Blowfish Studios is bringing an amusingly initialled game to Switch on 27th June in the form of War Tech Fighters, a science fiction mech game set in the depths of the cosmos.

Coming from developer Drakkar Dev, you control Captain Nathan Romanis as he and his company of rogues move across the galaxy following an assault from the oppressive Zatros Empire. Apparently this regime of ne’er-do-wells attacked your home colonies, so you’ll be serving up tasty portions of ice cold revenge thanks to your giant War Techs robots.

These huge machines come equipped with bullets, lasers and magnetic weapons which provide long range options, in addition to hulking great swords when you’ve got baddies right up in your metal face. As you can see from the trailer, it appears that the mechs are fully customisable with an assortment of colours and weaponry, as detailed in the official blurb:

War Techs are highly-customizable machines that span three distinct core body classes and sport more than 180 upgradeable systems and parts. Use the fast and light Hawk class to fly circles around enemies, get in the enemy’s face with the slow and heavy Rhino-class mecha, or opt for a more balanced approach with flexible Lynx-class War Techs.

The game launched originally on PC and the console versions gain an exclusive Archangel War Tech available from the start of the game. Despite middling reviews on PC, this might still be worth keeping an eye on if you’re into huge sword-wielding robots fighting in outer space… and who isn’t interested in that?! It’ll cost $19.99 / €17.99 / £15.99 when it launches at the end of June

Have you played partaken of War Tech Fighter’s sci-fi mech action on PC? How was it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

As a large enterprise with global reach, Microsoft has the same security risks as its customers. We have a distributed, mobile workforce who access corporate resources from external networks. Many individuals struggle to remember complex passwords or reuse one password across many accounts, which makes them vulnerable to attackers. As Microsoft has embraced digital transformation for our own business, we shifted to a security strategy that places strong employee identities at the center. Many of our customers are on a similar journey and may find value in our current identity management approach.

Our goal is to reduce the risk of compromised identity and empower people to be efficient and agile whether they’re on our network or not.

Our identity management solutions focus on three key areas:

Read on for more details for each of these investment areas, advice on scaling your investment to meet your budget, and a wrap-up of some key insights that can help you smoothly implement new policies.

Securing administrator accounts

Our administrators have access to Microsoft’s most sensitive data and systems, which makes them a target of attackers. To improve protection of our organization, it’s important to limit the number of people who have privileged access and implement elevated controls for when, how, and where administrator accounts can be used. This helps reduce the odds that a malicious actor will gain access.

There are three practices that we advise:

• Secure devices—Establish a separate device for administrative tasks that is updated and patched with the most recent software and operating system. Set the security controls at high levels and prevent administrative tasks from being executed remotely.
• Isolated identity—Issue an administrator identity from a separate namespace or forest that cannot access the internet and is different from the user’s information worker identity. Our administrators are required to use a smartcard to access this account.
• Non-persistent access—Provide zero rights by default to administration accounts. Require that they request just-in-time (JIT) privileges that gives them access for a finite amount of time and logs it in a system.

Budget allocations may limit the amount that you can invest in these three areas; however, we still recommend that you do all three at the level that makes sense for your organization. Calibrate the level of security controls on the secure device to meet your risk profile.

Eliminating passwords

The security community has recognized for several years that passwords are not safe. Users struggle to create and remember dozens of complex passwords, and attackers excel at acquiring passwords through methods like password spray attacks and phishing. When Microsoft first explored the use of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for our workforce, we issued smartcards to each employee. This was a very secure authentication method; however, it was cumbersome for employees. They found workarounds, such as forwarding work email to a personal account, that made us less safe.

Eventually we realized that eliminating passwords was a much better solution. This drove home an important lesson: as you institute policies to improve security, always remember that a great user experience is critical for adoption.

Here are steps you can take to prepare for a password-less world:

• Enforce MFA—Conform to the fast identity online (FIDO) 2.0 standard, so you can require a PIN and a biometric for authentication rather than a password. Windows Hello is one good example, but choose the MFA method that works for your organization.
• Reduce legacy authentication workflows—Place apps that require passwords into a separate user access portal and migrate users to modern authentication flows most of the time. At Microsoft only 10 percent of our users enter a password on a given day.
• Remove passwords—Create consistency across Active Directory and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to enable administrators to remove passwords from identity directory.

Simplifying identity provisioning

We believe the most underrated identity management step you can take is to simplify identity provisioning. Set up your identities with access to exactly the right systems and tools. If you provide too much access, you put the organization at risk if the identity becomes compromised. However, under-provisioning may encourage people to request access for more than they need in order to avoid requesting permission again.

We take these two approaches:

• Set up role-based access—Identify the systems, tools, and resources that each role needs to do their job. Establish access rules that make it easy to give a new user the right permissions when you set up their account or they change roles.
• Establish an identity governance process—Make sure that as people move roles they don’t carry forward access they no longer need.

Establishing the right access for each role is so important that if you are only able to follow one of our recommendations focus on identity provisioning and lifecycle management.

What we learned

As you take steps to improve your identity management, keep in mind the following lessons Microsoft has learned along the way:

• Enterprise-level cultural shifts—Getting the technology and hardware resources for a more secure enterprise can be difficult. Getting people to modify their behavior is even harder. To successfully roll out a new initiative, plan for enterprise-level cultural shifts.
• Beyond the device—Strong identity management works hand-in-hand with healthy devices.
• Security starts at provisioning—Don’t put governance off until later. Identity governance is crucial to ensure that companies of all sizes can audit the access privileges of all accounts. Invest early in capabilities that give the right people access to the right things at the right time.
• User experience—We found that if you combine user experience factors with security best practices, you get the best outcome.

Learn more

For more details on how identity management fits within the overall Microsoft security framework and our roadmap forward, watch the Speaking of security: Identity management webinar.

Strategic, tabletop RPG For The King is just days away from release on Nintendo Switch. Available to pre-order right now, it’ll launch this Thursday 9th May.

The game blends tabletop and roguelike elements in a “challenging adventure that spans the realms”. Aiming to be highly replayable, it’ll have you venturing forth into the lands of Fahrul and discovering that every playthrough is unique with procedural maps, quests, and events.

For The King’s most replayable aspect is said to come in the form of Lore, which is generated through battles, story content, quests and more. Essentially, it’s a currency which is carried through each of your playthroughs, allowing you to purchase new characters, customisation options, locations, encounters and items.

Here’s a feature list for you to check out:

Features:

– Procedurally Generated Maps – Explore a procedurally generated world, from maps to quests to events, where every adventure is made unique.
– Singleplayer and Multiplayer Game Modes – Explore the lands of Fahrul alone, or with friends in local co-op or online multiplayer. Stick together for protection, or split the party to cover more ground.
– Turn-based Combat System – Fight and die as a party in fast paced and brutal turn-based combat using a unique slot system for attacks and special abilities.
– Includes all free updates – Following the success of For The King on PC, the console version of the game will include all the existing expansion packs for the game – including the Dungeon Crawl, Frozen Expanse Hilderbrandt’s Cellar, Gold Rush and Into The Deep adventures.

The game will launch on Switch for £19.99 / €24.99 / $24.99, although a 20% discount will be available for two weeks after release.

Will you be picking this one up later this week? Let us know below.

PQube and Aquire have announced that maze-based arcade game SCRAP RUSH!! will launch on Nintendo Switch in the west this summer.

The game puts you and your friends into an arena full of metal blocks (we imagine we’re not the only ones feeling a heavy Bomberman vibe after watching that trailer). Instead of bombs, though, you collect scrap, which gets turned into blocks and launched at opponents.

You’ll need to crush your opponents against the wall, all while dodging attacks from other players who are trying to do the same to you. The game was trending on the Japanese eShop last month, so it would seem that players have been enjoying this “hilarious” last-robot-standing affair.

We have some screenshots for you to check out below.

We’ll make sure to keep an eye out for a release date for this one in the coming weeks, but until then, why not let us know your early thoughts in the comments below?

Apple has developed and launched a game on the iOS App Store, something MacRumors says the company hasn’t done since 2008.

The game in question is Warren Buffett’s Paper Wizard, a free game named for one of the company’s notable investors that tasks players with flinging newspapers from Buffett’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska to the Apple HQ in Cupertino, California.

The concept plays into a short clip played during Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent visit to Omaha where he and Buffett brainstorm an app to develop, and Warren Buffett’s Paper Wizard is the result.

While the App Store lists Wildlife Design Inc. as its seller, MacRumors points out that the app’s terms say that it is copyrighted, maintained, and operated by Apple. A spokesperson speaking to Business Insider also confirmed that the game was co-developed by Apple. That qualifies Warren Buffett’s Paper Wizard the first release Apple has helmed since the 2008 release of Texas Hold’em.

The original Plants vs. Zombies, a charming tower defense game that spawned a prolific and still-running series, has turned 10 years old. To commemorate the release, the game’s creator George Fan has shared some of his early design doodles.

His notes offer a quick but interesting look at what ended up becoming an iconic game of its generation. Fan shared those design sketches in a thread on Twitter, running through how different character types and small mechanics appeared and evolved in the early days of planning for the game.

For instance, he says at one point a prototype of Plants vs. Zombies was a Magic: The Gathering-inspired deck building game. Another early idea of the game had plants fighting off aliens, specifically those from another PopCap-published game called Insaniquarium, but that idea was scrapped once Fan says he sketched the perfect zombie.

A peek at the rest of his notes can be found in the full twitter thread and, for another look at Fan’s process for creating Plants vs. Zombies (specifically the delicate business of teaching game mechanics to players), take a look at his talk from GDC 2012.

Happy 10th Birthday, Plants vs. Zombies! I had no idea when scribbling this on paper over 10 years ago just how much it’d change my life! pic.twitter.com/MyZMx9m7Zh

— George Fan (@thegeorgefan) May 5, 2019

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Alpha Skip Ahead Ring will begin receiving the latest 1910 Xbox One system update (19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_19H2HOLD_1910\18362.7073.190424-1920).  This build has the same features and fixes as 1905 however we need valuable core recovery coverage and feedback as we skip ahead.

DETAILS:

• OS version released: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_19H2HOLD_1910\18362.7073.190424-1920
• Available: 2:00PM PST 4/27/19
• Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PST 4/28/19

New Features:

The 1905 features are highlighted here in a new blog post  https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/04/25/improvements-to-xbox-game-pass-friends-list-and-messaging-coming-to-xbox-insiders/

Fixes:

My Games and Apps

• Fixes to address Multiple Games/Apps failing to launch with the too long to start error on latest update.

Settings – Hard Drive Transfer

• We have fixed the Moving/copying content from one drive to another.

System

• Fixed a sign in crashing bug.
• Localization fixes.
• UI and string changes to the Xbox Assist App.
• UI fixes to address flickering when starting the Xbox Accessories app.

Known Issues:

Audio

• Headsets are not being assigned to the users profiles.
• Some users are experiencing no audio with headsets and we are investigating
• Some users are encountering no audio on their Xbox console after boot (no shell audio, no game audio, no app audio), then have CSS ask them to perform the following steps:

1. Cold reboot the console

OR

2. Go to Audio settings on console
3. Change their HDMI audio settings to the highest supported uncompressed channel count for their equipment
4. Switch back to the desired format
5. Audio should be restored

My Games and Apps

• We are tracking the video corruption issue with Youtube and Netflix 4k playback.

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.

Descenders is Now Available on Steam and is 25% off!*

Descenders is extreme downhill freeriding for the modern era, with procedurally generated worlds, and where mistakes have real consequences. Will you lead your team to glory and become the next legendary Descender?

*Offer ends May 14 at 10AM Pacific Time