Today, The Pokémon Company has issued a statement announcing that it will donate a “minimum” of $5 million to charity.

The money will be going to nonprofit organisations working toward “improving the lives of children with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion”. The notice comes after Pokémon GO developer Niantic revealed that it would be donating proceeds from Pokémon GO Fest 2020 ticket sales, also committing a minimum of $5 million to “fund new projects from Black gaming and AR creators” and for “US nonprofit organisations that are helping local communities rebuild”.

Here’s Pokémon’s full statement:

The Pokémon Company says that a list of charities receiving donations will be shared soon.

Last week, Pokémon also shared a message of solidarity to Black Lives Matter, as well as its employees and fans who “continue to be impacted by systemic racism and senseless violence”.

Video capabilities, once a nice to have, have become a critical component of collaborative work.

In fact, when the world moved to remote work earlier this year, Microsoft Teams customers turned on video in Teams meetings two times more than they did before many of us began working from home full-time. We also saw total video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 percent in the month of March. These trends, along with daily conversations with customers navigating remote collaboration, inspired us to accelerate new features to customize your video experiences and make meetings more productive, comfortable, and fun.

Today, we are announcing the rollout of new custom background effects in Teams, along with new features in the free version of Teams. It’s all about enabling you and your team to work productively, collaboratively, and with everyone’s well-being in mind. Let’s get into the details.

Microsoft Teams custom background effects are now available!

When joining a Teams meeting, you want the focus on you—not that messy bookcase behind you. Last year, we introduced background blur to help everyone preserve privacy and keep their attention on their teammates. Our design team also created a collection of preset images that range from professional (a modern office) to pretty silly (a cartoonish beach scene). Today, we’re expanding these options so you can customize your background by uploading your own images or choosing one of the collections of backgrounds now available online.

No need for a green screen, or even a blank wall. Teams uses a highly trained model that differentiates the subject from their background and can impose a custom background over everything else, making it easy and fast to start expressing yourself in all your meetings.

Background collections to check out

With the whole world turning to video, companies are getting creative with collections of backgrounds you can easily download and then upload to Teams. Here are some options.

From a booth at Bob’s Burgers to a mountain of LEGO building blocks, there’s something for everyone in this collection from FOX.

If you want to be the coolest coworker when your colleagues’ kids wander on camera, our Xbox collection has you covered.

Celebrate 30 years of Microsoft Solitaire, one of the most played games on the planet every day, and show your love for the game with either the blue or green Microsoft Solitaire background.

Look out for great event-specific collections too! Our Microsoft designers created 20 virtual backgrounds for you to show your pride and support for the LGBTQI+ community. Download their colorful creations at microsoft.com/pride.

New features now available in the free version of Microsoft Teams

With so many people moving suddenly to remote work, the free version of Teams has become an important way for teams to meet and collaborate online. We want to help them continue to connect effectively, so we’re bringing several new features to this version of Teams.

Schedule your meetings in advance

Free version users are now able to schedule meetings and send out invitations in advance. This capability builds upon the existing ability to “Meet Now.” Meeting schedulers have the option of either copying the meeting link to send directly to other participants or sending an invite via Outlook or Google calendar. This much-requested capability is being rolled out to current users, while users who are just signing up now will be able to experience it soon. And right now, there is no time limit on meetings in the free version of Teams—so collaborate away!

Here is how you schedule and start meetings in the free version of Teams.

Use live captions

Teams free users can now turn on live captions during their calls and meetings. This feature makes meetings more inclusive, giving participants another way to follow along with the conversation and address the needs of participants with different hearing abilities or language proficiencies. It’s currently available as a preview in U.S. English.

Note: If you are already a user of the free version of Teams, this update will automatically happen, and you will be able to schedule meetings, as well.

The free version of Teams also provides all types of organizations up to 500,000 users with:

• Unlimited chat and search
• Audio and video calling
• Scheduled meetings
• 10 GB team file storage and 2 GB personal file storage per person
• Ability to use the Office web apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote)
• Unlimited app integration
• And much more!

And it’s all backed by Microsoft’s secure, global infrastructure—so all of our users can enjoy the confidence of a secure and reliable service. You can learn more and sign up for this free version today with just your email address here.

There’s no doubt that video is now a huge part of our daily work lives. With Teams, we want to provide video experiences that feel personal and comfortable to every customer, from students and teachers adjusting to remote work to globe-spanning corporate teams aligning around a tight deadline. Custom background effects help you design the video experience that works best for you—whether you need to hide a mess of toys or just want a funny background photo to give your team a laugh. Meanwhile, new features in the free version of Teams bring important meeting-scheduling capabilities to every Teams user. It’s all part of our effort to provide the best collaboration tool for every individual, team, and organization on the planet. I hope you enjoy these new features, and I can’t wait to bring you more exciting feature news in the days to come.

Earlier today we reported that Biped, the cute robot puzzle platformer from NExT Studios, is coming to Switch on 2nd July. The game released a couple of months ago on PS4 and PC, but with its local cooperative gameplay and accessible controls, it sure looks tailor-made for Nintendo’s console.

Recently, we were fortunate enough speak with the game’s producer Dong Ding via email about the development of Biped (or biped, as it’s stylised), the upcoming online mode, and the challenges of the Switch version.

Nintendo Life: For Switch players who might have missed the Steam and PS4 launch of Biped, can you tell us a little about the game?

Dong Ding, producer at NExT Studios: Biped is a unique coop action game powered by physics. In biped, you control the legs of the main characters, 2 cute little robots, rather than the characters themselves. Веside from the joysticks, you won’t be using any other buttons! Go on an exciting adventure with many tough challenges that require a lot of collaboration between you and your partner.

Tell us about the team at NExT Studios. How many people worked on Biped?

At NExT Studios, we constantly strive to deliver truly original gaming experiences. With our games we cover a wide range of genres and subjects, from imaginative puzzles to fierce fighting, from Ancient China to Future Earth, we will never cease to explore new worlds to surprise and entertain gamers who are looking for creativity and uniqueness.

So far we have published Death Coming, Iris.Fall, Bladed Fury, Meowoof, Nishan Shaman, Unheard, and biped on PC and console with more coming out later this year.

How long has Biped been in development? What inspirations did you look to while making it?

Biped was created in roughly 2 years. We are a team made of Nintendo fans so we naturally took a lot of inspirations from various Nintendo games. However, the level of originality that went into biped dictated how we came up with all the design solutions because there really weren’t many references out there.

We are a team made of Nintendo fans so we naturally took a lot of inspirations from various Nintendo games.

You control two cute robot characters, Aku and Sila. Can you tell us about the evolution of those characters? Were they always robots?

Aku and Sila didn’t have their names until quite late in development. Since we started off the project with a fun playable mechanic rather than a product vision, we got to spend a lot of time refining how the game plays and how the characters work. It wasn’t until the core gameplay was mostly defined that we were able to flush out the game universe, the background story, and hence the decision to make them robots.

We’ve read that you experimented with PvP multiplayer at one point. How did those experiments shape the end product? Has the game changed over time?

The PvP experiment was actually fun but we didn’t feel it was the right direction for the concept in general. We ended up focusing on coop mode because we believed it would provide the most fun to players given the content we could afford to create. After the PvP experiment, we narrowed down the levels to reflect this focus: all of the puzzles and challenges became totally central to the core experience, which is 2 players working and having a great time together.

With local co-op being one of Switch’s particular strengths, Biped feels like a natural fit. Presumably, the plan was always to bring it to Switch, so why launch on other platforms first?

We have always known that we want to launch biped on Switch and had no doubt it would be a great fit. However, in reality, it took us a lot of time to work out a control scheme to allow comfortable play using a Joycon, without losing the essence of the unique sense of control. Also, to make sure the game looks as good as it does on PC and runs at a smooth framerate we have been working hard on optimizing without sacrificing visual fidelity. We sincerely hope that gamers will find the wait worthwhile.

What’s been the biggest development challenge you’ve encountered in bringing the game to Switch?

For the Switch version we want to support as many playing scenes as possible so we are currently working on providing the online coop feature as soon as possible after the initial launch. Due to the complexity of the physics involved, as well as our high-performance goals, it is quite a challenge. But we are confident it will be delivered soon.

The last few months have been tough for people all around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How has it impacted NEXT Studios and Biped?

Like the rest of the world, teams at NExT studio had to work from home which presented a great amount of challenge achieving the set of goals we had before the pandemic hit. However, all the toughness and difficulty also taught us a priceless lesson on how resilient and creative our fellow colleagues and friends can be when faced with adversity. We were not only able to largely accomplish our goals but also came out of the situation being more agile, innovative, and most importantly, more understanding of one another.

Are there any plans to add content or new modes to Biped in the future?

For now, we are focusing on delivering the best launch possible for Switch but we have already begun planning for possible major updates. Please stay tuned for future announcements.

Finally, what other games have you been enjoying recently, on Switch or elsewhere?

A Short Hike provides an incredibly tranquil, minimalistic excursion. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is where I go to get my daily dose of pure happiness. And I often rediscover the fun of dungeon crawling with a friend in Minecraft Dungeons, which is not unlike something players can find in biped.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Our thanks to Dong. Biped is launching on Switch on 2nd July.

If the rumours are true, Nintendo likely won’t be putting out a Nintendo Direct presentation in the immediate future. That’s not to say announcements won’t continue to drop, or game-specific Direct videos won’t appear online over the summer, but a full-fat blow-out of a presentation doesn’t appear to be on the cards in the near-term – certainly not of the type we’d normally see in the first half of June, anyway.

The reasons for this are various and entirely understandable. Disruption to the video game industry over the past few months has led to companies across the spectrum adapting and experimenting with new ways of delivering news and debuting games. Nintendo has been a leader in this field for some time; the first of the big three to abandon a stage presentation at E3 in favour of a broadcast that it could control and edit for maximum impact.

And we have to say, dropping big announcements out of the blue has proved an effective, exciting strategy. March’s Nintendo Direct Mini was shadow-dropped without warning, and then there was Paper Mario: The Origami King, which sprung up on our Twitter timeline with such nonchalance that it took a moment to rack our brains and make sure we hadn’t blanked on a previous announcement (hey, we’re all suffering from a touch of lockdown fogginess, no?).

There’s little doubt that random drops of previously unannounced titles can certainly spice up a quiet Thursday afternoon. Yet, there’s still a palpable desire for a real, honest-to-goodness, 45-60 minute ‘proper’ Nintendo Direct. Not an an Indie World Showcase or an Animal Crossing Direct or a Smash fighter deep-dive Direct or Pokémon DLC Direct; a real one, if you will.

It’s not like there aren’t other things to think about in the world right now, but with other platform holders lifting the lid on their plans for the rest of the year, we thought it a good time to look to the future and consider the burning questions we’d most love to see answered by Nintendo over the summer, whether via a bumper Nintendo Direct or a sneaky tweet.

Question 1: How is No More Heroes 3 / Bayonetta 3 / Bravely Default 2 coming along?

First up, an update on the big games–Nintendo-published or otherwise–that we know are coming would be a good start. We’re talking titles like No More Heroes 3, Bayonetta 3 and Bravely Default II.

PlatinumGames’ sequel is a particular mystery in that selection – a game we’ve seen nothing of beyond its initial tease way back in December 2017. Director Hideki Kamiya has insisted multiple times that everything is progressing smoothly behind the scenes, to the point that questions about it are irritating him. Kamiya irritated? Fancy that.

You could easily bundle the following game in with those above, but we feel it deserves special attention…

Question 2: Got a sitrep on Metroid Prime 4?

How many years has it been now? Our perception of time is a bit skewed after the past couple of months, but it is now a whopping three years since Metroid Prime 4‘s initial reveal teaser at E3 2017 and nearly 18 months since Shinya Takahashi announced that all development work to that point had been scrapped and the project would be restarted by series veterans Retro Studios.

The game is still a long way off, but given its history we’d love a little development update. Two years, three years off – we don’t really mind when it arrives, but acknowledgement that Samus is alive and well would perk us up immeasurably.

Question 3: What’s planned for Super Mario Bros.’ 35th anniversary?

Bit of a leading question, this. The rumoured remasters of several Mario games got us dreaming of a ‘Super Mario All-Stars 2‘, and it seems highly likely that a host of 3D favourites will be coming to Switch sooner rather than later. Whatever Nintendo is cooking up, we’re eager to find out more. It can’t just be a collection of Uniqlo t-shirts, right?

Question 4: What’s next for Nintendo Switch Online?

We’ve been getting a slow drip feed of NES and SNES titles added to the online subscription service over the last few months, but Nintendo has stated its intention to continue adding value to the service and we’re wondering what’s coming next. A new exclusive game a la Tetris 99, perhaps? If not Nintendo 64 games, then how about Game Boy or Game Boy Advance titles? Something else entirely?

There’s no time like the present for a new Tetris 99-alike to take the world by storm.

Question 5: When can we stop calling it ‘Breath of the Wild 2’?

We say that we’re not fussed about game-specific Directs, but a Breath of the Wild 2 deep-dive would be most welcome. Or even a shallow-dive, come to think of it.

We’ve watched and dissected that reveal trailer from a year ago over and over, and we’d like to be able to stop calling this direct sequel ‘Breath of the Wild 2’ now. How about The Legend of Zelda: Dungeon Divers? The Legend of Zelda: Calamity’s Return? The Legend of Link: A Zelda to the Past…

Okay, they’re all rubbish. Give us a proper title, Nintendo, and let’s banish ‘BOTW2’ to the depths where it belongs.

Question 6: What can we look forward to in the second half of 2020?

This is probably the most pressing question on many a Nintendo fan’s mind (and likely a few other people besides). It would be an immense understatement to say that 2020 has been a bit of a rotter so far, and that’s one of the reasons so many of us are looking to our favourite creators to provide a little respite and distraction from the challenges of the last few months.

To be fair, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been a meditative part of our daily routine for many weeks now, but we would welcome something to get excited about in the second half of the year. We understand that Nintendo has projects bubbling away, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has inevitably affected release plans, but a drop of intel on games likely to arrive before Holiday 2020 would lift our spirits no-end.

It needn’t be ‘Super Mario Odyssey 2‘, or the rumoured Pikmin that’s been MIA for years, or an ‘F-ZERO FOR SWITCH’ megaton (although we’d snap up any or all of the above). A little Rhythm Heaven or WarioWare compilation on Switch would be just the ticket. Heck, we’d gladly take a couple of Wii U ports (there are still a fair few to pick from) – just something for Switch owners to pin on their mirrors and think about over the summer months, as opposed to staring into the abyss and having only titles on other platforms to get excited about.

Go on Nintendo, throw us a bone, hmm?

We have other questions, of course, but these are the ones causing the most head-scratching for us at the moment. What would you most like Nintendo to spill the beans about this summer? Let us know your burning questions below.

When words are not enough, only action can bring about change. Taking a stand against systemic racism, injustice, and prejudice is everyone’s responsibility and it begins with education and engagement. Here is a list of suggested organizations that we encourage you to visit and donate to.

We at Bungie are making a commitment to stand up on behalf of our Black community; including our players, developers, fans, and neighbors. Racial injustice surrounds us, and we need to help create positive change.

Bungie is making financial contributions to these organizations and matching the donations made by any of the people on our team. This will not be our only contribution to the fight for justice in our country, and globally. We have a platform, and we plan to use it.

Black Lives Matter.

Dancing Piglins, Workstation changes, and fixes oh my!  We draw ever closer to the Nether Update and so far I have to say the first thing I want to do is find some dancing piglins!

We’ve included some experimental changes to graphics rendering in this snapshot, which might reveal some issues on a small number of older graphics cards.

If do you find any new graphical bugs then please report them to the bug tracker with the make and model of your graphics card as well as which operating system you are using.

• Piglins now sometimes dance in celebration of a completed hunt

• Villager workstation logic changes
• Bells can be hung from the underside of more blocks
• When a villager that was traded with is struck by lightning, the witch it converts to will no longer despawn
• Players can no longer mount another entity when the crouch key is held down

VILLAGER WORKSTATION LOGIC

• Villagers no longer try to work at the same workstation
• The most experienced nearby villager for the profession corresponding to the workstation you add will get the workstation
• Villagers now have to walk to and reach the workstation before they can acquire the profession/work there
• Villagers can no longer claim workstations/professions during raids or night time.
• Villagers will check and make sure their workstation is valid at all times of day as long as they are within 16 blocks of their workstation.

• Added shader support for accessing depth buffer
• Renderer now uses per-pixel blending layers for some transparent elements
• Slightly changed datapack loading to prevent custom datapacks from crashing
• Cached repeated block type lookups and collisions during pathfinding for increased performance
• Minor optimizations in collision detection
• Top-level element in predicate file can now be array (all contents will be ANDed)

DATAPACK LOADING

• If datapack reload fails, changes will not be applied and the game will continue using previous data
• If existing datapacks prevent world from loading, the game will give option to load world in safe mode, which loads only vanilla datapack
• Changes to datapack list are stored only after successful reload
• Added –safeMode option to server to load only with vanilla datapack
• Game will now detect critical datapack issues, like missing required tags and prevent world from being loaded

• MC-667 – Lily pads can be placed intersecting entities
• MC-4065 – Messages/commands sent while in a bed won’t be remembered in sent history
• MC-112131 – Intersecting dungeons: spawner replaced by cobblestone
• MC-118594 – Removal of Log4J2Plugins.dat causing a slowdown of 3 secs on startup while it has to rescan all classes
• MC-120805 – Pig rotation is wrong when you see a player riding them with carrot on a stick
• MC-124812 – Endermen holding a block can despawn
• MC-125006 – Stronghold and dungeon generate over each other
• MC-134755 – All short mobs drown just below the surface of water
• MC-143443 – Redstone dust block states don’t update properly if the wire is broken by a piston
• MC-148893 – Fox spawners do not render the fox inside of the block
• MC-150806 – Multiple villagers are attached to the same profession block
• MC-153787 – Zombie Reinforcements can spawn on glass
• MC-156161 – Some chest loot is randomized across the same seed, unlike before 1.14
• MC-156866 – Villagers level from Apprentice to Journeyman with less experience than shown by XP bar
• MC-157303 – Villagers wake up and seek a new “home” (bed) while living in a 2 high house
• MC-157436 – Player position is constantly reset when clicking with a sword or a trident onto the ground in creative mode
• MC-162340 – World border is rendered behind transparent blocks
• MC-162665 – Food does not drop from a campfire when it is put out with a shovel/water bottle
• MC-163910 – Hand animation sometimes plays for a second time with high ping
• MC-164233 – “Skilled” villagers without job site do not get precedence over unemployed villagers
• MC-165549 – Arm swing animation is still played when drinking an item
• MC-166135 – Bees inside a nest/hive don’t grow up or get their breeding timer reset
• MC-167039 – Right-clicking on a spawner with the same mob spawn egg as in spawner plays hand animation
• MC-169891 – Zombie Reinforcements can spawn in regardless if light level is higher than 9 in nether (hard difficulty)
• MC-171515 – Semi-transparent items don’t render properly in front of semi-transparent blocks
• MC-171553 – Basalt can generate inside Nether fortresses
• MC-172079 – The /clear command output doesn’t count items in the inventory crafting grid
• MC-172142 – Items are invisible while being picked up
• MC-172197 – Nylium is not dropping netherrack when it is broken by pickaxe
• MC-172272 – /clear removes all items from crafting grid regardless of item type
• MC-172479 – Hoglins immediately attack invisible players
• MC-172980 – Light does not propagate across chunk borders properly
• MC-173032 – Fossils can overwrite the stronghold end portal
• MC-173063 – Redstone wire doesn’t update connections going up or down when being placed by commands
• MC-173197 – Zombified Piglin does not hold its arms upwards like a zombie
• MC-173404 – Desync when mounting an entity while sneaking
• MC-173552 – Nether Fossil support islands are sometimes cut off at chunk borders
• MC-174307 – Nether fossil stops basalt pillar
• MC-174325 – Mushrooms or Nether fungi can replace the stem of large nether fungi (trees)
• MC-174692 – Shroomlights, wart blocks and vines can overwrite the stem of large Nether fungi
• MC-174932 – Right-to-left text appears left-to-right after game start until language is changed
• MC-175553 – Piglins don’t drop their inventories when converted to zombified piglins
• MC-176020 – If a player is riding a strider, other players can not see the animation of the strider
• MC-176051 – Glowstone in the offhand sets spawn point and charges respawn anchor at the same time
• MC-176147 – Basalt randomly gets cut off
• MC-176628 – Frost Walker protects player from fire
• MC-177150 – Ticking entity java.lang.IllegalStateException: Tag minecraft:fire used before it was bound
• MC-177265 – Piglin and Zombified Piglin right arm/leg/loincloth textures are identical to the left ones
• MC-177626 – Spruce generation is broken
• MC-177870 – Soul campfire doesn’t deal twice the amount of damage as normal campfire
• MC-177888 – Blackstone can’t be used to repair stone tools and weapons using an anvil
• MC-177962 – Giant fungi can replace waterlogged blocks when growing
• MC-177970 – Player can occasionally be forced into crawling in one block tall spaces
• MC-178003 – Fossils can generate inside of desert temples
• MC-178441 – Endermen don’t avoid the wither’s skull projectiles
• MC-179020 – Jigsaw blocks do not disappear post-gen when structure is spawned using the ‘Generate’ action from an initial jigsaw
• MC-179890 – Fire stops ticking forever if gamerule doFireTick is set to false once
• MC-179909 – 2×2 trees sometimes fail to grow, but if they grow, they always grow on the surface
• MC-180098 – Farmer villagers’ farming behavior is broken
• MC-180771 – Observer not updating when tree grows leaves in front of it
• MC-180877 – Fire does not spread from netherack to other blocks
• MC-181108 – Right-to-left text is displayed left-to-right at all times
• MC-181464 – When a piglin picks up a shield the gear equip sound is infinitely spammed
• MC-181529 – Ctrl + Pick Block no longer copies skull / head NBT data properly
• MC-181555 – When replacing a snow layer with a grass block, podzol or mycelium, the block has the “snowy=true” blockstate
• MC-182666 – Parity issue: Piglins do not have a dancing animation when celebrating their victory
• MC-182888 – Compasses and clocks work like normal in villager trading GUI
• MC-182919 – Horse armour stops rendering if you equip the horse with a saddle by right-clicking
• MC-182967 – Throwing ender pearl whilst mounted doesn’t teleport you
• MC-183275 – Basalt pillars end above the lava in Java Edition but inside of the lava in Bedrock Edition
• MC-183374 – Text on signs stops rendering while still in view
• MC-183496 – Enchantment glint doesn’t render in boat interior
• MC-183718 – Stronghold end portal can be overwritten by ocean ruins
• MC-183808 – “Bee Our Guest” advancement does not trigger when harvesting honey from bee nests
• MC-183860 – Zombie villager converted from villager gets PersistenceRequired depending on whether attacking zombie had it
• MC-184482 – End Gateways don’t generate after defeating the ender dragon
• MC-184609 – Text renders in the wrong order
• MC-184619 – Piglins riding on other entities float
• MC-184629 – Piglins riding on hoglins or other piglins automatically dismount them
• MC-184730 – [Crash] “java.lang.NullPointerException: mouseClicked event handler” – Some Superflat presets crash immediately when trying to generate them
• MC-184740 – Structures generated in previous versions are not recognised as valid structures, causing mobs not to spawn
• MC-184778 – Redstone dust can be toggled between cross and dot in adventure mode
• MC-184936 – Old Minecraft logo in the end poem/credits
• MC-185156 – Worldgen settings are not validated and can cause crashes