Fortnite World Cup Esports Tournament Splits $100 Million Prize Pool
Epic Games has announced the details of its Fortnite World Cup, including a whopping $100 million prize pool for the 2019 season. That chunk of money will be split among several prizes, with the largest single cash prize coming in at $3 million.
First, there will be 10 weekly Online Open qualifiers running from April 13 to June 16. Every week the company will distribute $1 million broadly among the top players. Then, the top 100 Solo players and top 50 Duos teams will take part in the World Cup Finals in New York City from July 26-28. That event will distribute $30 million. Each player will win at least $50,000 and the Solo World Champion will win $3 million. Plus, $1 million in weekly tournaments will continue through the end of the year.
Epic notes that to compete you need to be at least 13 years old, and players between 13-17 need a parent or guardian's permission. Players also need to be in good standing without any violations on their current or previous accounts.
Recently Fortnite has gotten a new challenger in the battle royale space with the release of Apex Legends, which quickly grew an audience. Epic Games pointed out that Fortnite is still doing fine for itself too, setting a new record for peak concurrent players.
Still, Fortnite appears to be shoring up its defenses against the new challenger. With Season 8 approaching, Epic announced that you can earn the Battle Pass for free by taking part in Overtime challenges. That was interpreted as a sign that the company is attempting to retain its users by giving them a reason to put their time into Fortnite. A major tournament with tons of cash on the line could also help entice players to stick around.
Doug Bowser Thanks Nintendo Fans For The “Warm Messages”
Just days ago, Reggie Fils-Aimé shocked the video game community, when he announced he would be stepping down from his role as Nintendo of America President after nearly 13 years to spend more time with his family. Replacing him is the appropriately-named Doug Bowser. While the majority of the spotlight is still on the current President, Doug has already received extra attention since the news dropped.
To show his appreciation, he took to Twitter to thank fans for the “warm messages” and stated how he had been taught so much by Reggie over the past number of years at Nintendo and would use all of this knowledge to fuel his own enthusiasm:
“Thanks everyone for your warm messages as I look ahead to this new adventure. I have learned so much from Reggie. His love and passion for Nintendo, along with yours, will never be far from my mind.”
Besides welcome messages, fans on social media were also quick acknowledge the fact Mario’s number one enemy had taken over Nintendo of America. As a result, it’s already turned into a bit of a meme (in more ways than one). Below is a round-up, courtesy of Eurogamer:
How do you feel about Bowser taking over Nintendo of America? Tell us down below.
Funko Eager To Produce Nintendo-Themed Pop Figures
Love them or hate them, the big-headed Funko Pop figures are seemingly here to stay. At this year’s New York Toy Fair, Newsweek sat down with the Funko CEO Brian Mariotti to discuss the future of the company.
One interesting comment made by Mariotta during the interview, was how one of Funko’s main goals is to secure the license for Nintendo’s IP.
“We still have to get those Nintendo characters.”
Funko had somewhat of a breakthrough in the past year with The Pokémon Company, allowing it to produce a Pokémon Funko Pop line, including a seasonal Pikachu run.
“To build that relationship is super important to us. We all grew up playing Pokémon, with so many fans around the world, it’s amazing to land that license finally.”
Mariotti believes this is just the beginning, stating how production is going to be increase this year, with the plan to make four Pokémon Pops for each quarter.
“We’re going to ramp it up a bit with what we did last year.”
Do you collect Funko Pops? Would you like to see Nintendo-themed ones? Tell us in the comments.
Explore challenging tracks around the world, from Yellowstone Park to the peaks of Mt. Everest and everywhere in between. New Tandem Bike mode allows two riders to control one bike. Hone your racing skills and level up from local backyard competitions to stadium races. Make a statement with customizable outfits and bike skins.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-25-2019, 07:07 AM - Forum: Lounge
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There Are Lots Of Games To Play Free This Weekend On PS4, Xbox One, And PC
If you're looking for something new to play but aren't quite ready to plunk down some cash on a game, you'll have plenty of options to choose from this weekend. A number of titles are free to play for the next few days on PC and Xbox One, and PS4 and Xbox One owners will be able to try a special demo of Dead or Alive 6.
PC players have the most choices this weekend, as four titles are holding free weekends on Steam. These include the sandbox games Boundless and TerraTech, the mech strategy game BattleTech, and the 3v3 competitive game Aftercharge. You'll be able to sample all four of these at no charge until Sunday, February 24, and each is also on sale in case you'd like to pick them up after the free period ends.
On Xbox One, Xbox Live Gold members can try both Halo Wars: Definitive Edition and its sequel, Halo Wars 2, at no charge as part of Microsoft's ongoing Free Play Days promotion. The trial period likewise runs through February 24. You can download them either from Microsoft's website or the Gold member area on Xbox One, and both games are on sale for 50% off from the Microsoft Store.
Beyond that, Team Ninja is holding a beta for its upcoming fighting game Dead or Alive 6 from February 22-24. The demo will be available on both PS4 and Xbox One, but you'll need to have either a PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold subscription to participate. You can read more details about the beta on the Dead or Alive 6 website.
Separate from the free weekends, Epic is giving away another title for free through its storefront, the Epic Games Store. From now until March 7, PC players can claim a digital copy of the point-and-click adventure game Thimbleweed Park at no charge.
Review: RIOT – Civil Unrest – A Fantastic Idea Undone By Some Sloppy Execution
Ah, the strategy game. Once a stalwart of the PC gaming scene, the genre has bloomed on console in recent years as developers re-approach the genre in new and exciting ways. And it’s those titles that break away from the traditional military concept that’s gripped its mechanics for so long, taking the principles of an RTS and applying them in ways we’ve never seen. RIOT – Civil Unrest does just that, but while its pixel art revolutions look the part, the game itself simplifies itself too far and loses some of the control that makes an RTS so exciting to play.
On paper, the concept is certainly bursting with potential. Based on real-life riots and incidents of civil unrest that occurred across the world in recent years, you’ll either choose the side of the mob or the police. Whichever side you choose, you’ll need to meet a key objective or set of challenges before a timer runs out. Both sides differ in their options, making for some oddly uneven encounters. The police are usually smaller in number, but have key divisions for use in certain scenarios. Some have shields for driving back protesters, others have batons for when things get tasty or tear gas for quick crowd dispersion.
The mob, on the other hand, doesn’t have as many clearly defined roles. Instead, you get to control a much larger mass of human defiance divided into smaller manageable groups. More often than not, success while playing as the side of protest usually boils down to micromanaging each group so a large enough number of people are hindering the progress of the police. For instance, to protect a series of tents from being smashed to pieces, you’ll need to use each group to systematically force the fuzz into a tiny retreat. Each scenario is very much a to-and-fro affair, with gains and losses being constantly traded.
Preparation between the two sides also differs. For the police, choosing to equip certain units with particular gear will affect their usefulness in the field; for instance, giving heavy shield-toting coppers a radio (for gathering all available units to their location) is a far better fit than a gas canister. However, on the flip-side, the things you choose to take into a protest could potentially affect how many people actually turn out to join you. If you start packing weapons and other aggressive forms of expression, then the potential for violence will likely put some passive protesters off. It’s the little aspects such as these that show, however frustratingly, just how rich in potential RIOT really is.
The problem comes in the execution. Whichever of the three modes on offer you choose to play – Global (a setup that compares your performance in each scenario and adds into a leaderboard for both protesters and police), Story (specific missions based on real-life events) and Versus (two-player, split-Joy-Con affair using missions unlocked in Story mode) – you soon start to see how RIOT’s execution struggles to live up to its concept.
The lack of precise control is central to the issue. Yes, a mob of protesters – whether passive or aggressive – is meant to be unruly and nebulous by design, but there’s no attempt to mesh this with the precise tactical agency one associates with an RTS. You can cycle between defined units by pressing ‘L’ and ‘R’, then use the left analog stick to pull them in a particular direction. Movement is sluggish and too often our groups broke apart (even without coming into contact with a unit from the other side). Without support for touchscreen controls – something that would have suited the top-down unit dragging mechanics – managing your protest/police response never truly feels responsive, and that goes a long way to undoing the developer’s good work.
The variety of challenges and objectives in a given scenario to help add a little spice to proceedings – such as keeping protesters from controlling a key area or forcing your way past armed officers on a narrow bridge. Little messages pop up on-screen occasionally to add a little extra drama to proceedings, which is in turn reflected in the mood of either side. Start arresting too many protesters while they’re being passive yet pushy and you could send them into a full-on riot, for example. All of these systems have so much potential, but much of it never does enough with that potential to create something truly unique in the RTS genre.
The lack of a proper tutorial is another black mark against the game; while it’s just about possible to muddle through if you’re familiar with the RTS genre, a clearly defined mode which explains RIOT’s many systems and mechanics would make things easier to stomach – even if it wouldn’t necessarily solve the title’s other problems.
Conclusion
RIOT – Civil Unrest could have been something special, but its move to Nintendo Switch from other platforms hasn’t seen that potential embraced any further. The lack of touchscreen support and the absence of a proper tutorial mode are odd decisions considering how difficult it can be to follow the action when playing in handheld/tabletop mode. Even its use of real-life clashes between protesters and police fails to bring anything insightful or interesting to the table. Sadly, this riot is already fizzling out.
Retiring Nintendo President Reggie Shares Heartfelt Message With Fans
After more than 15 years with the company, Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime is retiring this April. Shortly after the news broke, the company shared a heartfelt farewell message from Fils-Aime himself on Twitter.
"I wanted to reach out directly to you, the Nintendo community, because there's one thing I really want to say: thank you," Fils-Aime said in the video below. "Thank you for your never-ending support, and for your passionate love of Nintendo. And personally, for giving me a Mushroom Kingdom full of incredible memories that I will never forget, ever.
"From the first time I saw the nickname 'Regginator,' I realized that Nintendo fans share a unique sense of community, a bond that goes beyond just a love of video games. For these past 15 years, I've been honored to be included as part of your family."
Fils-Aime also shared a few words about his successor, NOA senior VP of sales and marketing Doug Bowser, who'll be formally taking over his role on April 15. "Doug is a passionate and powerful leader, and a guy who in his youth probably spent too much time in front of a Donkey Kong arcade machine. Inside Nintendo, people already know him as a driving force, and you'll come to see that too."
Fils-Aime joined the company partway through the GameCube era and has been its face in North American territories ever since, delivering press conferences and appearing in Nintendo Direct broadcasts. He'll perhaps best be remembered, however, for the countless memes he's inspired, from the time he danced to promote Yo-Kai Watch to his unintentionally iconic catchphrase.
Following the news of Fils-Aime's retirement, many other industry figures, such as Microsoft's Phil Spencer, expressed their thanks and shared memories and anecdotes of the NOA president.
Splatoon 2 News Channel Giving Out Free Drink Tickets Next Week
Remember when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would occasionally hand out free items and food if you read the survival tips on the Switch news feed? Well, Splatoon 2 will be running a similar promotion very soon.
According to the Nintendo Versus Twitter account, as of “late next week”, the Splatoon channel will be posting articles about gear abilities. If you view these articles on your Switch, you’ll receive free drink tickets which can then be redeemed in-game.
Like free loot? Check out the Gear Ability tips articles starting late next week via the #Splatoon2 #NintendoSwitch News Channel! View the article on your Nintendo Switch, and you’ll receive some Drink Tickets in-game!
Are you eager to get your hand on a free digital drink? Are you still playing Splatoon 2 regularly? Tell us in the comments.
Over the past two decades, Apple has proven capable of exercising its rapidly lithe, innovating ability to take its existing technologies and create new computing forms that retain its influence over the most commercially successful and strategically important markets. That winning strategy of the past also appears to be the best suited for the future of PCs.
Source: Statistica.com
Apple’s innovative growth during legacy PC stagnation
IDC, Gartner and other firms have valiantly tried to minimize Apple’s real position in the PC industry, building unit sales charts like the one above, which make it appear that Apple is just a bit player in the computing industry dominated by HP, Lenovo, and Dell. These are created by adding up every computer these other vendors build and comparing them only against Apple’s Mac-branded systems, notably leaving out iPads.
However, the reality is that Apple’s unique ability to take its conventional Mac platform and simplify it into the more approachable and broadly usable iPad has paid off dramatically, both in the consumer and enterprise markets.
It’s also something that PC rivals haven’t been able to successfully do. Over the past four quarters, Apple sold 61.74 million iPads and Macs, making it the leader in PC unit shipments, ahead of second-place HP’s 57.16 million PCs shipped.
Apple not only created the only commerically successful tablet, but also maintained its Mac sales while PCs shrank
But Apple also brought in greater PC revenues and profits, enabling it to invest billions to radically enhance its own macOS and iOS platforms and develop custom A12 and T2 silicon that enhances and differentiates its offerings. In the future, Apple’s higher unit sales, revenues, and profits from PC sales will keep making it easier for Apple to innovate in the computing space while HP, Lenovo, Dell and others will continue to be stuck waiting on Microsoft and Intel to chart out their futures. Over the past decade, WinTel has been failing its hardware partners, with no sign of any turnaround on the horizon.
The ARM processors that will likely power an increasing number of PC devices in the future are not held back by Intel, but no other maker apart from Apple is benefitting from the vast economies of scale that iPads are contributing to mobile chips. So while Apple will be able to leverage its existing, highly profitable production of high-end ARM processors for iPads, PC and mobile makers will be starting from scratch, fragmenting the market for PC processors and diluting Intel’s existing x86 economies of scale.
Nobody else is selling premium tablets in volume. Apple’s iPad ARM chips are erasing the economies of scale that once propelled x86 PCs
One honest thing that you can see from the chart is that demand for conventional PCs has receded dramatically in the years since iPad appeared, with industry-wide shipments falling by about 25 million units quarterly. In part, that’s because conventional uses of PCs have been replaced by smartphones and other mobile technologies. But certainly, the roughly ten million iPads that Apple ships each quarter are also eroding into that demand. Note that Apple’s Macs are not suffering the same falloff in sales, meaning that Apple is indeed successfully targeting PCs with iPads, not pursuing a strategy of weaning its Mac users onto iPads.
Apple is currently pursuing a strategy that positions iPads as its accessible, affordable entry-level computing product; iPad Pro as a higher end version of that same computing model; Macs as its familiar, yet increasingly iOS-integrated version of conventional computing; and Mac Pro models delivering the high-end version of the Mac experience. Pundits pretend to be befuddled by why they can’t plug a mouse or a hard drive into an iPad, but consumers seem to have figured out which products fit their needs best and are having no problem buying them.
Microsoft’s Surface unable to say “no”
So who is troubled in PCs as the world enters 2019? Certainly Microsoft, which has proven unable to move beyond the conventional PC in either smartphones or mobile tablets or other form factors. Its PC platform shrank twice as fast as Apple’s iPad grew, and its own Surface vision of hybrid computing has remained tepidly flat for a decade at a number that’s only about a twelfth of the revenue Apple is generating from its range of non-phone computing hardware.
Yet the Surface lineup includes so many various experiments—Microsoft seems almost unable to say no—that the cost of developing and maintaining all those SKUs is significant, crushing any hope of profitability. That makes Surface a profit sink, a distraction away from things Microsoft could be doing.
Microsoft is spending tons of money to look cool but isn’t creating a viabile business
That’s the very types of projects that Jobs canceled when he took over Apple in 1997, yet today’s pundits demand that Apple take note of the whimsical things being done under the Surface brand and follow Microsoft, rather than pursuing the strategies that Jobs used to turn Apple around. Since 2011, Tim Cook has exercised the same strategies to dramatically grow Apple’s sales even as the industries around it continue to slide sideways with distractions that were a waste of resources.
Chrome OS, Android and ARM
Google has similarly shown that it has no real insight into building a PC platform, with Chromebook and Android both failing to deliver a conventional PC, a modern mobile tablet, or some other hybrid experience that any customers want to pay anything for. All it has done is spend tons of money building devices that nobody buys: Chromebook Pixel, Nexus 9, Pixel C, and PixelBook have all been flops.
Everyone else in the PC industry is lined up behind Microsoft and Google, waiting for one or both of them to provide the software needed to drive their hardware. They’re also largely waiting on Intel to provide the silicon to power it. Efforts to move conventional computing to ARM chips, where there’s more competition, have suggested the potential of a new wave driving PC demand. However, overall interest in PCs is clearly waning despite the latest attempts at ARM laptops and netbooks, and Apple is far ahead of anyone else in developing custom ARM silicon to power the next generations of PCs.
Pretty clearly, nobody wants “Google’s best in a laptop or tablet”
It’s also worth noting that any significant movement from PCs to ARM processors will come at the cost of fragmentation of the Windows platform. Those expenses will be incurred by software developers trying to target multiple platforms, as well as two sets of chip designers—Intel and ARM—spending resources to build the future of Windows PCs. On Apple’s side, the differences between Macs and iPads are narrowing, both for developers as Apple prepares to introduce the ability to bring iOS AppKit apps to the Mac, and for chip development as Apple moves more of its proprietary tech to custom T2 silicon and as the Ax architecture nears the point where Apple’s own SoCs will have the ability to power Macs.
Isn’t it curious that in 2019, a decade after iPad launched to the howls of embittered naysayers, Apple has continued to grow its Mac sales while at the same time building iPad into an equally large enterprise? And yet all pundits can think about is how Apple desperately needs to choose between them, pontificating about how Apple should either give up Macs, or turn iPads into a Mac in order to move Mac users to iPads, or some equally bizarre advice that makes no sense at all.
Meanwhile, they saw nothing but huge potential in Google’s parallel failures of Chromebooks and Android tablets, and still see some glimmer of hope for Microsoft’s stagnant Surface hobby and a new crop of ARM Windows machines. Microsoft’s in it for the long haul, they insist, just like Microsoft said it was for Zune and Windows Phone. The reality today is that Windows has never been less important, and grows ever more irrelevant every year even as Microsoft continues to expand support for its users on iOS and Macs.
It doesn’t matter if pundits refuse to acknowledge this. It does matter, however, that Apple is lining up broad industry support behind building custom enterprise software for iOS, software that will soon be easy to port to the Mac as well.
Even if absolutely nothing were to change across the next ten years in terms of market share shifts, Apple’s Mac and iPad businesses would continue to generate nearly half a trillion dollars in revenues for Apple while supporting the development of highly advanced silicon, OS, development frameworks and apps. Windows remains in maintenance mode, getting occasional patches as the market forces driving Intel chips and Windows development slow to a crawl.
I’m happy to announce that ASP.NET Core 2.2 is available as part of .NET Core 2.2 today!
How to get it
You can download the new .NET Core SDK (2.2.100) for your dev machine and build servers from the .NET Core 2.2 download page. New Windows Server hosting, runtime installers and binary archives are also available from this page for updating servers.
This release updates .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, and Entity Framework Core to version 2.2.0. The new SDK version is 2.2.100. Visual Studio requirements are as follows:
The main theme for this ASP.NET Core release was to improve developer productivity and platform functionality with regard to building Web/HTTP APIs. As usual, we made some performance improvements as well. We’ve posted about these features as part of the preview releases and you as such you can read about them by following the links below:
Health Checks integration with BeatPulse
We’re happy to announce that the BeatPulse project now supports the new Health Checks API, which means you can easily add checks for dozens of popular systems and dependencies using their great support. Here’s a message from the BeatPulse team about their support for our new Health Checks API:
BeatPulse is a community driven project that was created to provide health checking mechanisms for systems, networking and a wide variety of services that are common within the enterprise, e.g. SqlServer, MySql,Postgress, Redis, Kafka and many more . When Microsoft announced ASP.NET Core Health Checks for the 2.2 roadmap, the BeatPulse team ported all the existing liveness packages and features to work with the new Microsoft Health Checks abstractions at the repository AspNetCore.Diagnostics.HealthChecks. Apart from all the health checking packages, the BeatPulse team also incorporates other features like pulse tracking (Application Insights and Prometheus), failure notifications and a UI interface were we can configure different monitored systems and have a global view of health status. This UI is available as a Docker image published in Docker Hub.
More coming soon
When we announced planning for ASP.NET Core 2.2, we mentioned a number of features that aren’t detailed above, including API Authorization with IdentityServer4, Open API (Swagger) driven client code generation, and the HTTP REPL command line tool. These features are still being worked on and aren’t quite ready for release, however we expect to make them available as add-ons in the coming months. Thanks for your patience while we complete these experiences and get them ready for you all to try out.
Migrating a project to ASP.NET Core 2.2
To migrate an ASP.NET Core project from 2.1 to 2.2, open the project’s .csproj file and change the value of the TargetFramework element to netcoreapp2.2. You do not need to do this if you’re targeting .NET Framework 4.x.
Finish by updating your NuGet package references to the latest stable versions. Note that projects targeting .NET Core (rather than .NET Framework) should not have a package version specified for the Microsoft.AspNetCore.App package reference as this will be managed automatically by the SDK. Doing so will now result in a build warning.
ASP.NET Core 2.2 is the latest release in the “Current” .NET Core train. This represents the first release since the declaration of 2.1 LTS that reestablishes a separate LTS and Current train. The Current train is where new features, enhancements, and regular bug fixes are applied and is recommended for most customers. Note that both LTS and Current releases receive servicing updates for security and critical stability fixes. It is currently expected that 2.2 will the last non-servicing release in the 2.x life cycle, and as such customers not using an LTS release will need to migrate to 3.0 GA, within 3 months of its release in the second half of 2019 in order to remain supported.
The .NET Core 2.2 SDK, runtime, and updated ASP.NET Core IIS Module are in the process of being deployed to Azure App Service regions around the world. We expect this to be completed before the end of December 2018.
Some regions may receive the updated runtime before the updated ASP.NET Core IIS Module (ANCM), which is required by default for projects targeting ASP.NET Core 2.2. It’s also a requirement for the new in-process hosting feature. If you receive startup errors after deploying to Azure App Service, try configuring your project to use the existing version of ANCM by setting the AspNetCoreModule property to the value “AspNetCoreModule”, e.g.:
Once the target region has been updated with the latest ANCM version, you can remove that property altogether and redeploy the application to have it switch to using the new ANCM.
This release also adds better 64-bit support for .NET Core in Azure App Service. If you’re running your ASP.NET Core application on .NET Core 2.2 with in-process hosting, you can simply enable the 64-bit option in the Azure Portal and the site will now run in a 64-bit process. For other information on how to run your ASP.NET Core application in a 64-bit process in Azure App Service with other configurations, see this article.
