Electronic Arts had been banking on BioWare’s Anthem and Respawn’s Apex Legends to lead its Q4 but, while Apex Legends performed well, Anthem didn’t meet EA’s sales expectations.

In a conference call covering its latest earnings report, EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen noted that the game hasn’t lived up to its sales goals, but didn’t share any specifics on how many copies Anthem sold beyond that comment.

However, a previous goal shared by EA last quarter (and picked up by GameSpot) had the company estimating that Anthem would move between 5 and 6 million copies before March 31, 2019.

While Anthem didn’t set any sales records for EA, Jorgensen did say that the game saw the largest percentage of digital purchases for any of the company’s games to date and that it (along with the free-to-play Apex Legends) helped the company’s full-year digital net bookings increase by 14 percent year-over-year to $1.19 billion.

Despite that underperformance, EA leadership said that the company continues “to invest heavily in Anthem, with developers working on game quality, content, systems and game mechanics. It’s great original IP and we’ve doubled down on the product.”

During a call with investors (transcribed by SeekingAlpha), EA COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen shared that the company is currently in talks to bring Apex Legends to China and mobile platforms.

The Chinese government is infamously strict about what games it will approve for monetization and release in the country, and those regulations have only strengthened this last year. But, for the games that can get approved China can be a valuable market given the fact that the country represents a $30 billion video game industry and over 600 million players.

“We are in advanced negotiations to bring Apex Legends to China and to mobile,” said Jorgensen, “And we will update you on timeframes when those negotiations are concluded.”

Beyond that, details are unclear. Fellow battle royale games PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite followed similar paths after first releasing on PC and consoles, though Tencent just this week had to pull support for the PUBG mobile game in China due to licensing complications.

Even without a mobile version of the game or a release in China, EA says that Apex Legends is “easily the fastest-growing franchise we’ve ever had.” The company’s current forecasts see Apex Legends bringing in net bookings in the range of $300 million to $400 million in the 2020 fiscal year, and that’s before even considering income from a mobile or Chinese release of the game.

This week at Bungie, TR3-VR was waiting for you.

What was once [Redacted] is now live. Some of our favorite moments in the studio happen when players uncover the secrets in Destiny, whether it’s a new dungeon in the Dreaming City or something much more sinister, hiding within eyeshot of the Traveler. With the release of Zero Hour, we got to enjoy that all over again, right alongside many of you. The team who brought this experience to life has a short message for you:

Dev Team: Experiences like these are a salute to our inquisitive, skilled, and close-knit Destiny player community. We couldn’t make these without the right audience to discover and enjoy them. Thanks for being awesome, and don’t forget TR3-VR is waiting for you down there.

It’s time for your weekly dose of Bungie Blog content. We’ve got some information on the upcoming season and your final chance to take on the Iron Burden. Let’s dive in.

Season of Opulence: Getting Raid Ready

Starting June 4, 2019, Season of Opulence kicks off for all players of Destiny 2. Many of you are familiar with how raids can launch with new content—usually on a Friday at reset. This season, we’re doing something a little different. Owners of the Annual Pass will be challenged to conquer a new raid on day one. Here’s some context on this new plan and changes to the upcoming Power climb:

Dev Team: The world’s first race for a raid is a competitive event. The raid is a challenge geared toward testing a fireteam’s ability to learn and execute on the mechanics, as well as their ability to overcome enemies and bosses together. Having a short window of time between release and launch allows us to preserve the combat challenge for players making their attempt on day one and get people playing the raid content right away.

Crown of Sorrow

June 4, 2019: 4 PM PDT

Recommended Power for first encounter: 715

If you’re the type to take a day off work to celebrate the start of a new Season, get that request in now! We’re officially four weeks away from Season of Opulence. We’ll have more information on what’s changing in the Destiny 2 experience in June, so keep your eyes set on the blog for updates.

Stoke the Fire

The final Iron Banner of Season of the Drifter takes place next week. Lord Saladin returns to the Tower, which is now clean of Revelry decorations, and invites you to participate in Power-enabled combat.

Iron Banner and Increased Valor

Start: 10 AM PDT on May 14

End: 10 AM PDT on May 21

Destiny 2 Update 2.2.2, released earlier this week, fixed an issue where the Iron Ruby shader was not being rewarded when dismantling Iron Banner rewards. If you’ve been looking to acquire this shader, you can either dismantle a reward that’s already in your inventory or dismantle an Iron Banner reward next week. Lord Saladin will also feature the following weapons for direct purchase when completing their associated weekly bounties:

NOTE: This will be your final chance to participate in the Iron Burden experiment of Season 6. If you’re currently on the path to earn 2,500 burdened kills and the “Heavy as Death” emblem, you have seven days to complete the “Now You’re Just Showing Off” Triumph.

Additionally, this will be your final opportunity to unlock Season 6 Triumphs or armor sets related to Iron Banner. Get out there and make Saladin proud.

Player Support, Reporting In!

This week brought a list of issue resolutions to Destiny 2, and a few issues have been discovered since the deployment of Destiny Update 2.2.2. Player Support is at the ready to give you the information you need for success.

Destiny 2 Update 2.2.2

On Tuesday, we rolled out Destiny 2 Update 2.2.2. This update included a sandbox tuning pass and resolved the following issues:

This May Never Happen Again

We always love to see players leveraging nuances of the sandbox to claim victory. With a mix of Reveler’s Tonic, armor swapping, Arc Strider tomfoolery, and a cheeky teleport, a lone Guardian found success when challenging an ahamkara to battle.

Movie of the Week: Solo Riven

Honorable Mention: Gambit Shark

If you’d like a chance at the Lens of Fate emblem, be sure to submit your footage to the Community Creations portal on bungie.net.

Every time new content enters the game, an email is sent studio-wide reminding the team that the mysteries of Destiny are hand-crafted for you, the player, to uncover. We watch. We wait. We count the minutes until the first player notices something unique in a corner that has never been seen before. We monitor the conversation as players make progress toward their unknown prize. Then, we celebrate.

Now, it’s our turn to play. See you starside.

Cheers,

Dmg04

UK publisher Bitmap Books has announced that it is producing an officially-licenced history of SNK’s beloved Metal Slug franchise, and has been given “unprecedented access” to the company’s archives in order to compile the publication.

Metal Slug: The Ultimate History is the first officially-licenced book of its kind, and covers the history of the series from its inception in 1996 all the way up to the present day. It will showcase original art, concept material, screenshots and 11 “exclusive and incredibly detailed interviews” with key members of the development team, including Kazuma Kujo and Toshikazu Tanaka.

Bitmap Books, as you may recall, has previously published the excellent NEOGEO: A Visual History, another book that was given SNK’s official blessing. It is also the company behind Super Famicom: Box Art Collection and the long-running Visual Compendium range, which has covered the NES and SNES so far, with a Master System edition shipping this year.

Metal Slug: The Ultimate History will be available to pre-order in July, and is expected to ship in September.

The summer of 2009 was a nightmare for my family. Our 3-month-old son Sergio was ill, and doctors could not diagnose his condition. Our family went on a long journey to find an answer. Two years after his symptoms began, in 2011, we learned that he had Dravet Syndrome.

Neurologists were working to find a diagnosis and Sergio was being treated while they searched. At nine months of age, he was given a drug that was contraindicated for what ultimately was his condition. Soon after receiving it, he started to have dozens of seizures per day.  We stop counting the seizures, and wondered why, in the age of computers, neurologists don’t use computers and data to improve the diagnosis process.

This event changed my life. I founded the Dravet Syndrome Foundation in Spain in 2011 after learning of Sergio’s condition, and later, Foundation 29. I spent seven years trying to find a cure. Unfortunately, finding a cure for a rare disease is very challenging. Instead, using resources available to me as a Microsoft employee, and with foundation volunteers, created a diagnostic program for children with Dravet Syndrome, called Dx29. To date, it has provided diagnoses for more than 700 patients worldwide. It is now available for clinicians to use free of charge.

The Long Wait for a Rare Disease Diagnosis

Patients live an average of 4.8 years for a rare disease diagnosis. In the meantime, they contend with the risk of medical errors and severe side effects.  Patients visit an average of 7.3 specialists, with 40% of patients reporting that a delayed diagnosis had a significant or very marked impact on their condition. It is estimated that 6-8% of the world is affected by a rare disease, meaning that improvements in diagnosis procedures could impact 460-620 million people.

The Need for Clinical Data Integration

The conventional diagnosis process is not designed for the complex biology behind rare diseases. It usually starts with a clinical consultation. A physician requests a genomic test, sending along the biological samples and the symptoms (phenotypes) already identified. The sequencing is performed and bioinformaticians (often manually) analyze the large amount of data produced. To carry out this complex analysis, they use the symptoms identified by the physician to guide their search.

The physician’s and bioinformation’s data are not integrated, so these professionals are disconnected. Those conducting the gene filtering have partial phenotypic information but are unable to collect more data because only physicians have full access to patients and their records. The genetic report the physician receives would likely be different if more patient information was available during gene filtering. Clinical decisions made based on the genetic data could be different with more data. How can bioinformaticians check if a given gene variant in the patient is producing a concrete phenotype? How is the patient information put in the hands of bioinformaticians? There is an information gap issue.

Satya Nadella Empowers Employees to Help

At the 2017 Microsoft employee hackathon in Spain, one of my best friends, and Microsoft colleague, Sacha Arozarena, suggested we create a bot to diagnose patients with rare diseases. After just three days of intensive work, our prototype was able to suggest symptoms and navigate the user to a potential diagnosis. It was still a proof of concept, but we won the Spanish hackathon. The most important achievement of this work was the connections the prototype created for us.

That same month, I heard Satya Nadella discuss his son’s medical condition while he presented at Microsoft Ready, so I sent him an email asking for help. He replied within five minutes, connecting me with Microsoft’s Research team. Through this connection, I learned about Microsoft’s efforts in several areas:  a new Genomics team, a team working on medical natural language processing, and the company’s investments and efforts towards bringing artificial intelligence to health science.

Using the Cloud and AI to Speed Diagnosis

One year ago, colleagues and I founded Foundation 29, a non-profit organization with the mission to improve the lives of patients with rare diseases through faster, better diagnosis. The foundation is developing solutions to facilitate diagnosis, with the intention of distributing them to every physician in the world. Dx29 is the name of this effort. The goal is to reimagine and democratize diagnosis.

The tool we developed uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to close the information gap. The gene filtering of most routine low-level cases can be automated with AI, allowing bioinformaticians and specialists to focus on the most challenging cases where human intervention is required. Physicians can drive automatic genetic analysis simply by identifying symptoms in the tool. The physician’s role comes back to the center of the process, focusing on the patient and doing symptom identification and differential diagnosis.

Dx29 does not make a diagnosis, but enhances the physicians’ skills. It gives physicians a tool that augments their capabilities by hiding the complexity of genomics and allowing them to focus on clinical diagnosis, something they are already experts on.

The process starts by performing automatic symptom identification and codification from medical records. It then allows physicians to navigate the complexity of gene identification by simply selecting identified symptoms in the tool.  In the final step, once enough symptoms have been matched with the genetic information, Dx29 presents a ranked list of potential conditions for the physician to further evaluate and decide how to proceed. The foundation did the first medical tests last December with promising results. Our goal is to make the tool available to the medical community this spring and find a business model to secure the continuity of the project.

Thanks to Microsoft and Global Organizations

Dx29 is possible because of help from Microsoft and its employees. It is impossible to list all Microsoft employees who joined forces to collaborate on this initiative. Foundation 29 and in particular, Dx29 are honored by the privilege of working with Microsoft software engineers, product groups, and consultants. Architects from Microsoft Services, data engineers, data scientists and the legal department provided us with advice on privacy and data protection.

I am proud to work for a company that empowers employees to achieve more. A lack of diagnosis is not only a stressful situation for patients and families, but also for healthcare professionals. Without a diagnosis, an appropriate treatment is not possible. With all the help received so far, Foundation 29 aims to empower physicians with the right tool to provide an accurate diagnosis.

I would like to thank the following organizations for their contributions to the development of the Dx29 tool and its pilot:

• Centro de Investigación Biomédica en red de Enfermedades Raras (CIBERER), Madrid, Spain
• Hospital La Paz de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
• NIMGenetics, Madrid, Spain,
• Idibell, Barcelona, Spain
• The Global Commission on Rare Diseases

Rare disease patients are exceptions in clinical routines, but they drive the medical community towards precision medicine. Precision medicine should not be limited to exceptional cases, but spread to all patients, improving the standard of care for all.

Time is ticking. I know I won’t be able to find a cure for Sergio and he will have to live with Dravet Syndrome all his life. But having the possibility of creating a tool to speed up and improve diagnosis process for other children is a strong motivation for me, my family and the community around us. Helping others is sometimes the only way to heal your own wounds.

Learn more about Dx29, the Global Commission and how AI can support diagnosis and read more from the Microsoft In Health Blog on the Global Commission.

A colony ship crash-lands on a hostile planet, leaving the crew struggling against the odds to survive. With the passing of time, the chance of rescue diminishes so the colonists disperse and establish their own factions. Generations of survivors have eked out a living, but there is a limit to the barren planet’s resources and tensions between the competing factions are high.

Nomads of the Fallen Star is a sci-fi adventure in which you take on the role of the leader of a motley bunch of scavengers on a quest for fame and fortune. Initially, there are only two members in your team, a grizzled veteran who goes by the name of Varon and a young woman called Iona, who has a talent for chemistry. This unlikely duo must traverse the land, trading between the numerous settlements and completing missions whilst unravelling the background story as they go. As their reputation grows, they will be able to purchase better equipment and recruit new members.

From the onset, it is obvious that Nomads is a port of a PC game. Indeed, it has the look and feel of a PC game from the previous millennium. The font is tiny, the icons minuscule and the character portraits blurry and non-distinct. However, let us not be too harsh, this is the work of a solo developer and the PC version has attained plenty of positive feedback. Unfortunately, even if you are prepared to overlook the rather off-putting presentation, Nomads of the Fallen Star’s ropeyuser-interface isn’t so easy to excuse.

You will spend a lot of time watching the various factions, militia and caravans trundling slowly across the landscape. On one level, it is easy to admire the machinations that are whirling away in the background creating the sense of a real living world. However, when you just want to get from A to B it quickly becomes immensely frustrating. You have to scroll the map using a little virtual joystick that is nestled at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Release the joystick and the screen flips back to centre on your party. It is a system that feels both clunky and irritating. When you are used to navigating maps by tapping and dragging, it feels positively archaic. Furthermore, you have to constantly switch between input modes to either confirm orders or find out additional information. There are other problems too, such as an exit button that doesn’t appear to do anything and an abort mission button that is all too easy to accidentally press. Overall, it feels like an interface that has been shoehorned into a touchscreen device instead of being designed from the ground up.

Combat is a little macabre as you manoeuvre your units, represented by disembodied heads, around a rudimentary grid. You can then use your action points to initiate numerous attacks. The tiny icons aren’t really distinct enough so the first few battles are even more confusing than they need to be. It is especially tough at the start of the game when you only have two team members and limited equipment. Because the game is so open-ended you can find yourself involved in some hopelessly one-sided battles, and with no option to quit you are forced to see things through to the bitter end. You can pep up your team by taking some performance-enhancing drugs, but the lack of terrain features means that the best tactic is usually to wait around on the left of the screen until the reckless enemies charge into range.

If you are a true sadist then you can play with the permadeath option turned on. However, this game is so tough that any sane souls will probably select the option where death only returns your adventurers to the last settlement that they visited. When you start playing it seems like everything is stacked against you; shortages of food and water, strict mission deadlines and overpowering opponents all serve to frustrate. To be fair the game does give advice, but you have to really pay attention and read everything carefully otherwise you may miss some crucial hints. The vast amount of information that is thrown at the player can feel overwhelming and you soon realise the need to narrow your focus to a few specific goals. Unfortunately, there isn’t an option to make additional saved game files. This seems odd given the open-ended nature of the game, which encourages exploration and experimentation.

This all sounds very negative, but in spite of these concerns Nomads of the Fallen Star still has some really neat ideas. The combination of trading and squad-based combat works well and the music is wonderful, flowing from the beautifully eerie to the pulse-poundingly rousing. In some ways, Nomads is a tremendous achievement, not since Genesis has such a massive living world been created by a single pair of hands, although I’m betting that it took considerably longer than seven days to complete. The butterfly effect has been incorporated into the game with much thought and skill. For instance, a caravan carrying ale is ambushed on route to a local mine.

The miners go on strike, causing supplies of ore to dwindle. In the meantime, metal prices soar and supplies of weapons and armour are hit. The local militia grow ill-equipped and unhappy.  Law and order begins to fall apart and raiders take the opportunity to fill their pockets with ill-gotten gains. To make matters worse disillusioned militiamen desert and join raiding groups. Yet, the number of caravans risking journeys has fallen, forcing the raiders to attack the outposts themselves. All because a few miners had dry throats and you didn’t get the crucial supplies through in time.

It is a shame that the dodgy interface and unforgiving introduction are likely to deter all but the most resolute of gamers.  Nomads of the Fallen Star tells an interesting story set in a dynamic open-world of warring factions and economic hardships. There is so much to discover, like crafting, trading, scavenging, developing your faction and characters. After the initial hurdles, the game opens up and you can begin to appreciate the ambitious scope.

If you find the concept intriguing and you have the patience to take on the tough challenge then I strongly recommend that you give the PC version a try. Playing on a larger screen with mouse control rectifies many of the game’s frustrations, leaving you free to explore the planet without having to constantly wrestle with the interface. If you insist on playing it on mobile, then tablet is probably the best way forward – the interface issues get exacerbated by smaller screens.

Substance Designer, the PBR material creation software from Allegorithmics (and now Adobe), just received it’s first major update of 2019.  The major new feature is the ability to process both values and textures, simplifying the material creation workflow.  The release also includes several new filters such as new flood fill variants, height extrusion and more.

Details from the press release:

Where before textures represented values, Substance Designer can now process these values directly during material creation, ensuring consistency across the pipeline. Using the new “Value Processor” node, users can manipulate values from within the composite graph itself, helping to drive parameters and optimize their workflow with even more creative flexibility. Rather than working with nodes that represented elements like color, users can add the color value directly, simplifying and strengthening the design process. 

Users can also pass values from one node to another, and create global variables at the graph level. Over time, nodes/filters will attain the ability to become smarter throughout the graph as they receive additional data. Substance Engine v7 will soon be compatible with all the Substance integrations, so materials can be directly imported into top tools without any extra tweaks.

“With the introduction of Substance Engine v7, Substance Designer takes another step toward becoming the ultimate material authoring tool,” said Nicolas Wirrmann, product manager for Substance Designer. “The whole ecosystem has become smarter, and the new engine allows artists to continue to innovate and experiment for years to come.”

Along with Substance Engine v7, today’s update brings with it several new filters, including:

• New Flood Fill Variants – Two new Flood Fill companion nodes have been released including: “Flood Fill to Index,” which generates user numbers per shape, and “Flood Fill Mapper,” which lets them apply images to each shape.
• Atlas Splitter – Users can now divide an Atlas in order to isolate and exploit the separate elements of a scan.
• New Directional Warp Filters – The “Non-Uniform Direction Warp” allows the intensity and direction of the warp to be driven by an image input; the “Multi-Directional Warp” applies the directional warp multiple times in opposite directions while the displaced texture stays in place.
• Height Extrude – Height maps can now be rendered as 3D depth; users can rotate the resulting shape as a 3D object.
• Triplanar Update – More accurate blending formula, random offset, separated inputs for x, y and z projections are now available.
• Improvements to Normal Vector Rotation – Rather than being set by a uniform value, the Normal Vector rotation angle can now be set using the grayscale value of an image input.

Along with the new features, today’s update also introduces several performance upgrades, including a massive boost to the bakers. The integration of Optix for the AO, Bent Normal and Thickness bakers will now produce speeds at least five times faster than CPU ray tracing. The .obj loader has also been optimized and multi-threaded, leading to a significant increase in loading times.

For technical users, the update brings expanded options to the Python Scripting plugin system. Users can now create GUIs for plugins within Substance Designer using the Python API. The plugin system has also been standardized, allowing for plugins to start when the application loads, aiding in the creation of persistent plugins. Additional plugins created by the Substance team are on the way as well, look for those soon.

You can learn more as well as download a 30 day trial here.

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