A few weeks ago, Game Grumps revealed it would bring its popular title Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator to the Switch and mobile devices in the “very” near future.

The estimated release date of 2nd July has now appeared on the North American eShop. It will set you back $14.99 and is expected to take up 2.7GB of space. We’ve also got an official confirmation from the Twitter account:

The Switch version is expected to be the same as existing releases, where you create your own Dad, date dads, unlock multiple endings and play Dad-themed mini and microgames. Read the Steam description and view the trailer below:

You and your daughter have just moved into the sleepy seaside town of Maple Bay only to discover that everyone in your neighborhood is a single, dateable Dad! Will you go out with Teacher Dad? Goth Dad? Bad Dad? Or any of the other cool Dads in this game? With minigames, sidequests, and a variety of paths and endings, Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator is this year’s most anticipated Dad-based game.

Will you be downloading this one on release? Tell us in the comments.

Are you using multiple monitors with your Linux workstation? Seeing many things at once might be beneficial. But there are often much more windows in our workflows than physical monitors — and that’s a good thing, because seeing too many things at once might be distracting. So being able to switch what we see on individual monitors seems crucial.

Let’s talk about i3 — a popular tiling window manager that works great with multiple monitors. And there is one handy feature that many other window managers don’t have — the ability to switch workspaces on individual monitors independently.

Quick introduction to i3

The Fedora Magazine has already covered i3 about three years ago. And it was one of the most popular articles ever published! Even though that’s not always the case, i3 is pretty stable and that article is still very accurate today. So — not to repeat ourselves too much — this article only covers the very minimum to get i3 up and running, and you’re welcome to go ahead and read it if you’re new to i3 and want to learn more about the basics.

To install i3 on your system, run the following command:

$ sudo dnf install i3

When that’s done, log out, and on the log in screen choose i3 as your window manager and log back in again.

When you run i3 for the first time, you’ll be asked if you wish to proceed with automatic configuration — answer yes here. After that, you’ll be asked to choose a “mod key”. If you’re not sure here, just accept the default which sets you Windows/Super key as the mod key. You’ll use this key for mostly all the shortcuts within the window manager.

At this point, you should see a little bar at the bottom and an empty screen. Let’s have a look at some of the basic shortcuts.

Open a terminal using:

$mod + enter

Switch to a second workspace using:

$mod + 2

Open firefox in two steps, first by:

$mod + d

… and then by typing “firefox” and pressing enter.

Move it to the first workspace by:

$mod + shift + 1

… and switch to the first workspace by:

$mod + 1

At this point, you’ll see a terminal and a firefox window side by side. To close a window, press:

$mod + shift + q

There are more shortcuts, but these should give you the minimum to get started with i3.

Ah! And to exit i3 (to log out) press:

$mod + shift + e

… and then confirm using your mouse at the top-right corner.

Getting multiple screens to work

Now that we have i3 up and running, let’s put all those screens to work!

To do that, we’ll need to use the command line as i3 is very lightweight and doesn’t have gui to manage additional screens. But don’t worry if that sounds difficult — it’s actually quite starighforward!

The command we’ll use is called xrandr. If you don’t have xrandr on your system, install it by running:

$ sudo dnf install xrandr

When that’s installed, let’s just go ahead and run it:

$ xrandr

The output lists all the available outputs, and also indicated which have a screen attached to them (a monitor connedted with a cable) by showing supported resolutions. Good news is that we don’t need to really care about the specific resolutions to make the them work.

This specific example shows a primary screen of a laptop (named eDP1), and a second monitor connected to the HDMI-2 output, physically positionned right of the laptop. To turn it on, run the following command:

$ xrandr --output HDMI-2 --auto --right-of eDP1

And that’s it! Your screen is now active.

Managing workspaces on multiple screens

Switching workspaces and creating new ones on multiple screens is very similar to having just one screen. New workspaces get created on the screen that’s currently active — the one that has your mouse cursor on it.

So, to switch to a specific workspace (or to create a new one in case it doesn’t exist), press:

$mod + NUMBER

And you can switch workspaces on individual monitors independently!

Moving workspaces between monitors

The same way we can move windows to differnet workspaces by the following command:

$mod + shift + NUMBER

… we can move workspaces to different screens as well. However, there is no default shortcut for this action — so we have to create it first.

To create a custom shortcut, you’ll need to open the configuration file in a text editor of your choice (this article uses vim):

$ vim ~/.config/i3/config

And add the following lines to the very bottom of the configuration file:

# Moving workspaces between screens 
bindsym $mod+p move workspace to output right

Save, close, and to reload and apply the configuration, press:

$mod + shift + r

Now you’ll be able to move your active workspace to the second monitor by:

$mod + p

And that’s it! Enjoy your new multi-monitor experience, and to learn more about i3, you’re welcome to read the previous article about i3 on the Fedora Magazine, or consult the official i3 documentation.

GigSky is a mobile cell service provider with a history of catering to Apple users, providing service in more than 190 countries. When they announced their eSIM for iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, AppleInsider gave it a shot.

You may not have heard of GigSky, but they aren’t new; they’ve been around since 2010. In 2015, the firm began offering support for the Apple SIM for iPads, a SIM Apple provides which lets you select providers from within iOS.

From the very beginning, they’ve placed an emphasis on providing service for international travelers, and the eSIM offering fits right in that niche.

What it is

The iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR are equipped with an eSIM.

A SIM card contains the SIM chip, essentially a very small computer that is programmed with all the carrier’s settings to enable phone service. With most modern phones, you have to insert a SIM to activate mobile phone service.

The eSIM, or embedded SIM, is that same functionality as a programmable computer built into the iPhone.

The advantage of doing this is that it saves space in the phone: you don’t need to have physical space for the physical card, you don’t need the contacts inside to receive it, you don’t need the ejector mechanism, which means Apple can use that interior space for something else.

With the 2019 iPhones, excluding the dual-SIM model for China, it’s possible to set up a mobile phone data provider directly from an app, such as the one provided by GigSky.

How it works

When Apple announced eSIM functionality, they mentioned using a QR code to set it up. In GigSky’s case, you download the GigSky app and are guided through choosing a plan.

GigSky has data plans starting from 300MB (1 day, $10), and rising through 500MB, 1GB, 2GB (15 days, $15, $20, $30 respectively), and up to 5GB (30 days, $50.) After selecting the plan, the destination needs to be chosen from the long list of countries. For this review, Las Vegas was selected as the location.

Las Vegas is a difficult city for mobile data. The tall buildings of the strip negatively affect signal, and the increased number of people for conventions place huge demands on the cell towers, especially when tech conferences are in town.

In years’ past, we’ve used Verizon reasonably well, AT&T with poor results, and T-Mobile with mixed results, seemingly depending on how high up a building we were.

It’s not clear which providers GigSky uses in the US, or which providers they use in any of the 190 countries. We asked for this information, but had not received answers at time of publication. This was important to us, because if our regular carrier was Verizon, and they’re using Verizon’s towers, then it provides limited benefit to add as a secondary data provider.

After selecting a data plan, you give the eSIM a nickname, or can delete it if you need to, because perhaps you selected the incorrect plan or wrong country.

Payment for the plan was easy, but the steps that followed were a little more complicated, because you have to leave the GigSky app and be prompted to add the cellular plan within some screens that the iPhone displays. GigSky offers some screen images to help guide you through the process.

You add the plan to your phone, and have to give it a label, as well as changing any further settings, such as selecting it as a data-only plan.

After doing this, reviewing the plan will show that the credits are active, and the signal strength bar will have a second line of bars below it indicating an additional plan is in use.

Using Control Center shows both signal bars with the names of the services, and indicators for whether they’re primary or secondary. In Settings > Cellular, it’s easy to change which service is primary or secondary, and it’s possible to set one service as primary for voice, and the other as primary for data.

When the screen is locked, you also get the carrier labels, although the labels are on the left side of the screen with the signal strength bars on the right side of the screen.

Speedtest.net’s app shows the GigSky eSIM tested at 74.21 Mbps, with AT&T detected as the nearest site to speed test through. The app also thought the provider was Zayo. As Zayo has 12.3 million miles of fiber according to their Web site, it’s possible that GigSky eventually routed back to Zayo’s backbone.

Testing Verizon Wireless against GigSky was revealing: download speeds were 10.4 Mbps. Even testing GigSky with different destinations offered better results than Verizon’s 10.4 Mbps. The worst GigSky result scored on the iPhone XS Max used for testing was 40.2 Mbps.

It’s important to note that this may not be similar to your experience if you don’t live or travel in Las Vegas or the Mid-Atlantic region of the US, but we are encouraged that GigSky partnered with competent carriers.

What we thought of it

Set up was easy, as at no time did we feel confused or lost, although we did take a minute to read all the steps, where normally we might have just tapped through. Even where setup is mildly complex (the handoff between GigSky and Apple), they do attempt to make it easy by providing the necessary information before hand.

Speeds are fast, at least in the areas we tested: Eastern USA and Las Vegas. We never felt like we were without signal in either region.

GigSky is probably the easiest method for having local data service, especially over the old ways of finding a cell phone store, buying a pay-go SIM, and having to figure out how to top up.

The use of the eSIM in general makes this easy, and doing it through an app is even easier. The downside we predict with international travel would be the fact that you need to have some sort of data connection to buy GigSky data in the first place, in which case users abroad have to find someplace with Wi-Fi long enough to set it all up.

The notion of buying 5GB for $50 is fine, but the notion of that being time-limited is lousy, and a real shame. If you buy 5GB for $50 and the unused portion expires, it’s fair to feel a little cheated. We understand this is how data is priced among carriers, but it’s a disappointment that there isn’t a carrier willing to change this.

Score: 4 out of 5

The GigSky app is available on the iOS App Store.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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Senior Analyst Matthew Bailey shares insights from Ovum’s latest Game Console Device Forecast – analyzing key trends shaping the future of the home game console market, and assessing the opportunities on offer for telcos, hardware manufacturers, OTT platform owners, game developers, and publishers as the next generation of video gaming emerges and evolves.

Game consoles, and their manufacturers, are on the precipice of significant change

The emergence of new connected devices such as media streamers and smart TVs, the (re)emergence of device-agnostic cloud gaming platforms and technology such as Google’s Stadia, and the growth of mobile gaming are threatening their relevance to gamers, software developers, and publishers as well as the broader media and entertainment market.

The game console market is currently at a crossroads: Sony’s and Microsoft’s eighth-generation consoles are coming to the end of their lifecycle, with replacements expected in 2020. Meanwhile, Nintendo is seeing success with its Switch console, which straddles the line between home and handheld consoles, meaning that it competes with both home consoles and smartphones.

Competition between the three incumbents is also set against the looming threat (or opportunity) of cloud gaming, which will eventually eliminate the need for dedicated consoles and usher in new competition from global tech giants such as Google and Amazon, in addition to other smaller vendors. However, Ovum believes that this will not be the case over the next five years, when console sales and installed bases will remain strong despite declining penetration in some mature markets.

Source: Ovum Game Console Device Forecast Report: 2019-24

Cloud gaming will be the next battleground for manufacturers, tech giants and OTT players as console penetration falls

2013 marked the launch of the current eighth generation of video game consoles, with the release of Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4. The latter emerged as the clear leader in terms of sales, nearing the 100 million mark this year. The Nintendo Switch, released in March 2017, further boosted consumer interest in console gaming. According to Ovum’s latest game console forecast, there were 260 million consoles in people’s homes globally at end-2018. Growth, however, is set to slow down substantially – reaching only 300 million in 2024. The longer-term prospect is less than promising: Ovum predicts that global console hardware unit sales will effectively halve between 2018 and 2030.

Source: Ovum Game Console Device Forecast Report: 2019–24

Faced with a gloomy long-term outlook for consoles, Microsoft, Sony, and – to a lesser extent – Nintendo are making bold moves in cloud gaming. They aim not only to mitigate the looming threat and maintain their market dominance in the traditional gaming segment, but to reach a much wider audience. Sony has offered game streaming as part of its PlayStation Now service since 2014; Microsoft’s own xCloud service is expected to launch this October; and Nintendo has dipped its toes in cloud gaming by offering Resident Evil 7: Cloud Version on Switch in Japan in late 2018. However, cloud gaming launches by OTT giants with strong cloud computing infrastructure, such as Google and Amazon, will create new competition.

What should console makers and game developers do next?

Console manufacturers must prepare for a cloud-first, post-console market. This will be easier for Microsoft, with its significant cloud technology and infrastructure. While Sony already runs its own cloud gaming service, it will, along with Nintendo, struggle much more against OTT giants in this area. Manufacturers’ biggest strengths are their gaming brands: partnering with other prominent cloud-technology vendors (including Microsoft, as Sony has already done), network operators, and even other smart TV, smartphone, and tablet manufacturers would provide the scale, technology, and brand equity to compete.

Games, meanwhile, should be designed with cloud gaming in mind. Games that rely on “twitch” reflexes, such as competitive online multiplayer first-person shooters, will be more impacted by latency brought in by game streaming, making slower-paced, single-player experiences a better option at this stage. Meanwhile, game progression systems and save states must be designed to withstand server disconnections to avoid frustrating game experiences.

Publishers and developers should also embrace new partnership opportunities. Rethinking how games are sold is going to be essential – cloud gaming’s business model remains a big point of contention/pain point. Cloud gaming also means that tech giants and prominent telcos will become viable partners over the coming years, in addition to the three main console platforms. However, publishers need to account for the economics of the all-you-can-eat nature of any new subscription platforms that emerge.

Ovum is a market-leading data, research, and consulting business focused on helping digital service providers, technology companies, and enterprise decision-makers thrive in the connected digital economy.

Through our 150 analysts worldwide, we offer expert analysis and strategic insight across the IT, telecoms, and media industries.

Ovum is part of Informa Tech, a B2B Information Services business serving the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications sector. The Informa group is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

https://ovum.informa.com/contact/contact-us

“I’d be careful about the notion that streaming will automatically bring the entire business to a subscription model.”

– David Haddad discusses recent shifts toward subscription in video games, and how those differ from other industries.

Both cloud-based gaming services and subscription services are rising to the forefront of the game industry all at once, but Warner. Bros Interactive Entertainment president David Haddad isn’t sold on the idea that streaming will make subscription models a necessity.

Speaking to VentureBeat, Haddad explained that streaming services have brought about major shifts toward subscription services in other industries, but that he doesn’t necessarily believe the same thing will be true for video games.

“I just think there’s a lot of differences compared to other forms of media,” Haddad tells VentureBeat.

One of those key differences, and why he says traditional game sales won’t be stomped out by subscriptions, is the differences in how individuals play, and how many games they typically burn through a year.

“I do think that we’ve proven that a transactional business, as we call it, where you pay a premium price for an experience, where gamers can have 30, 40, 100 hours of play–they’ll pay a premium price for that. That’s great for us. We have a history of that transactional business,” says Haddad. “There are gamers that want to consume way more than two or three games a year, which is sort of an average right now. There may be people that like the consumption pattern of having a subscription so that they can try more games and play more games.”

“But the behavior today is actually fairly concentrated on players spending most of their time in a handful of games that they carefully pick and that are able to secure a premium price in the market. I think it’ll be a mixture of both.”

Streaming and subscription services are just one part of the larger interview VentureBeat had with Haddad at E3. The rest of that conversation, including talks about the annual show itself and the company’s recent venture into AR, can be found here.

In celebration of the Summer Sideshow Update, play Killing Floor 2 for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. You can also pickup Killing Floor 2 at 67% off the regular price!*

If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play Killing Floor 2. If you don’t have Steam, you can download it here.

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

Remember the unbelievable sale last week for NBA 2K19 on the North American eShop and multiple other digital platforms? The game received a limited-time 95 percent discount, taking it from the regular price of $59.99 all the way down to just $2.99. Even people who don’t play sports games on a regular basis found this deal hard to pass up.

Unfortunately, though, some of these new players got quite the shock when they were seemingly forced to watch “unskippable ads” in their paid game before each session. Sure enough, It led to immediate outrage and a lot of confusion online. Although these 2K TV advertisements are being reported elsewhere as a new addition to the game, this is apparently not the case.

According to veteran ballers, these in-game video ads are nothing new and can be disabled in the game’s settings menu. Reddit user Totalnoob18 cleared things up over on the Xbox One subreddit:

“You can turn off 2k tv in the setting. Wont gonna get the ads, nor that [removed] tv before games.”

A Reddit user on the PC Gaming subreddit known as iHicham added to this:

“yeah those ads aren’t new at all”

Eventually, this information spread to multiple subreddits – including the Nintendo Switch one. While it’s still a questionable practice for developers and publishers to insert video advertisements within paid games, it’s now at least clear new players can disable the 2K TV in the settings menu.

Did you pick up NBA 2K19 during the recent sale? Are you holding out for NBA 2K20? Share your thoughts below.