While the overall picture in sales terms was relatively rosy for Nintendo according to its latest financial figures, shareholders aren’t doing quite as well as the revenue figures suggest. Despite increases in sales and a 2.4% increase in revenue to 172 billion yen, profit has taken a 45.7% dive compared to the same three month period last year.

The three-month period ending 30th June 2018 saw profit (specifically ‘profit attributable to owners of parent’) of 30.6 billion yen (nearly $282 million) compared to the latest figure of 16.6 billion (almost $153 million). Of course, the latter figure is still not to be sniffed at, but the massive slide despite improved sales might raise some eyebrows.

This drop is put down primarily to exchange rates cutting into profits. The report cites ‘foreign exchange losses of 12 billion yen and other factors’ for the decrease, so it appears that outside and, regrettably, uncontrollable elements have taken their toll on the balance book this quarter. We certainly wouldn’t be happy losing over $110 million at the bureau de change.

The company is already investigating ways to mitigate the effects of otherwise uncontrollable increases in costs but there’s no denying that the current exchange rates aren’t helping the Kyoto company’s bottom line at the moment.

Every three months, Nintendo provides an updated list of its upcoming major releases, highlighting the games it thinks will help to boost the Switch’s appeal and letting us know of any minor updates or delays.

That time has come around once more today, and we’ve got the whole list for you down below. There have been a few small changes since the last update – such as the confirmed release dates for games like Luigi’s Mansion 3 and Pokémon Sword and Shield – but otherwise, everything seems to be as it was before.

So, while it doesn’t really show us anything new or exciting, the update does at least tell us that all of the games listed below are still on track for their intended release dates – which is never a bad thing.

Here’s the full list (month/day/year):

Japan (correct as of 30th July, 2019)

The United States (correct as of 30th July 2019)

• Nintendo Switch Lite – 9/20/2019
• Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 7/12/2019
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order – 7/19/2019
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses – 7/26/2019
• Astral Chain – 8/30/2019
• Tetris 99 – 9/6/2019
• Daemon X Machina – 9/13/2019
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – 9/20/2019
• Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition – 9/27/2019
• Luigi’s Mansion 3 – 10/31/2019
• Pokémon Sword and Shield – 11/15/2019
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 3/20/2020
• Bayonetta 3 – TBA
• Metroid Prime 4 – TBA
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel – TBA

Europe (correct as of 30th July, 2019)

• Nintendo Switch Lite – 9/20/2019
• Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 7/12/2019
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order – 7/19/2019
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses – 7/26/2019
• Astral Chain – 8/30/2019
• Daemon X Machina – 9/13/2019
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – 9/20/2019
• Tetris 99 – 9/20/2019
• Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition – 9/27/2019
• Luigi’s Mansion 3 – 10/31/2019
• Pokémon Sword and Shield – 11/15/2019
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 3/20/2020
• Bayonetta 3 – TBA
• Metroid Prime 4 – TBA
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel – TBA

There’s an awful lot to look forward to on these lists – so much so that we know we’ll never have the time to play everything we want to. Which games are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments below.

When using multiple monitors, by default, means that your desktop wallpaper is duplicated across all of your screens. However, with all that screen real-estate that a multiple monitor setup delivers, having a different wallpaper for each monitor is a nice way to brighten up your workspace even more.

One manual workaround for getting different wallpapers on multiple monitors is to manually create it using something like the GIMP, cropping and positioning your backgrounds by hand. There is, however, a neat wallpaper manager called Hydrapaper that makes setting multiple wallpapers a breeze.

Hydrapaper

Hydrapaper is a simple GNOME application that auto-detects your monitors, and allows you to choose different wallpapers for each display. In the background, it achieves this by simply composing a new background image from your choices that fits your displays, and sets that as your new wallpaper. All with a single click.

Hydrapaper lets the user define multiple source directories to choose wallpapers from, and also has an option to select random wallpapers from the source directories. Finally, it also allows you to specify your favourite images, and provides an additional category for favourites. This is especially useful for users that have a lot of wallpapers and change them frequently.

Installing Hydrapaper on Fedora Workstation

Hydrapaper is available to install from the 3rd party Flathub repositories. If you have never installed an application from Flathub before, set it up using the following guide:

Install Flathub apps on Fedora

After correctly setting up Flathub as a software source, you will be able to search for and install Hydrapaper via GNOME Software.

By Christine McKee
Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 07:42 pm PT (10:42 pm ET)

We’re giving away 10 Adonit Note styluses for use with Apple’s current iPad and iPad Pro. Enter today for your chance to win!

Now through Aug. 6, AppleInsider readers can enter to win one of 10 Note styluses courtesy of Adonit. In our hands-on review, we found the Adonit Note is great for jotting down notes and can be paired easily with Apple’s 2018 iPad or iPad Pro. It’s also compatible with 2019 iPad Airs and iPad minis.

Retailing for $49.99, 10 lucky winners will each receive the Adonit Note delivered to your door.

Entering the giveaway is quick and easy. Simply retweet this tweet or subscribe to our YouTube channel using the widget below. You can also gain additional entries by following us on Instagram to view exclusive photos from Apple events. The entry period for the giveaway ends at 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Aug. 6, and the winner will be announced here on Aug. 7, so be sure to check back to see if you’ve won.

No purchase is necessary to enter and the sweepstakes is open to U.S. residents aged 18 years and older. Please note, contest entries will be verified upon selecting a winner.

Adonit Note Stylus

Apple Deals

AppleInsider and Apple authorized resellers are also running a handful of additional exclusive promotions this month on Apple hardware that will not only deliver the lowest prices on many of the items, but also throw in instant discounts on AppleCare, software and accessories. These deals are as follows:

See if there is a Mac, iPad or Apple Watch deal that will save you $100s by checking out prices.appleinsider.com.

At SIGGRAPH 2019, Maxon announced details of the upcoming R21 release of their Cinema4D 3D DCC application.  The release isn’t actually coming until September of 2019 we have details of the upcoming new features.

In addition to new features, there were two major announcements, a change to a single version and a change in pricing.  First details on the new single SKU approach:

Only one version of Cinema 4D:

• No more Prime / Visualize / Broadcast / Studio / BodyPaint editions. 
• All functionality is in the one version, no separate editions anymore.
• Demo and Educational versions are no longer separate downloads. 
• Demo and Educational can be upgraded to a commercial version.

With a single SKU, there is now also a single price tag, however there are now several subscription options, detailed here.

Essentially you can now pay for Cinema4D via subscription which are cheaper when paid on an annual basis.  Additionally you can continue to purchase Cinema4D with a perpetual licence, but unfortunately it is 3x more money that the most affordable version available currently.  Learn more in the video below.

GameDev News Art Applications

Click Here!

If you were to ask people how AI could change their lives, they may immediately think of self-driving cars and chatbots. In a business context, increased efficiencies and advanced data analytics would be among the likely responses.  

But AI is also changing the arts, enriching people’s daily experiences, preserving culture and making art more accessible to those unable to visit a gallery or historic site for themselves.    

In July 2019, Microsoft announced a new and fourth pillar to its AI for Good portfolio, the $125 million, five-year commitment to use artificial intelligence to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges. This new pillar will focus on AI for Cultural Heritage, and use AI to work with non–profits, universities, and governments to help preserve the languages we speak, the places we live, the artifacts we treasure and celebrate the people who have made an impact.  

The program will build upon previous efforts including those in New York, with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MIT; in Paris with the Musée des Plans-Reliefs; and in southwestern Mexico, where Microsoft is engaged as part of ongoing efforts to preserve languages.   

AI is also a creative force able to compose music, write novels and paint pictures. Here are seven examples of how AI is enriching our cultural lives.  

Virtual visits 

The great buildings and historical sites of the world may attract millions of tourists a year, but many more people have only seen pictures. That is beginning to change. 

Microsoft AI is being used to help preserve records of historic sites and bring people closer to some of the wonders of the world. Teams from the French company Iconem have used cameras and drones to create 3-D digital models of landmarks from Cambodia to Syria. 

In Paris at the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, Microsoft partnered with Iconem and HoloForge Interactive to create an immersive experience using mixed reality and AI that pays homage to the French cultural icon Mont-Saint-Michel, off the coast of Normandy. 

Visitors can interact with the exhibits and discover information and stories about the site. 

Open access 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched its Open Access initiative in 2017, making all images and data relating to public-domain artworks in its vast collection available to everyone online. The Met recently collaborated with Microsoft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help take this initiative to the next level, using artificial intelligence to explore new ways for global audiences to discover, learn and create with one of the world’s foremost art collections. 

Language Preservation  

There are more than 7,000 languages in the world, a third of which have fewer than 1,000 people who continue to speak them. In southwestern Mexico, Microsoft is engaged as one of the community partners in efforts to preserve languages spoken in the region, specifically Yucatec Maya and Queretaro Otomi. By using AI, Microsoft has helped to protect endangered languages. 

[Subscribe to Microsoft on the Issues for more on the topics that matter most.] 

Interpreting expressions 

Enigmatic expressions like those worn by the “Mona Lisa” or seen on the faces of countless statues of Buddha, invite the viewer to speculate on what the subjects was thinking or feeling. 

But researchers in Japan are revolutionizing the way we think about this phenomenon, using facial recognition software. They used Azure Cognitive Services Face API to analyze 200 statues of Buddha, including the mysterious expressions of the Ashura Buddha at the Kofukuji Temple in Nara.  

Traditionally, Buddhist statues would have shown faces devoid of emotion. But in their creation, the Kofukuji statues’ faces may have been influenced by their sculptors’ moods and may carry traces of detectable emotion, which the project sought to investigate. The aim of the project was “to provide people with a means for reaffirming the beauty of Buddhism,” according to Professor Syun’ichi Sekine. 

Beyond Microsoft’s efforts, these are just some of the ways AI is already changing the arts: 

Robot writers 

In 2019, OpenAI announced that it had created a language algorithm that could write text that was indistinguishable from that written by a human. The GPT-2 program has not been released as a fully trained version, as its makers claim they are concerned about the potential “malicious applications of the technology.” 

Whether that concern is justified, AI is already writing both news and fiction. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times reported on an earthquake that had just hit the city, with an article automatically generated by its Quakebot algorithm. And Guardian Australia has run an experiment in publishing an article written by a program called ReporterMate. Such developments are intended to produce straightforward news items with as little human intervention as possible, leaving editorial staff and reporters free to focus their efforts on more complex or nuanced activities, such as investigations or opinion pieces. 

AI has also been credited with writing its first novel, “1 the Road,” an account of a road trip written by a computer hooked up to a GPS, microphone and camera.  

Painting by numbers 

In October 2018, the sale of the painting “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy” for $432,500 surprised the art world. The “artist” was an algorithm used by the Paris-based collective Obvious. Members of the collective fed thousands of images into a computer, which then used what it had learned to create an original image. 

The sale sparked debates about what constituted art and whether human artists would eventually be replaced by machines. But the people behind Obvious are far from the only ones using AI to create works of art. The HG Contemporary Gallery in New York has hosted an exhibition called “Faceless Portraits Transcending Time,” featuring prints produced by an AI program named AICAN.

Composing melodies and lyrics 

AI has been used in music for decades. In 1956, Lejaren Hiller used a computer to help compose the “Illiac Suite for String Quartet.” And the influential producer Brian Eno help pioneer a genre called generative music.  

Today, AI is being used to write so-called functional music for commercial clients like the video game industry, with tempo and mood configured to keep up with changes in ongoing gameplay. 

Another impact AI is having on music is in the use of algorithms that create playlists on streaming services. Not only are they choosing what millions of subscribers listen to, but they are also beginning to introduce AI-written music into those playlists. 

For more on AI, visit AI Empowering Innovation. And follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.