Ryan Reynolds and everyone else involved in the production of the live-action Pokémon movie Detective Pikachu have done a tremendous job promoting the film in the lead-up to its release. Unfortunately, though, it looks like someone on the internet might have leaked the entire movie already. Yep, even the voice of Pikachu has spotted this “leak” online:

Anyway, you better stop reading right now and view the full movie in the above tweet, courtesy of the Twitter account @InspectrPikachu.

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Done? If you made it past the minute mark, you’ve probably realised by now this is simply a joke and perhaps the best marketing stunt so far for this movie. As you can see, the “leak” tricks you into thinking it’s the real deal and before you know it, Detective Pikachu is doing a cheery dance workout for nearly two hours straight.

What do you think of this amusing marketing stunt? Will you be heading to your local cinema to see Detective Pikachu? Tell us below.

Following on from last week’s website reveal, Nintendo has now officially confirmed Donkey Kong Jr., Clu Clu Land and VS. Excitebike will arrive on the Switch Online NES service on 15th May.

Thanks to the official PR, we now have a bit more information about each of these classic games:

Donkey Kong Jr. – Based on the popular arcade game, Donkey Kong Jr. is the sequel to the immensely successful Donkey Kong^™game. Play as Donkey Kong’s son, and rescue your dad who has been kidnapped and imprisoned in a cage by Mario. Use jumping and climbing abilities to clamber up vines and chains, gather vital fruit and keys, and open the cage to free your father. Make sure you avoid the pesky birds, nasty electric sparks and creepy chompers. Four different worlds filled with numerous climbing and jumping puzzles await you in this timeless classic.

VS. Excitebike – Fans love the Excitebike^™ game for its frenetic races, high stakes and sweet jumps. With this game, you can take it to the next level with the Famicom^™ disk version of VS. Excitebike – complete with two-player split screen. Create tracks from 20 classic Excitebike track parts, and go for a best time or take on friends. Racing is even more exciting when the rivalries are real. You can also try out the single-player mode in VS. Excitebike. It adds tracks, music and the ability to save your high score.

Clu Clu Land – The greedy Sea Urchins have stolen all of Clu Clu Land’s gold bars and buried them in a series of mazes. As Bubbles, a brave bubble fish, you’ll set out to uncover all of the gold bars in each maze. With 20 stages to complete and increasingly complex conditions (like having to pass over the gold bars twice to uncover them), you might just want to bring along a friend for help.

For the second month in a row, Japan will receive the exact same line-up as the west. Below is a trailer of what you can expect:

This brings the total number of games available on the Switch Online NES library to more than 40.

Are you looking forward to any of the releases this month? Tell us down in the comments.

We’re excited to kick off the fourth annual ID@Xbox Game Fest this week, where we celebrate the diverse range of games and experiences offered by independent developers on Xbox One.

From May 7-27, we’ll be unearthing some of the ID@Xbox program’s hidden gems for players to discover. Beginning this week until May 20, we will focus on Gaming for Everyone and feature diverse stories, voices, creators, and characters across 31 participating titles. We’ll wrap up the month (May 21-27) with an ID@Xbox Super Sale highlighting even more games that have released through the ID@Xbox program.

As a Game Fest tradition, we talked with the developers behind some of these games to learn more about what Gaming for Everyone means to them as well as how their own personal stories have impacted the experience and creative processes for their games.

1979 Revolution: Black Friday – “Diversity of experience is one facet of the Gaming for Everyone ethos, and an interactive drama set against the turbulent backdrop of Middle Eastern politics and civil unrest certainly isn’t your typical video game. 1979 Revolution: Black Friday not only demonstrates the medium as a unique platform for powerful story-telling, but also how it can be used as an engaging and entertaining means to inform and educate on a complex, real-world subject that, normally, would fall beyond the interests and/or awareness of many people.” – Matt Cundy, Digerati community manager

“Our goal was to breathe life into a piece of history that few understand intimately. By engaging with a diverse cast of characters and engaging with narrative choices, we were able to blend the forms of gaming and documentary to capture a digital recreation of Iran in 1979 for a whole new generation to discover.” – Navid Khonsari, creator of 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and iNK Stories co-founder

Dandara – “Even after many rewrites and inspirations, I think Dandara is always going to be a statement about Brazilian culture and history. It’s an outsider’s scream telling you that inspiration can be found by looking out of your own window, or even closer, on your own story. Better yet if it is able to touch you through those inspirations, with stories and people you have not stopped to think about.” – Luke Icenhower, marketing manager

Firewatch – “Firewatch is single player, first-person mystery. We love games that transport you to a faraway, unusual place and tell you a gripping story, but we don’t so much love games that trap you in impossible combat scenarios or esoteric puzzles along the way. So, we made Firewatch a mystery for everybody – where the game design isn’t about how good you are with a gun but what it feels like to be alone in the woods with (almost) no one to trust.” – Sean Vanaman, writer/designer

In Between – “In Between started out as part of my bachelor’s thesis back in university dealing with with the taboo topics of death and dying within a video game. In the end, our mission with In Between was to tell a story, that follows along a specific theme but that would still allow players their own interpretations and provide different possibilities for self-identification. We hope to try and give an insight into/make it easier for other people to relate to the thoughts and emotions of family members, friends or anyone else who finds him-/herself in these seemingly hopeless situations.” – Daniel, art director, co-founder

Night in the Woods – “Night in the Woods was an interesting project to write code and music for because, while we had an overall outline in mind, we left a lot of things open for ‘improvisation.’ I had to stay on my toes to make sure we could adapt the code to whatever new ideas might come up. It’s really cool that Night in the Woods has meant a lot to a bunch of folks, because it originated from this very odd and personal process.” – Alec Holowka, programmer, composer and game designer

The Path of Motus – “I think the game deals with issues that most people face daily. I know many people that had big dreams as a kid, but as they get older society beats those ideas out of their head and they settle for less than what they want in life. I hope this game speaks to those people and shows them that it’s never too late to pursue your dreams in life. I know some people are stuck in their situation due to monetary problems, so I also released a free educational video series showing people how to program games on our website (pathofmotus.com) to help folks that are interested in game development. I hope The Path of Motus can have some type of positive impact on everyone that plays.” – Michael Hicks, designer

Where the Bees Make Honey – “I make games to express myself and to communicate with others. Through the power of interactivity, games offer experiences from different cultures and communities.” – Brian Wilson, developer

See below for the rest of the games included in Game Fest this week:

39 Days to Mars

Aritana and the Harpy’s Feather

Blackwood Crossing

Celeste

Fragments of Him

Gone Home: Console Edition

I, Hope

Monica e a Guarda dos Coelhos

Mulaka

Never Alone Arctic Collection

Nippon Marathon

Old Man’s Journey

Perception

SOMA

Storm Boy

Tacoma

The First Tree

The King’s Bird

The Mooseman

The Town of Light

Three Fourths Home: Extended Edition

What Remains of Edith Finch

Wheels of Aurelia

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

This is just a taste of all the great games included in ID@Xbox Game Fest. The Gaming for Everyone theme will run from May 2 through to May 20, so jump in and start discovering the games behind these exceptional stories.

To see all titles included in the first week of Game Fest visit Xbox.com.

.NET Core 3.0 Preview 5 is now available. This iteration was brief for the team and primarily includes bug fixes and improvements to the more significant updates in Preview 4. This post summarizes the important points in this release.

Please see the release notes for additional details and known issues.

Get started

To get started with ASP.NET Core in .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5 install the .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5 SDK. If you’re on Windows using Visual Studio, you also need to install the latest preview of Visual Studio.

Upgrade an existing project

To upgrade an existing an ASP.NET Core app (including Blazor apps) to .NET Core 3.0 Preview 5, follow the migrations steps in the ASP.NET Core docs. Please also see the full list of breaking changes in ASP.NET Core 3.0.

To upgrade an existing ASP.NET Core 3.0 Preview 4 project to Preview 5:

• Update Microsoft.AspNetCore.* package references to 3.0.0-preview5-19227-01
• Update Microsoft.Extensions.* package references to 3.0.0-preview5.19227.01

That’s it! You should be good to go with this latest preview release.

New JSON Serialization

In 3.0-preview5, ASP.NET Core MVC adds supports for reading and writing JSON using System.Text.Json. The System.Text.Json serializer can read and write JSON asynchronously, and is optimized for UTF-8 text making it ideal for REST APIs and backend applications.

This is available for you to try out in Preview 5, but is not yet the default in the templates. You can use the new serializer by removing the call to add Newtonsoft.Json formatters:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)

{ ... services.AddControllers() .AddNewtonsoftJson() ...

}

In the future this will be default for all new ASP.NET Core applications. We hope that you will try it in these earlier previews and log any issues you find here.

We used this WeatherForecast model when we profiled JSON read/writer performance using Newtonsoft.Json, our previous serializer.

public class WeatherForecast

{ public DateTime Date { get; set; } public int TemperatureC { get; set; } public string Summary { get; set; }

}

JSON deserialization (input)

Description	RPS	CPU (%)	Memory (MB)
Newtonsoft.Json – 500 bytes	136,435	95	172
System.Text.Json – 500 bytes	167,861	94	169
Newtonsoft.Json – 2.4 kbytes	97,137	97	174
System.Text.Json – 2.4 kbytes	132,026	96	169
Newtonsoft.Json – 40 kbytes	7,712	88	212
System.Text.Json – 40 kbytes	16,625	96	193

JSON serialization (output)

Description	RPS	CPU (%)	Memory (MB)
Newtonsoft.Json – 500 bytes	120,273	94	174
System.Text.Json – 500 bytes	145,631	94	173
Newtonsoft.Json – 8 Kbytes	35,408	98	187
System.Text.Json – 8 Kbytes	56,424	97	184
Newtonsoft.Json – 40 Kbytes	8,416	99	202
System.Text.Json – 40 Kbytes	14,848	98	197

For the most common payload sizes, System.Text.Json offers about 20% throughput increase during input and output formatting with a smaller memory footprint.

Options for the serializer can be configured using MvcOptions:

services.AddControllers(options => options.SerializerOptions.WriteIndented = true) 

Integration with SignalR

System.Text.Json is now the default Hub Protocol used by SignalR clients and servers starting in ASP.NET Core 3.0-preview5. Please try it out and file issues if you find anything not working as expected.

Switching back to Newtonsoft.Json

If you would like to switch back to the previous default of using Newtonsoft.Json then you can do so on both the client and server.

1. Install the Microsoft.AspNetCore.SignalR.Protocols.NewtonsoftJson NuGet package.

2. On the client add .AddNewtonsoftJsonProtocol() to the HubConnectionBuilder:

   new HubConnectionBuilder()
   
   .WithUrl("/chatHub")
   
   .AddNewtonsoftJsonProtocol()
   
   .Build();

3. On the server add .AddNewtonsoftJsonProtocol() to the AddSignalR() call:

   services.AddSignalR()
   
   .AddNewtonsoftJsonProtocol();

Give feedback

We hope you enjoy the new features in this preview release of ASP.NET Core! Please let us know what you think by filing issues on Github.

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.