover and upgrade powerful gear in order to free the city of Mirage from a deadly sandstorm.
What Remains of Edith Finch (50% off) A BAFTA Award winner for Best Game of 2018. The game is a collection of strange tales about a family in Washington state. As Edith, you’ll explore the colossal Finch house, searching for stories as she explores her family history and tries to figure out why she’s the last one in her family left alive. Each story you find lets you experience the life of a new family member on the day of their death, with stories ranging from the distant past to the present day.
This is just a small sample of all the great games on sale January
21 – 27. Whether you’re a weathered veteran or rookie taking their first step
on the great journey of adventure games we have something for you. See the full
list of games at Xbox.com
Don’t Miss: Building interesting emergence in Dying Light 2
At last year’s E3, Techland introduced Dying Light 2 to the world with the help of a new lead writer: Chris Avellone. The former Obsidian writer was on hand to explain that not only was he working on Dying Light 2, but the game would also be adding an incredible amount of choice-based divergence.
Instead of following a linear adventure like the first game, players will be constantly making choices that will reshape the zombie-filled city they’re parkouring around in. At E3 this year, Techland showed off a demo behind closed doors that established how far these decisions will go. Small decisions can open or close quest paths in a way that will be familiar to many RPG developers, but Techland also showed off a prominent divergence that literally impacted the physical level design of Dying Light 2.
At the end of the demo, Dying Light 2 protagonist Aiden Caldwell must choose whether to open the pumps to give water to the whole city, or practice restraint and listen a the Colonel Kurtz-like NPC who has another plan for the city. It’s a (complicated) moral choice, but more importantly, it’s a decision that will impact the actual game geography.
Lower the pumps, and a new section of the city becomes available, filled with a new type of zombie. Keep the pumps raised, and the player will never see that section of the city, or those enemies, in the rest of their playthrough.
After the demo, lead game designer Tymone Smektala was on hand to chat about the game design process of Dying Light 2, and how Techland is taking inspiration from Avellone’s choice-driven storytelling to make a more emergent game experience.
What have you learned in a year as a game designer since you got to show Dying Light 2 to the world?
What I learned is how complex it is to work with narratives that are nonlinear, and with sandbox space that can have a lot of variation and variance in it. You need to support every possible combination of these too. This is really stressful, and we had to come up with some internal methodologies for how we wanted to handle this.
This is really a headache, especially if you’re doing this for the first time. But thankfully we have support from Chris Avellone, who’s basically a master of nonlinear narratives. He has been supporting us very much, first of us he shares his knowledge with us, he shares his experience with us, he helped us build the world that Dying Light 2 takes place in.
The city, the factions, the whole lore is either made by Chris himself or with support from Chris. But I think the most important thing we benefit from right now is the fact that he also as I said shared with his knowledge with his internal team of writers.
So he did a lot of nonlinear games where you have choices and those choices have some kind of consequences, of course these games never really offer the opportunity to change the actual game space, but still this helps out. He knows how to do it, he knows how to approach it, so it’s manageable.
You said a great word in there, methodologies. We’re seeing a lot of procedural games this year at E3, would you be able to share anything about the procedural methodologies developed for Dying Light 2?
If you are pushing this in that direction, the biggest tool for us in that regard is something we are calling CityBuilder. It’s not the fanciest of names…
It’s a good name!
This is our internal tool that lets us create a city like you have in Dying Light 2 with a lot less effort than we would need to have if it was all done manually. There’s a guy outside who is the architect of this system…our engineering programmer, he could answer more questions about it. This is our tool that allows us to build whole cities from prefabs, small pieces.
When I say small pieces, I don’t mean like building stuff, basically each part of the city, of the geometry you see, every ledge, every window, every door opening, everything is one brick that’s used by CityBuilder to create various city parts which doesn’t require that much input from our level designers. It understands our game, it understands what works in parkour, so it’s a great tool that lets us create something quite quickly, and iterate quickly.
Emergent gameplay is a promise that everything you do has a consequence. What have you found is a way to let your team make very emergent gameplay without it explode out of control and break your game?
So I think there are two questions in one. The first one is actually about emergence itself. We have to introduce a lot of different solutions for that. One of the biggest – and it always works – is basically physics. We have so many cool emergent moments because of the physics and how it plays with things like our AI behaviors, with our destruction models.
For example, we had one presentation today early where in the first scene of the demo, we want you to see that emergence so we try to cut off the head of the first guy. The player did that, and the head flew off. But the head hit another guy in the face, and it broke his nose! So suddenly he started bleeding from his nose because he got hit by that head cut off by another guy.
So that’s emergence. When we talk about the number of variance not blowing out of proportions, you have to put a limit somewhere. Because the limit is either your capabilities as a developer or even the limits of the Blu-Ray disc you have to ship the game on.
We decided what’s important, what kind of changes are important to us. The goal is to create a game where each player can feel that they were able to shape the city by their own decisions, and we look at things that really support that. Things that let you activate or deactivate. Reveal or destroy, heat or unheat interactive elements of the sandbox space.
This is how we kept our head cool, let’s say, and how we were able to wrap our heads around it.
You’re working with a custom engine, right?
Yes it’s our in-house engine, it’s called C-engine. It’s something we’ve built purposefully for the games we’re making. Techland said internally it wants to make open-world first-person games, and this is an engine that supports that with a lot of different things, how it streams data, how it streams spaces with the high fidelity of graphics you see in the scene. All of those things, we have built in the engine on purpose because we know what kind of games we want to make.
What are some other things you found that emergent gameplay system rewards you in terms of making interesting moments for the player? How do you create a sense of triumph, or partnership with the NPCs?
When we talk about partnership with NPCs, this is an important part of our game. This might not be that visible here in the demo, but there’s a theme to Dying Light 2 which asks you to look at the selfish needs of the player character and the collective needs of the NPCs around you. When you first start thinking about it, you may think “screw the NPCs, they’re just computer people on my monitor, I don’t really care about them, I want all of the good stuff for me as a player character.”
But there’s a theme in our game where you will have to choose between the needs of your player character and the needs of those computer people. But when you finish the game, you start thinking “maybe I shouldn’t be so insensitive. Maybe I should think about the NPCs more. Maybe there’s something those guys are trying to tell me. Maybe it’s not always about thinking about yourself. Maybe we should sometimes think about other people as well.”
Is there anything in the gameplay about letting players see those consequences that you think has emerged?
This is something we knew by gut instinct, but it’s clear in playtesting it’s really empowering for players that they feel their decision made some kind of a change. The bigger the change, the bigger the scale of it, the bigger the feeling of empowerment.
We had a lot of people leaving our playtests saying “wow, this was amazing when I climbed to the highest building, the shape of the city, what’s in it, is because of my decisions.” maybe this is not a new finding but it really solidified in our heads and experience and knowledge knowing it makes a difference and knowing that it excites people and they know they can impact what’s happening in the game they’re playing.
A lot of devs talk about their willingness to let the player miss content a lot. You mentioned that the player will miss 50% of the content in the game, because they’re going to make binary choices and content will be locked off. As a person who makes games and loves seeing people play your stuff, how does it feel to put a lot of work of something and only a few people see it?
No! But I still believe people will see it. We had a very high number of players who completed Dying Light. So we had 50 percent of people completing the first game—
A 50 percent completion rate?
That’s crazy if you compare it to other games, if you think about it.
That’s incredible.
We had also about 35 percent of people playing co-op in a game which wasn’t really about co-op, it was just a mode we added. 35 percent of people were playing co-op. We had guys really going crazy with it, the guys who played 4,500 hours. I believe they will go back to the game even when they finish it, this is something they will really experience, and this will really get them interested.
I think also we did some artistic choices that we hope will really engage people, like the modern dark ages thing. You see things from the modern times but we’ll say they’re medieval-ized. This is something that really interests players, because this is kind of familiar, but also alien, so you want to explore that. So I think people would want to stay in our game for a long, long time.
Modern day software systems are moving towards containers. But there are a few important factors to understand before we move our Java/JVM based applications to containers. These factors raise questions about Java's suitability for containers.
Imagine an environment in which 10 instances of an application have been deployed into a container. Suddenly the application starts throttling and falling short of the normal performance. What has happened? In order to allow multiple containers to run isolated side-by-side, we have specified it to be limited to one CPU (or the equivalent ratio in CPU shares). Unfortunately, the JVM will see the overall number of cores on that node (64) and use that value to initialize the number of default threads we have seen earlier. As started 10 instances, we end up with:
10 * 64 Jit Compiler Threads
10 * 64 Garbage Collection threads
10 * 64 …. And so on…
Moreover, our application, being limited in the number of CPU cycles it can use, is mostly dealing with switching between different threads, and cannot get any actual work done.
Suddenly the “package once, run anywhere" promise of containers seems violated.
Before JDK 8.0_131, the core count resources were determined by sysconf. That means that whenever we run it in a container, we are going to get the total number of processors available on the system, or in case of virtual machines, the virtual system. The same is true for default memory limits: the JVM will look at the host overall memory and use that for setting its defaults. We can say that the JVM is ignoring cgroups, which causes the previously mentioned problems. Unfortunately, there is no CPU or memory namespace (also, namespaces usually have a slightly different goal), so a simple /proc/meminfo from inside the container will still show us the overall memory on the host.
Java 8.0_131 - Onwards on containers!
Java now supports Docker CPU and memory limits. Let us look at what “support” actually means.
Please look into the Jira below, which shows the list of improvements in Java for Containers.
These changes are available in 8u192. [Released Oct 2018]
The JVM can recognize the memory and CPU configurations of the container in which it is running. For instance, if the Docker container is configured to run with 1024m of memory, the JVM can now detect that, and can in turn configure its Java heap and the sizes of its other memory pools accordingly. Therefore, to have a smaller footprint for your Docker instance, all you have to do is to control the size of that container instance. The same applies for the CPU configuration. Focus on configuring the number of CPUs that you would like the container instance to use, and the JVM running inside it will be able to detect that configuration, and limit its CPU use to that configuration.
Memory
The JVM will now consider cgroups memory limits if the following flags are specified:
-XX:+UseCGroupMemoryLimitForHeap
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions
In that case, the Max Heap space (if not overwritten) will be automatically be set to the limit specified by the cgroup. As we discussed earlier, the JVM is using memory besides the Heap, so this will not prevent a user from the OOM killer from removing their containers. However, especially given that the garbage collector will become more aggressive as the Heap fills up, this is already a great improvement.
CPU
The JVM will automatically detect cpusets and use the specified number of CPUs for initializing the default values discussed earlier. Unfortunately, most users (and especially container orchestrators, such as DC/OS) use CPU shares as the default CPU isolation. Moreover, with CPU shares you will still end up with the incorrect value for default parameters.
So what can we do?
We should consider manually overwriting the default parameter (e.g., at least XMX for memory and XX:ParallelGCThreads, XX:ConcGCThreads for CPU) according to your specific cgroup limits.
Considering Non-Heap Memory in Java
The JVM memory consists the following segments:
Heap Memory
Non-Heap Memory, which is used by Java to store loaded classes and other meta-data
JVM code itself, JVM internal structures, loaded profiler agent code and data, etc.
The JVM has memory other than the heap, referred to as non-heap memory. It is created at the JVM startup and stores per-class structures, such as runtime constant pool, field and method data, and the code for methods and constructors, as well as interned Strings.
In previous versions of Java (before 1.8), JVM specifies a default space of 64 MB for PermGen space, which could be modified according to need for requirements over 64 MB.
In Java 8, PermGen has been renamed to Metaspace, with some subtle differences. It is important to note that Metaspace has an unlimited default maximum size (-XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=?MB). On the contrary, PermGen from Java 7 and earlier has a default maximum size of 64 MB on 32-bit JVM and 82 MB on the 64-bit version. Of course, these are not the same as the initial sizes. Java 7 and earlier versions start with something around 12-21 MB of the initial PermGen space.
After setting heap and MetaSpaceSize, what options are available?
There is no way to limit the native memory usage of an application. After Java heap and Metaspace are allocated, a Java application is free to usewhatever left in the system memory for other native allocations. We can limit the total memory available to the container itself by configuring the total memory of the container. However, if our application extensively uses Direct memory buffers (native allocations), we can control their maximum size by using the JVM option MaxDirectMemorySize, and that, in turn, will control the size of native allocations.
We can say that the problems described above are caused by the JVM ignoring cgroups.
Unfortunately, there is no CPU or memory namespace (also, namespaces usually have a slightly different goal), so a simple less /proc/meminfo from inside the container will still show us the overall memory on the host.
To celebrate the game’s launch, Nintendo has published an interview with the man himself – Dr. Ryuta Kawashima – as well as game developers Kouichi Kawamoto and Kenta Kubo. Siliconera has provided a translation of selected parts from the interview, which we’ve shared for you below.
Here’s what the three said when asked about how the game’s development began:
Kouichi Kawamoto, producer: “Personally, the reason I began the project was because, for some reason, some of my acquaintances who didn’t know I was in charge of the DS Brain Age were saying that they wanted to play Brain Age again. However, the DS game has many outdated elements nowadays, so I can’t recommend it, so I thought that we should bring it to the latest platform.” Kenta Kubo, director: “Since Brain Age: Concentration Training, I’ve still been discussing proposals with Dr. Kawashima… and around two years ago, I spoke to Kawashima, and said that “We’re thinking of a Brain Age game for the Nintendo Switch.”
Dr. Kawashima: “During seminars, I’m asked by those who played Brain Age on DS, ‘What game is coming next?’. However, it’s sad that those people would say that they were really into the game in past tense. And then, I’d ask further, and it would turn out that those people who played the game with their kid back then are beginning to reach that age… The age where you start forgetting things.”
Dr. Kawashima goes on to talk about his hopes for the new release:
Dr. Kawashima: “What’s important is ‘continuation’. This is something not just about Brain Age but games in general must deal with. Aren’t there a lot of games where you play it once and then stop playing? As a specialist in this field, I want players to continue their brain training for extended periods.
To do so, we’ll let them form groups, and have them play the game among their friends. That way, even when their brain age shows they are 20 years old (in the Brain Age series, 20 is the youngest you can go), you might have situations where one person wasn’t able to surpass the time set by their girlfriend… (laughs)
Our research up until now has proven that doing brain training with others affects how long people continue with it quite clearly. Competing with others is an effective way to have players continue on for even over 10 years.”
Despite being available in Europe, Japan and Australia, we’re still yet to hear of a North American release for the new game. If such a release does get announced, we’ll be sure to let you know.
For those of you with access to Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch, have you been enjoying your time with it? Let us know in the comments.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 Has Delayed Its BB-8 Update
Star Wars Battlefront II has delayed a promised update that will let you play as BB-8 (and his First Order doppelganger, BB-9E). The update, which was meant to be available on January 30 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, has been delayed for some last-minute bug fixes.
The update's delay was announced on the Battlefront forums, with a post stating that a "critical issue" was found during testing. The update will now release "early next week," although an exact date was not set. "We already have a new build going through its regular pre-release checks and things are looking positive," the post reads.
"Unfortunately, this is sometimes the reality in game development where testing continues right up until an update is deployed onto our live servers," it continues. "Although disappointing, we feel that it is much better that we found the issue now, rather than have it slip through and make it to our live servers." A definite release date will be confirmed soon.
The post also confirms that BB-8 will be able to do his iconic "thumbs up" pose from The Force Awakens, which is very good and cute news.
The update will also add two new Capital Ships to Capital Supremacy: the MC85 Star Cruiser and Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. Ajan Koss is coming to Hero Showdown, and there will be various "fixes and improvements" too. These are the examples given:
Darth Vader will now be able to block while choking
Auto Players will be able to carry out melee attacks
Droidekas receive an increase to their shield health
VO announcers will now mention the era-appropriate heroes that spawn
Finn and Kylo Ren both have new emotes, which you can unlock via new milestones
An update for the game back in December 2019 added content from The Rise of Skywalker, including a new map and costumes. The game original released in 2017 to less-than-stellar reviews, but has improved a lot since then, and has ultimately been very successful.
After 10 months in development, Godot 3.2 has been released. The release includes dozens of new features including C# support for Android and WebAssembly, glTF2.0 support, a new Android build system and a ton more.
This only represents the top level features, there were a ton of smaller changes and improvements, for a complete list of changes check out the complete changelog. You can learn more about this release in the video below.
Black Desert Mobile gets its first new class – the Sorceress
By Joe Robinson29 Jan 2020
Anyone who’s familiar with the PC version of Black Desert Online will be used to the development studio adding in new classes, whether they be brand new or new gender-specific options for existing class-types.
With a much smaller class-set on launch, Black Desert Mobile has all of that to look forward too, and the first new class since launch has just been added: Say hello to The Sorceress.
You can make your character look like anything, of course, but the ‘default’ look for the new class looks oddly familiar… imagine if The Witcher’s Yennefer were done in Anime styling and wore less clothes, perhaps. For the header imagine I selected one of the less risque clothing options in the character creation menu.
The Sorceress is billed as an adaptable class, capable of both up-close and long ranged attacks. This can be summarized by two of her moves – the Shadow Kick, which does exactly what you think it does and the Dark Pulse, which is a ranged attack. As you can see from the video above she can do a bunch of other moves as well, depending on your style.
This new update also brings with it a new magical enhancement system as well. When your Black Spirit consumes items, it can generate magical residue which can be in turn used to buff weapons via the new system.
Of course, you know what the best thing about this new update is – I get to play the Flappy Bird game again.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 01-30-2020, 05:29 AM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Microsoft commercial strength powers second quarter results
REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 29, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2019, as compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year:
Revenue was $36.9 billion and increased 14%
Operating income was $13.9 billion and increased 35%
Net income was $11.6 billion and increased 38% GAAP and 36% non-GAAP
Diluted earnings per share was $1.51 and increased 40% GAAP and 37% non-GAAP
“We are innovating across every layer of our differentiated technology stack and leading in key secular areas that are critical to our customers’ success,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Along with our expanding opportunity, we are working to ensure the technology we build is inclusive, trusted and creates a more sustainable world, so every person and every organization can benefit.”
The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to non-GAAP financial results. Additional information regarding our non-GAAP definition is provided below. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year.
GAAP results include a net income tax charge related to the TCJA of $157 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2019. This net income tax charge is excluded from our non-GAAP results.
Microsoft returned $8.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020.
“Strong execution from our sales teams and partners drove Commercial Cloud revenue to $12.5 billion, up 39% year over year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.
Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $11.8 billion and increased 17% (up 19% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:
Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 16% (up 18% in constant currency) driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 27% (up 30% in constant currency)
Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 19% (up 20% in constant currency) with continued growth in Office 365 Consumer subscribers to 37.2 million
LinkedIn revenue increased 24% (up 26% in constant currency)
Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 12% (up 15% in constant currency) driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 42% (up 45% in constant currency)
Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $11.9 billion and increased 27% (up 28% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:
Server products and cloud services revenue increased 30% (up 32% in constant currency) driven by Azure revenue growth of 62% (up 64% in constant currency)
Enterprise Services revenue increased 6% (up 7% in constant currency)
Revenue in More Personal Computing was $13.2 billion and increased 2% (up 3% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:
Windows OEM revenue increased 18% (up 18% in constant currency)
Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 25% (up 27% in constant currency)
Surface revenue increased 6% (up 8% in constant currency)
Xbox content and services revenue decreased 11% (down 9% in constant currency)
Business Outlook
Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast.
Quarterly Highlights, Product Releases, and Enhancements
Every quarter Microsoft delivers hundreds of products, either as new releases, services, or enhancements to current products and services. These releases are a result of significant research and development investments, made over multiple years, designed to help customers be more productive and secure and to deliver differentiated value across the cloud and the edge.
Here are the major product releases and other highlights for the quarter, organized by product categories, to help illustrate how we are accelerating innovation across our businesses while expanding our market opportunities.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)
To better execute on Microsoft’s mission, we focus our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts where we can have the most positive impact. To learn more about our latest initiatives and priorities, please visit our investor relations ESG website.
Webcast Details
Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Frank Brod, chief accounting officer, Keith Dolliver, deputy general counsel, and Michael Spencer, general manager of investor relations, will host a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time (5:30 p.m. Eastern time) today to discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information. The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor. The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on January 29, 2021.
Non-GAAP Definition
We recorded a net charge of $157 million during the three months ended December 31, 2018 related to the TCJA.
We have provided non-GAAP financial measures related to the TCJA to aid investors in better understanding our performance. We believe these non-GAAP measures assist investors by providing additional insight into our operational performance and help clarify trends affecting our business. For comparability of reporting, management considers non-GAAP measures in conjunction with GAAP financial results in evaluating business performance. The non-GAAP financial measures presented in this release should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Constant Currency
Microsoft presents constant currency information to provide a framework for assessing how our underlying businesses performed excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. To present this information, current and comparative prior period results for entities reporting in currencies other than United States dollars are converted into United States dollars using the average exchange rates from the comparative period rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during the respective periods. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. Microsoft has provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding our performance. The non-GAAP financial measures presented in this release should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:
intense competition in all of our markets that may lead to lower revenue or operating margins;
increasing focus on cloud-based services presenting execution and competitive risks;
significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns;
acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances that may have an adverse effect on our business;
impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a significant charge to earnings;
cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities that could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position;
disclosure and misuse of personal data that could cause liability and harm to our reputation;
the possibility that we may not be able to protect information stored in our products and services from use by others;
abuse of our advertising or social platforms that may harm our reputation or user engagement;
the development of the internet of things presenting security, privacy, and execution risks;
issues about the use of AI in our offerings that may result in competitive harm, legal liability, or reputational harm;
excessive outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure;
quality or supply problems;
the possibility that we may fail to protect our source code;
legal changes, our evolving business model, piracy, and other factors may decrease the value of our intellectual property;
claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
claims against us that may result in adverse outcomes in legal disputes;
government litigation and regulatory activity relating to competition rules that may limit how we design and market our products;
potential liability under trade protection, anti-corruption, and other laws resulting from our global operations;
laws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data that may impede the adoption of our services or result in increased costs, legal claims, fines, or reputational damage;
additional tax liabilities;
damage to our reputation or our brands that may harm our business and operating results;
exposure to increased economic and operational uncertainties from operating a global business, including the effects of foreign currency exchange;
uncertainties relating to our business with government customers;
adverse economic or market conditions that may harm our business;
catastrophic events or geo-political conditions that may disrupt our business; and
the dependence of our business on our ability to attract and retain talented employees.
For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.
All information in this release is as of December 31, 2019. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com
For more information, financial analysts and investors only:
Michael Spencer, General Manager, Investor Relations, (425) 706-4400
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers, and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information, as well as today’s 2:30 p.m. Pacific time conference call with investors and analysts, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.
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