It’s only taken over nine years, but The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is finally making its way to mobile via the power of xCloud and Xbox Game Pass. If you’re unfamiliar with the service, Microsoft’s xCloud allows you to stream a range of major console games to your Android device, from Gears 5 and Sea of Thieves to Control and now Skyrim.

Bethesda’s legendary RPG is one of several new games set to join the Xbox Game Pass library for Android before the end of the year. Others include action-packed shooter My Friend Pedro and Soulslike Code Vein. Skyrim will be playable via the official Xbox Game Pass app from tomorrow.

If you’re on iOS, you’ll have to wait until spring 2021 to test out the service. Plus, xCloud for iOS will function through your web browser as opposed to a native app. This creative workaround was used to avoid having to split the entire Game Pass library into individual apps on Apple’s platform.

The version of Skyrim that Android users will be able to play is the enhanced Special Edition, which boasts improved visuals and all of the game’s DLC. Notably, the Special Edition also supports mods.

If the prospect of playing Skyrim on mobile is one you simply can’t ignore, you’ll be needing a subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you’re a new subscriber, you’ll pay $1/£1 for your first month, then $14.99/£10.99 for every month after that.

Does this mean that Skyrim is now one of the best mobile RPGs? Quite possibly.

In its typical out-of-the-blue style, Nintendo has announced that a new Indie World Showcase will be airing tomorrow, 15th December.

The show will kick off at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET and will feature ‘roughly 15 minutes of updates and new announcements on indie games coming to Switch’. You can see the announcement for yourself below.

You can watch the show live right here at Nintendo Life at the times mentioned above – make sure to keep an eye on our home page just before it starts.

Until then, though, any predictions? Fire away in the comments.

Gaming giants Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox have shared details on their united commitment to make gaming a safer place for all players.

Dave McCarthy, Corporate Vice President, Xbox Operations, has shared a new post on the official Xbox website today, highlighting the basic principles that sit at the heart of each company’s work. “We believe gaming is for all people of all ages, including our youngest and most vulnerable players,” the post reads. “Technology makes compelling entertainment experiences possible, and we want to ensure that those experiences – especially when they involve interaction with others – are positive and respectful.”

McCarthy goes on to explain how Xbox is ‘aligned’ with its industry rivals in this message, sharing the three key pillars holding up its work.

“At Xbox, we are aligned with both Nintendo, on behalf of the community of Nintendo Switch players and PlayStation in our belief that protecting players online requires a multidisciplinary approach – one that combines the benefits of advanced technology, a supportive community, and skilled human oversight. We can accomplish more when we work toward the same goal, and so we will each continue investing in, evolving, and amplifying our approaches to user safety. As we continue this work, we will prioritize protecting the safety of our players, especially those most vulnerable.”

Here are those key principles listed in the post:

Prevention: Empower players and parents to understand and control gaming experiences.

• We provide controls that let players customize their gaming experience. We support parents with the tools and information necessary to create appropriate gaming experiences for their children.
• We recognize that for safety features to be useful, they must be easy to use. We will promote the availability of our safety tools through our platforms, support channels, services, on our websites and in retail stores to reach more players and parents.
• We continually inform our parents and players through our codes of conduct, terms of use, and our enforcement practices.
• We invest in technology to help thwart improper conduct and content before a player is subject to harm.

Partnership: We commit to partnering with the industry, regulators, law enforcement, and our communities to advance user safety.

• The industry’s commitment to safety is central. We believe that we have an opportunity to collaborate for the benefit of the video game industry and all players to offer a safer gaming experience.
• We work with industry trade organizations, industry members, regulators, law enforcement, and experts to develop and advance online safety initiatives.
• We commit to conducting shared research for the benefit of the industry.
• We believe that hate and harassment or exploitation of younger players in any way have no place in gaming. We partner with our community to promote safe gaming behavior and encourage the use of reporting tools to call out bad actors.
• We partner with ratings agencies such as the ESRB and PEGI to ensure that our games are rated for the appropriate audience.

Responsibility: We hold ourselves accountable for making our platforms as safe as possible for all players.

• We make it easy for players to report violations of our code of conduct and, in addition to removing content, we take appropriate enforcement actions for violations, including restricting players from using our services for misconduct.
• We comply with all local laws and will respond to all lawful requests from law enforcement. We promptly notify law enforcement if we observe unlawful conduct or where we believe a player is at risk of imminent harm.
• We publish our rules and requirements and we ensure that players who have been reported understand the requirements for continued engagement with our platforms.

It’s particularly good to see the companies ‘holding themselves accountable’ for making their platforms as safe as possible here. Incidentally, you can find Nintendo’s support page and information for parents at those links should you need any assistance.

McCarthy concludes:

“Protecting players can be challenging in a digitally and often instantaneously connected world. This partnership signifies our commitment to work together to improve player safety and ensure gaming remains truly for everyone. While the video game industry has a long history of taking steps to protect gamers, especially children, we recognize that no one company or industry will solve these challenges alone.

“We welcome others to make and share similar commitments to players everywhere.”

Do you believe that Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox do enough to protect gamers? Do you think more could be done, or that the three companies should accept a higher level of responsibility than they do now? Feel free to share your thoughts on the topic in the comments section below.

News | Bungie.net”>

News | Bungie.net”>

Godot have just released a new version of Godot 3.2.4, beta 4. We have already discussed several of the recent improvements in the 3.2.4 release including 2D Sprite Batching and the new improved FBX Importer. In addition to further improvements in those areas and various bug fixes, the beta 4 release brings a few new features to the table.

Details from the Godot Engine blog:

In particular, this build adds optional GDNative support to the HTML5 target, on top of the pre-existing optional multithreading support. The HTML5 export templates now come in three flavors which you can select in the export preset: normal, threads enabled and GDNative enabled. Multithreading and dynamic linking (GDNative) can’t be used at the same time due to current WebAssembly limitations.
Note: Threads enabled and GDNative enabled templates are only available for standard builds for now, as there are other issues to solve to make them work with Mono.

Additionally, beta 4 adds support for MP3 loading and playback! Until recently, the MP3 audio format was patent-encumbered and could therefore not be included in Godot, but the last patent expired in 2017, so a MP3 loader and decoded could finally be implemented.

There are also a number of fixes to the rewritten FBX importer which should improve compatibility, so if you ran into issues with it in previous builds, make sure to retry your models!

You can learn more about Godot 3.2.4 in the video below, including a quick tutorial showing how to use MP3’s in your Godot game.

We recently interviewed Ben Cotton on how he uses Fedora. This is part of a series on the Fedora Magazine. The series profiles Fedora users and how they use Fedora to get things done. Contact us on the feedback form to express your interest in becoming an interviewee.

Who is Ben Cotton?

If you follow the Fedora’ Community Blog, there’s a good chance you already know who Ben is.

Ben’s Linux journey started around late 2002. Frustrated with some issues on using Windows XP, and starting a new application administrator role at his university where some services were being run on FreeBSD. A friend introduced him to Red Hat Linux, when Ben decided it made sense to get more practice with Unix-like operating systems. He switched to Fedora full-time in 2006, after he landed a job as a Linux system administrator.

Since then, his career has included system administration, people management, support engineering, development, and marketing. Several years ago, he even earned a Master’s degree in IT Project Management. The variety of experience has helped Ben learn how to work with different groups of people. “A lot of what I’ve learned has come from making mistakes. When you mess up communication, you hopefully do a better job the next time.”

Besides tech, Ben also has a range of well-rounded interests. “I used to do a lot of short fiction writing, but these days I mostly write my opinions about whatever is on my mind.” As for favorite foods, he claims “All of it. Feed me.”

Additionally, Ben has taste that spans genres. His childhood hero was a character from the science fiction series “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. “As a young lad, I wanted very much to be Wesley Crusher.” His favorite movies are a parody film and a spy thriller: “‘Airplane!’ and ‘The Hunt for Red October’” respectively.

When asked for the five greatest qualities he thinks someone can possess, Ben responded cleverly: “Kindness. Empathy. Curiosity. Resilience. Red hair.”

Ben wearing the official “#action bcotton” shirt

His Fedora Story

As a talented writer who described himself as “not much of a programmer”, he selected the Fedora Docs team in 2009 as an entry point into the community. What he found was that “the Friends foundation was evident.” At the time, he wasn’t familiar with tools such as Git, DocBook XML, or Publican (docs toolchain at the time). The community of experienced doc writers helped him get on his feet and freely gave their time. To this day, Ben considers many of them to be his friends and feels really lucky to work with them. Notably “jjmcd, stickster, sparks, and jsmith were a big part of the warm welcome I received.”

Today, as a senior program manager, he describes his job as “Chief Cat Herding Officer”- as his job is largely composed of seeing what different parts of the project are doing and making sure they’re all heading in the same general direction.

Despite having a huge responsibility, Ben also helps a lot in his free time with tasks outside of his job duties, like website work, CommBlog and Magazine editing, packaging, etc… none of which are his core job responsibilities. He tries to find ways to contribute that match his skills and interests. Building credibility, paying attention, developing relationships with other contributors, and showing folks that he’s able to help, is much more important to him than what his “official” title is.

When thinking towards the future, Ben feels hopeful watching the Change proposals come in. “Sometimes they get rejected, but that’s to be expected when you’re trying to advance the state of the art. Fedora contributors are working hard to push the project forward.“

The Fedora Community 

As a longtime member of the community, Ben has various notions about the Fedora Project that have been developed over the years. For starters, he wants to make it easier to bring new contributors on board. He believes the Join SIG has “done tremendous work in this area”, but new contributors will keep the community vibrant.

If Ben had to pick a best moment, he’d choose Flock 2018 in Dresden. “That was my first Fedora event and it was great to meet so many of the people who I’ve only known online for a decade.”

As for bad moments, Ben hasn’t had many. Once he accidentally messed up a Bugzilla query resulting in accidental closure of hundreds of bugs and has dealt with some frustrating mailing list threads, but remains positive, affirming that “frustration is okay.”

To those interested in becoming involved in the Fedora Project, Ben says “Come join us!” There’s something to appeal to almost anyone. “Take the time to develop relationships with the people you meet as you join, because without the Friends foundation, the rest falls apart.”

Pet Peeves

One issue he finds challenging is a lack of documentation. “I’ve learned enough over the years that I can sort of bumble through making code changes to things, but a lot of times it’s not clear how the code ties together.” Ben sees how sparse or nonexistent documentation can be frustrating to newcomers who might not have the knowledge that is assumed.

Another concern Ben has is that the “interesting” parts of technology are changing. “Operating systems aren’t as important to end users as they used to be thanks to the rise of mobile computing and Software-as-a-Service. Will this cause our pool of potential new contributors to decrease?”

Likewise, Ben believes that it’s not always easy to get people to understand why they should care about open source software. “The reasons are often abstract and people don’t see that they’re directly impacted, especially when the alternatives provide more immediate convenience.”

What Hardware?

For work, Ben has a ThinkPad X1 Carbon running Fedora 33 KDE. His personal server/desktop is a machine he put together from parts that runs Fedora 33 KDE. He uses it as a file server, print server, Plex media server, and general-purpose desktop. If he has some spare time to get it started, Ben also has an extra laptop that he wants to start using to test Beta releases and “maybe end up running rawhide on it”.

What Software?

Ben has been a KDE user for a decade. A lot of his work is done in a web browser (Firefox for work stuff, Chrome for personal). He does most of his scripting in Python these days, with some inherited scripts in Perl.

Notable applications that Ben uses include:

• Cherrytree for note-taking
• Element for IRC
• Inkscape and Kdenlive when he needs to edit videos.
• Vim on the command line and Kate when he wants a GUI