Revenue for Microsoft’s video game business is down 21 percent year-over-year at the close of the second quarter of FY 2020, a decline the company blames both on slowing hardware sales and a tough comparison against a stronger-than-usual Q2 (driven by an unnamed third-party title) back in FY 2019.

All in all, Microsoft’s game revenue decreased $905 million for the quarter ending December 31, 2019. Revenue from Xbox hardware sales alone fell 43 percent year-over-year, a decline Microsoft chalks up to a decrease in both the number of consoles being sold and lowering prices of Xbox systems.

Xbox content and services fell $295 million year-over-year, or by 11 percent. Microsoft says growth in its own subscription services (likely Xbox Game Pass) helped offset a decline caused mostly by the fact that an unnamed third-party title set the bar high during the same quarter last year.

In terms of revenue, the “More Personal Computing” category that houses Microsoft’s game business (alongside the likes of Windows, search advertising, and Surface revenue), came in at 13.2 billion for the quarter, up from $13 billion year over year.

In this 2016 GDC talk, Dragon’s Eye Productions’ Dr. Cat discusses customized techniques for generating random numbers which are optimized for player-psychology and design intentionality.

Notably, he advocates for more directly controlling/skewing RNG to produce desired results, and offers some practical advice on the topic using game and code examples.

It was an intriguing talk on a topic most game makers deal with on a regular basis, so if you didn’t see it live don’t miss your chance to take in Dr. Cat’s talk for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.

We’re just a couple of days away from Super Bowl LIV and while we’re not exactly clued up on the big event ourselves (we’re mostly based in the UK, sorry!), we do know one thing: it doesn’t usually feature Sonic.

The speedy hog has landed himself a big game spot this year, presumably kicking away competing brands with those giant shoes of his. It features NFL stars Michael Thomas and Christian McCaffrey, Olympic track star Allyson Felix, and NASCAR driver Kyle Busch all commenting on someone who’s just too fast to handle. Any guesses who that might be?

As you’ve probably figured, the ad is aiming to promote the upcoming movie due to arrive in theatres on 14th February. If you missed them, several clips from the film were released earlier this week.

Feeling hyped for this one yet? Let us know in the comments.

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Thanks to Greatsong for the tip!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Destiny 2 News And Guides

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

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

What’s the Python Re + Quantifier?

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

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

>>> import re

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

['aaaaaab']

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

['abb']

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

['abbbbb']

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

['ab']

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

[]

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

['hello', 'world']

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

Examples 1 and 2: Greedy Plus (+) Quantifiers

Here’s the first example:

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

['aaaaaab']

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

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

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

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

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

The second example is similar:

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

['abb']

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

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

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

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

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

['abbbbb']

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

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

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

['ab']

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

Examples 5 and 6

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

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

[]

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

Another interesting example is the following:

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

['hello', 'world']

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>> import re

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

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

[]

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

[' + ']

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

[' ++++ ']

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

[Collection] What Are The Different Python Re Quantifiers?

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

So let’s dive into the other operators:

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

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

Here are the most important regex quantifiers:

Quantifier	Description	Example
.	The wild-card (‘dot’) matches any character in a string except the newline character ‘n’.	Regex ‘…’ matches all words with three characters such as ‘abc’, ‘cat’, and ‘dog’.
*	The zero-or-more asterisk matches an arbitrary number of occurrences (including zero occurrences) of the immediately preceding regex.	Regex ‘cat*’ matches the strings ‘ca’, ‘cat’, ‘catt’, ‘cattt’, and ‘catttttttt’.
?	The zero-or-one matches (as the name suggests) either zero or one occurrences of the immediately preceding regex.	Regex ‘cat?’ matches both strings ‘ca’ and ‘cat’ — but not ‘catt’, ‘cattt’, and ‘catttttttt’.
+	The at-least-one matches one or more occurrences of the immediately preceding regex.	Regex ‘cat+’ does not match the string ‘ca’ but matches all strings with at least one trailing character ‘t’ such as ‘cat’, ‘catt’, and ‘cattt’.
^	The start-of-string matches the beginning of a string.	Regex ‘^p’ matches the strings ‘python’ and ‘programming’ but not ‘lisp’ and ‘spying’ where the character ‘p’ does not occur at the start of the string.
$	The end-of-string matches the end of a string.	Regex ‘py$’ would match the strings ‘main.py’ and ‘pypy’ but not the strings ‘python’ and ‘pypi’.
A|B	The OR matches either the regex A or the regex B. Note that the intuition is quite different from the standard interpretation of the or operator that can also satisfy both conditions.	Regex ‘(hello)|(hi)’ matches strings ‘hello world’ and ‘hi python’. It wouldn’t make sense to try to match both of them at the same time.
AB	The AND matches first the regex A and second the regex B, in this sequence.	We’ve already seen it trivially in the regex ‘ca’ that matches first regex ‘c’ and second regex ‘a’.

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

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

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

Finds all occurrences of an arbitrary character that is

followed by the character sequence 'a!'.

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

Finds all occurrences of the word 'is',

followed by an arbitrary number of characters

and the word 'and'.

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

Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',

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

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

Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',

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

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

Finds all occurrences where the string starts with

the character sequence 'Ha', followed by an arbitrary

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

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

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

occurs at the end of the string.

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

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

word 'Death'.

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an example that shows the difference:

>>> import re

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

['ab']

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

['abbbbbbb']

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an example that shows the difference:

>>> import re

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

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

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

[]

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

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

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

You’ve learned about the three quantifiers:

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

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

>>> import re

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

['aaaaaaa', '']

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

['aaaaaaa']

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

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

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

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

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

>>> import re

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Re Methods

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

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

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

Where to Go From Here?

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

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

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

Meanwhile, in the world of mobile games…

New App Releases

Disgaea 1 (iOS & Android)

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

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

Spelltower+ (iOS Universal)

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

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

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

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

App News & Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

App Sales

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

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