Final Fantasy XIV surpasses 14 million lifetime registered players
Newsbrief: Square Enix’s flagship Final Fantasy MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV now boasts over 14 million registered accounts since the game’s rocky 2010 launch (and more successful 2013 relaunch).
While 14 million is a notable milestone in its own right, it is worth noting that registered accounts is quite a different metric than active players and that accounts that take advantage of the game’s reworked free trial option are likely included in this count as well.
Still, that’s a 4 million boost in registered accounts from the 10 million milestone Final Fantasy XIV hit at about this point last year.
Play Overwatch for Free with Xbox Live Gold August 23 – 27
If you’ve been waiting for the right time to join the fight for the future as an agent of Overwatch, now’s your chance! From August 23–27, we’re calling on all prospective soldiers, scientists, adventurers, and oddities: assemble your teams and dive in during the Overwatch free weekend event!
If you have an Xbox Live Gold subscription, you’ll be able to play with the full Overwatch roster of 28 heroes––including the newly released Wrecking Ball––across 18 maps set around the globe. You’ll have full access to Quick Play, Custom Games, and a variety of unique play options in the Arcade.
Player progression is unlocked as well, so you’ll be able to level up and earn limited-time Summer Games Loot Boxes. Plus, if you decide to purchase Overwatch, either this weekend or at a later date, you’ll keep any progress you made and achievements earned during the free weekend event––just be sure to use the same Xbox Live account that you played on.
The free period will begin at 11:00 a.m. PDT on Thursday, August 23 and will end at 11:59 p.m. PDT on Monday, August 27 in all supported regions. Instructions on how to participate are below.
Step 1: Turn on your Xbox One and log in to your Xbox Live Gold account
Step 2: Go to the Microsoft Store, then select Search
Step 3: In the search field, type in Overwatch
Step 4: Select Overwatch: Legendary Edition from the search results and then click Free Trial
Step 5: Once the download and installation processes are complete, click Launch to begin!
We hope you have fun playing Overwatch during the free weekend event. For all the latest news about Overwatch on Xbox One and any future free weekend events, keep it tuned here to Xbox Wire. Good luck out there, agents!
Earlier this year, Ubisoft’s third quarter financial briefing revealedMario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle had been the highest selling third-party game on the Switch – placing the French-based publisher in the overall lead in terms of third-party sales on the platform. More recently, Ubisoft’s full-year sales and earnings figures for the 2017-18 period showed a total of seven percent of the company’s sales were on Switch, with sales predominantly accredited to the Mario and Rabbid cross-over game.
Ubisoft Milan Creative Director Davide Soliani recently shed a bit more light on exact sales figures for the popular tactical turn-based RPG via Twitter, confirming the title has now sold more than two million copies on the Nintendo Switch. It’s great to see a third-party company’s hard efforts pay off.
Have you bought Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle on the Switch yet? Do you enjoy Ubisoft games in general? Would you like to see more of them on Nintendo’s latest system? Tell us below.
RPG Maker MV Releases In North America Next February
Following a previous announcement Japan would receive RPG Maker MV later this year on 15th November, NIS America – in partnership with Kadokawa Corporation – has released a PR revealing the Nintendo Switch game will be launched in North America on 26th February 2019. The European release is also scheduled for 2019, but an exact date has not been locked in.
Just like existing releases in the series, MV will allow aspiring developers to craft their very own video game. The title will also unite players – allowing maps to be uploaded and shared with fellow creators. This feature is possible with the RPG Maker MV Player App which will be available as a free download at launch.
SCUM aims to evolve the multiplayer open world survival game with unprecedented levels of character customization, control and progression, where knowledge and skills are the ultimate weapons for long-term survival.
Fortnite Finally Made Weekly Chest Challenges Fun [Update]
Alongside the release of a new update, the talk of the town in Fortnite over the past few days has obviously been the appearance of a mysterious giant purple cube. This almighty being (all hail cube) is covered in hieroglyphic symbols, shoots purple lightning, and is slowly moving somewhere, so the fascination with it is understandable. However, a few hours before the cube exploded onto the scene, a significant change happened to Fortnite's challenges that shakes up the weekly formula in a positive way. [Update: After Week 7 challenges introduced the new stage-based approach to chest objectives, Week 8 has gone back to the old style of chest quests. That's disappointing, but you can still read about why it would be wise for Epic to adopt the newer style permanently below.]
New challenges are released roughly every Thursday, resulting in a deluge of Battle Pass owners hopping on and bombarding a particular location because a new challenge is situated there. It can be a bit of a mess at times, particularly when you're trying to complete the challenge that revolves around simply opening chests. This sounds easy enough, but when you've got around 30 or 40 people descending on somewhere like Fatal Fields trying to do the same thing, it turns into a mad dash just to open a single chest before unceremoniously dying. This is repetitive, frustrating, and makes you question whether it's all worth it for another dance emote or fancy skin (spoiler: it always is).
However, Epic surprised us last week by finally altering the way chest-centric challenges work. Now it's a multi-step "treasure hunt" of sorts that scatters the challenge across multiple locations. Instead of this hectic scamper to open a chest before anyone else can, the player base is spread out across the map depending on which step of the challenge they're currently on. I managed to open all five chests in five different matches with little issue. I wasn't immediately dying because someone else shot me in the back after finding a chest first; I could actually have a proper game of Fortnite, opening a chest to tick it off the list, before running off to complete other challenges/die somewhere else. This is a marked improvement over previous weeks, and sits in stark contrast to the old formula of landing in the same place and dying over and over again like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow.
[The new challenge] sits in stark contrast to the old formula of landing in the same place and dying over and over again like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow
I understand this isn't some groundbreaking change, but it removes a lot of the monotony from Fortnite's weekly challenges, and has an effect on the overall composition of matches as well. With the player base spread out, the flow of games is a lot smoother, with a higher likelihood of encountering combat opportunities no matter where you are on the map. It's a practical change and gives me hope Epic has a few more changes in store for Fortnite's weekly challenges.
Season 5 has already seen some interesting activities, from using ATKs and trolleys to hop through rings of fire, to the recent time trials that challenged people's building and traversal skills (complete with an 8-bit remix of the old Fortnite theme). These challenges offer a welcome change of pace, and there's always excitement in the air each Thursday as we wait to see if Epic has something similarly unconventional up its sleeve. We're essentially paying for the privilege to compete in these challenges, right? Might as well make them fun.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 09-03-2018, 02:24 PM - Forum: Windows
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How government is transforming with AI – part 3
In our last two blogs in this series, we discussed how governments are using digital assistants—often with cognitive services such as language translation built in—to engage their community in more accessible ways and support their teams.
Another way that governments are using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is to help them predict needs and anticipate issues so they can prepare accordingly.
For example, to keep Alaska’s highways open and safe during severe winter weather, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities uses the FathymWeatherCloud solution and Microsoft Azure IoT technologies to make better, hyper-local decisions about deploying road crews. Being able to make more informed decisions with better data is helping Alaska save lives and significantly reduce road maintenance costs.
“The information we get from WeatherCloud puts us miles ahead in creating accurate forecasts,” says Daniel Schacher, Maintenance Superintendent at the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, in this article. “We’ve become much more proactive in our responses.”
Read “How Alaska outsmarts Mother Nature in the cloud” to learn about what led Alaska to deploy the system, how it works, and the way it’s helping the state keep residents safer and save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in resource usage.
Another example of keeping vital infrastructures up and running with insight from AI and IoT solutions comes from our partner eSmart Systems. With its Connected Drone portfolio, utilities can send smart drones out on beyond-line-of-sight missions to inspect power lines and pinpoint faults and weaknesses.
Utilities are using Connected Drones to stay ahead of power grid maintenance issues and help them prevent or reduce blackouts in the communities they serve. And by using drones to inspect lines, which can be dangerous for personnel, they can keep their teams safer.
Utilities are also using Connected Drones to get power back up and running after a disaster, as was the case in Florida after Hurricane Irma. Watch this video to see how the drones helped to assess the damage quickly—inspecting hazardous areas so human inspectors wouldn’t have to be put in harm’s way. With insight from the Connected Drones, the utility company was able to know not only precisely where repairs were required, but also which crew and equipment were needed to get power restored as quickly as possible in the affected communities.
Those are just a few examples of how governments can gain insight with AI and IoT that can help them keep the infrastructures their citizens rely on up and running. To learn about more vertical and horizontal areas where your government agency can benefit from AI, read the Gartner report: “Where you should use artificial intelligence—and why.” It provides research on the potential of various use cases and offers recommendations on the most effective strategies for applying AI.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 09-03-2018, 01:25 AM - Forum: Lounge
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After Destiny 2: Forsaken's Release, Bungie Has A Year Of DLC Planned
Forsaken, the next expansion for Destiny 2, arrives on September 4. Bungie has now revealed a new ViDoc (above) and the planned roadmap of DLC content that will come to Destiny 2 after Forsaken has arrived. There are two different paths of content depending on whether you want to spend more money on Destiny 2, which you can get for free right now with PS Plus.
Forsaken kicks off Destiny 2's fall season, which runs from September through November and is called Season of the Outlaw. On September 1, you can play Gambit as part of a 24-hour trial if you pre-order Forsaken. Forsaken officially launches three days later, and the expansion's raid, titled Last Wish, goes live on September 14. On September 18, Iron Banner returns and The Convergence map is added to the Crucible. The Breakthrough multiplayer mode comes to Crucible on September 25, along with some more maps. Festival of the Lost returns in October, but Bungie is promising a twist this time around. Continued updates and surprises will be patched into Destiny 2 throughout November.
From there, Destiny 2's roadmap splits. Each season will run three months long. What you get depends on whether you're willing to pay. All Destiny 2 players get add-ons from the free seasonal updates path. Paying for the annual pass unlocks a different string of exclusive content.
Starting in December 2018's Season of the Forge, everyone will have access to The Dawning event, as well as season rankings, the Iron Banner, new Crucible content, and new weapons--including the return of heavy machine guns. Annual pass holders get access to the Black Armory, which includes Light and Fury weapons, as well as the new Forges of the Chain activity, a Raid Lair, exotics, legendaries, and bonus rewards.
This pattern continues into Spring 2019's Season of the Drifter and Summer 2019's unnamed season, with new weapons and events unlocking for all players, and exotics, legendaries, and new activities to complete unlocking for annual pass holders. You can see the full roadmap on Bungie's blog. Bungie is keeping some of the information purposively vague for now in order to surprise Destiny 2's players down the line. In the meantime, see the big changes in Destiny 2's newest update.
Choose from one of 12 contractors hired by anonymous contract handlers and work as a team to either protect or obtain valuable data, housed on a laptop and located in dangerous locations around the globe.
Nintendo Power Podcast is the official podcast of Nintendo of America, in which guests such as Nintendo employees and developers discuss the world of Nintendo each month.
In Episode 8, host Chris Slate (previously editor-in-chief of the Nintendo Power™ magazine) is joined by Toph, a competitive Super Smash Bros.™ player and commentator, and JC Rodrigo from Nintendo Treehouse to discuss recent Super Smash Bros. Ultimate announcements, the competitive scene and their favorite fighting games. The guests also answer listener questions, take the Warp Zone quiz and more.
