With E3 less than two weeks away, we’ve got some new details on what Xbox has got going on for the biggest gaming event of the year!

We’ll be kicking things off with our annual Xbox E3 2018 Briefing, which you can watch live beginning on Sunday, June 10 at 1:00 p.m. PDT. During the briefing, you’ll have a chance to check out everything from in-depth looks at previously-announced games to trailers for our unannounced titles coming in 2018 and beyond. You can watch the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing live beginning at 1 p.m. PDT on June 10 on the official Xbox Channel on Mixer, or on the Mixer app for Xbox One and mobile. Viewers logged into Mixer will be eligible for a special MixPot full of digital content – stay tuned for more details.

As was the case last year, the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing on Mixer will be offered in six languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish (LATAM), Portuguese (LATAM), and includes support for English Closed Captions. To select an alternate language, click the “cog” button within Mixer to view the available list. We’re excited for fans all around the world to join in on the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing festivities.

You’ll also be able to catch a live stream of the briefing on the Xbox Twitch Channel, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook Live or on the big screen at your local Microsoft Store.

We’re also very happy to announce that we’re partnering with cross-platform entertainment media brands Fuse and FM to bring the Xbox E3 2018 Briefing to cable and satellite subscribers in the U.S. and Canada at 1:00 p.m. PDT (or 4:00 p.m. EDT for you east coast dwellers!). The Briefing will also livestream on Fuse.tv and an encore presentation will air on FM at 9:00 p.m. PDT (12:00 a.m. EDT).

Be sure to hit up Fuse.tv to find out where you can watch Fuse.

This year will mark the first year that Inside Xbox will be airing during E3. Inside Xbox will air Monday, June 11 at 3 p.m. PDT and will feature a livestream full of exclusive announcements, game demos, interviews, giveaways and more.

Mixer at E3 2018

Mixer is the best place to catch all of the action from this year’s E3. From Saturday, June 9 to Friday, June 15, tune in at www.mixer.com for the latest news, gameplay, exclusive interviews and more. For fans attending E3 in person this year, we’ll have a dedicated Mixer booth located in the South Hall of the LACC, where you can get hands-on with new titles, watch the live broadcast each day, and catch your favorite Mixer Partners streaming live from the show floor. We’re also happy to announce a special showing of HypeZone Live featuring a new battle royale experience. Players can compete to see if they can make it into the HypeZone and walk away with some sweet swag.

Enjoy the Xbox Experience at the Microsoft Theater

This year, we’re excited to call the Microsoft Theater our Xbox home base for the week of E3.

On Tuesday, June 12 and Wednesday, June 13, E3 Expo Badge holders will have the opportunity to experience our brand new Xbox Experience at the Microsoft Theater during expo hours. Featuring a diverse lineup of blockbuster games and experiences, including many of the titles shown in our briefing, attendees will have an opportunity to experience hands-on why Xbox is the best place to play.

Whether you love first-person shooters, action-adventure games or the latest independent darling, the Xbox Experience is the place to be this E3.

Visit the Xbox Official Gear Shop

For the first time, come and visit the Xbox Official Gear Shop by Microsoft Stores in the Xbox Experience at E3. Fly your gaming colors and show off your fandom for Xbox and award-winning franchises like Halo, Forza Motorsport, and Gears of War as well as limited edition designer collaborations. We will have more information on this exciting new initiative over the coming weeks.

Celebrate E3 at Microsoft Store

Check out your local Microsoft Store on timing and details to watch the Xbox E3 2018 briefing taking place on Sunday, June 10, and participate in Forza Motorsport 7 tournaments for a chance to win Xbox One themed prizes.

If you are in Los Angeles, we’ve also got a special event taking place at the Microsoft Store at Westfield Century City where we are celebrating E3 with USC Alum and now Tennessee Titans cornerback Adoree’ Jackson on Sunday, June 10. Visit Microsoft Store for more information and timing.

Finally, for fans planning to attend in person, we recommend you take a look at E3’s updated security protocols to ensure you have an optimal experience.

Be sure to head on over to the Xbox E3 Online Experience for more information and details on what we’ve got going on for the week.

Here’s to a great E3!

It should come as no surprise that the internet of things (IoT) has tremendous potential to transform healthcare. Consumers are already familiar with IoT wearables, such as smartwatches and fitness bands, that enable them to track and improve their health at home. But at-home monitoring is just the start. Today, healthcare organizations are looking at how they can leverage IoT in their patient populations to enhance patient engagement, forge deeper connections, deliver more personalized care experiences, and improve adherence to care plans.

Helsa, one of Sweden’s largest private healthcare companies, recently implemented the Health360 ImagineCare Experience. The solution, from ImagineCare and Tribridge, a DXC Technology company, combines IoT monitoring, a patient engagement app, and care coordination tools to enable healthcare organizations to deliver right-size, right-time care, based on trusted information.

David Turcotte, Microsoft Global Industry Director, sat down with Helsa Regional Manager Jessica Hård Svensson, Helsa District Nurse Marie Blomster, and Gustav Hjelmgren, Cofounder of ImagineCare, to discuss how IoT is improving the lives of Helsa patients.

David Turcotte: Tell us about Helsa and the patient population you serve.
Jessica Hård Svensson: Helsa is a healthcare company with fifteen primary care units in Sweden. Our six outpatient units in southern Sweden, which I manage, serve 35,000 patients. As a general primary care practice, we care for the whole family, treating conditions from the common cold to severe chronic diseases.

Before piloting medical IoT, did you experience challenges implementing patient engagement initiatives?
Jessica: Of course! When you see your patients only once or twice a year, it’s very difficult to keep them motivated to stick to their treatment plans. Patients need ongoing engagement to make and maintain the shifts in lifestyle, like diet and exercise, necessary to manage chronic diseases.

I understand your pilot of the Health360 ImagineCare solution is still in its early phases, but you are already leveraging its medical IoT capabilities with select patients. What patient populations have you rolled it out to so far?
Marie Blomster: IoT remote medical sensing is ideal for patients with chronic diseases who need to frequently monitor their vital signs or levels. Right now, we are primarily using IoT for patients with diabetes and hypertension, since these patients need to continually track blood glucose levels and blood pressure. IoT remote medical sensing has improved the quality of care we can offer them.

What results have you seen from implementing IoT for this population?
Marie: Since patients can be monitored remotely with IoT, we have been able to respond much more quickly to undesirable metrics, such as high blood pressure and high blood glucose, which means that we can address potential emergencies before they happen.

Moreover, our doctors can make treatment decisions based on more accurate data. Without IoT, doctors often need to make medication decisions and dosage adjustments based on only one or two blood pressure values. With IoT, on the other hand, hypertension patients can monitor their blood pressure at home every day and automatically transmit the data to their care team, providing our doctors assurance that their medication decisions are based on accurate, representative data.

This has reduced the use of unnecessary medications, for example. Some patients present higher blood pressure in a clinical setting but have normal blood pressure when measured at home. Because our doctors now have the IoT data to see this, they are no longer prescribing blood pressure medications to patients who don’t need them.

Jessica: Moreover, since we engage with patients remotely, we have been able to reduce both planned and unplanned in-person visits to our primary care center.

What feedback have you received from patients on their experience with IoT and the ImagineCare solution?
Marie: Our patients have found IoT data highly motivating. For instance, we’ve given some of our patients IoT fitness trackers to encourage them to exercise more. ImagineCare gamifies exercise for them. They have become competitive around improving their metrics, which has motivated them to exercise more and meet the exercise goals recommended by their doctors.

Gustav Hjelmgren: On our side at ImagineCare, we’ve heard from Helsa patients that they feel much more connected to their care teams and that their care teams better understand their priorities. This closer connection makes them feel more secure. Moreover, because they have an ongoing conversation with their care team, rather than just being seen once or twice a year, there’s more continuity of care over time. This is fundamentally a new way of delivering care and it’s inspiring to see how patients are responding to it.

How do you anticipate IoT data will help you optimize the day-to-day flow of patients when you roll ImagineCare out to the larger population?
Jessica: IoT data will help us identify the high-risk patients who really need to be seen in person, so that we can prioritize them when scheduling appointments. That way we can focus on the patients who need in-person care. The rest of our patients—those who are in a place where they can effectively self-manage their care—we can engage with via the ImagineCare app. This will help us overcome a key healthcare challenge: the growing population of senior citizens coupled with the shortage of healthcare workers.

This will also be useful for managing the care of patients who are particularly anxious about their health. Because we will be able to monitor them and keep a close connection through ImagineCare, we hope they will feel less anxious and not feel the need to visit the clinic as frequently.

Are there other specific populations that you expect will see major benefits from IoT?
Gustav: There are a number of patient groups at Helsa with whom we are looking to use IoT. Beyond diabetes and hypertension, we see significant potential for IoT to benefit patients with chronic conditions like asthma, congestive heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Why did you choose ImagineCare over other IoT solutions on the market?
Jessica: The deciding factor was that ImagineCare is more complete than other applications on the market. Most IoT applications are designed to be used for only a very small sub-segment of the patient population. ImagineCare struck us as much more applicable to a wide range of patients, both those with specific chronic diseases and the general population. The connection between ImagineCare and Microsoft was also an attraction.

Gustav: We feel that Microsoft shares ImagineCare’s values and our ambition to create a new way to deliver care based on the preferences of each patient. A benefit of our relationship with Microsoft is that we partner with them to make ongoing improvements. For instance, right now we’re talking to Microsoft about how to add more AI and machine learning to the solution to enhance its intelligence. Microsoft also connects us to industry-leading partners to further enhance our total healthcare offering.

What do you anticipate for the future of IoT in healthcare and specifically at Helsa?
Jessica: I expect the technology and its applications in healthcare to become increasingly sophisticated, and we hope to keep Helsa on the cutting edge. Most importantly, though, I anticipate we will continue to use IoT and digital engagement strategies in combination with in-person care as a way to enhance the human connection at the heart of care, rather than replace it.

Learn more

Tags: healthcare, ImagineCare, Interview

It lends support when possible through empowering employees such as Cathy Balcer, GLEAM chapter lead in Singapore, who joined with other companies to promote “freedom to love” nights all over the city; Andrea Llamas, GLEAM lead in Mexico, who helped Microsoft officially join a local network of companies that are LGBTQ+ friendly; and Nidhi Singh, Roland White, Bibaswan Dash, and Mike Emery, who helped launched the first GLEAM chapter in India, which garnered 100 employee members in its first week.

Aside from pushing for social change and increased protections, around the globe, Microsoft is also working to drive inclusion in the technology industry for all, including people who are LGBTQ+.

Women account for 24 percent of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs, according to the Economics and Statistics Administration’s 2017 numbers.

Chen was initially worried that she would have be closeted to survive a corporate work environment. But when her teammates showed genuine interest in her life and weren’t at all bothered by her sexuality, she decided she was never going to hide her real self for a job again.

“If you’re LGBT and minority, you’re in a double bind. If you’re in a minority and LGBT and a woman, you’re in a triple bind,” said Rochelle Diamond, chair of the board of directors of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals.

That’s why Microsoft supports organizations like Out Leadership, which works to fill more C-suite level jobs with LGBTQ+ talent. Microsoft employees attend events like the Lesbians Who Tech summit, which connects lesbians and helps them build a network of colleagues, associates, and friends in the industry in addition to championing the representation of out lesbian women in the field.

It was that very summit helped spark Chen’s own personal awakening.

“Shortly after I started, I was out to my immediate team and manager, but I was living as a software engineer who also happened to be gay,” said Chen. “It wasn’t a part of who I was at work, just kind of like a fun fact about me.”

Chen had heard about the Lesbians Who Tech summit and wanted to check it out. She was trepidatious when she asked her manager, unsure how taking time off work solely to understand how what it means to be gay in the workplace might be perceived. To her delight, her manager was all in.

“My being queer was seen by management as important and worth the funding to explore what that meant for me,” she said.

When Chen started at Microsoft as an intern, she initially worried that she would have be closeted to survive a corporate work environment. But when her teammates showed genuine interest in her life and weren’t at all bothered by her sexuality, Chen decided she was never going to hide her real self for a job again.

“Now, I try to include this perspective in every discussion I have. I want to be the representation that I was so sorely missing growing up.”

This is a guest post by Mike Rousos

I recently had an opportunity to help a developer with an ASP.NET Core app that was functionally correct but slow when under a heavy user load. We found a few different factors contributing to the app’s slowdown while investigating, but the majority of the issues were some variation of blocking threads that could have run in a non-blocking way. It was a good reminder for me just how crucial it is to use non-blocking patterns in multi-threaded scenarios like a web app.

Beware of Locks

One of the first problems we noticed (through CPU analysis with PerfView) was that a lot of time was spent in logging code paths. This was confirmed with ad hoc exploration of call stacks in the debugger which showed many threads blocked waiting to acquire a lock. It turns out some common logging code paths in the application were incorrectly flushing Application Insights telemetry. Flushing App Insights requires a global lock and should generally not be done manually during the course of an app’s execution. In this case, though, Application Insights was being flushed at least once per HTTP request and, under load, this became a large bottleneck!

You can see this sort of pattern in the images below from a small repro I made. In this sample, I have an ASP.NET Core 2.0 web API that enables common CRUD operations against an Azure SQL database with Entity Framework Core. Load testing the service running on my laptop (not the best test environment), requests were processed in an average of about 0.27 seconds. After adding a custom ILoggerProvider calling Console.WriteLine inside of a lock, though, the average response time rose to 1.85 seconds – a very noticeable difference for end users. Using PerfView and a debugger, we can see that a lot of time (66% of PerfView’s samples) is spent in the custom logging method and that a lot of worker threads are stuck there (delaying responses) while waiting for their turn with the lock.

Something’s up with this logging call

Threads waiting on lock acquisition

ASP.NET Core’s Console logger used to have some locking like this in versions 1.0 and 1.1, causing it to be slow in high-traffic scenarios, but these issues have been addressed in ASP.NET Core 2.0. It is still a best practice to be mindful of logging in production, though.

For very performance-sensitive scenarios, you can use LoggerMessage to optimize logging even further. LoggerMessage allows defining log messages ahead-of-time so that message templates don’t need to be parsed every time a particular message is logged. More details are available in ourdocumentation, but the basic pattern is that log messages are defined as strongly-typed delegates:

// This delegate logs a particular predefined message

private static readonly Action<ILogger, int, Exception> _retrievedWidgets = LoggerMessage.Define<int>( LogLevel.Information, new EventId(1, nameof(RetrievedWidgets)), "Retrieved {Count} widgets"); // A helper extension method to make it easy to call the 

// LoggerMessage-produced delegate from an ILogger

public static void RetrievedWidgets(this ILogger logger, int count) => _retrievedWidgets(logger, count, null);

Then, that delegate is invoked as needed for high-performance logging:

var widgets = await _dbContext.Widgets.AsNoTracking().ToListAsync();

_logger.RetrievedWidgets(widgets.Length);

Keep Asynchronous Calls Asynchronous

Another issue our investigation uncovered in the slow ASP.NET Core app was similar: calling Task.Wait() or Task.Result on asynchronous calls made from the app’s controllers instead of using await. By making controller actions async and awaiting these sorts of calls, the executing thread is freed to go serve other requests while waiting for the invoked task to complete.

I reproduced this issue in my sample application by replacing async calls in the action methods with synchronous alternatives. At first, this only caused a small slowdown (0.32 second average response instead of 0.27 seconds) because the async methods I was calling in the sample were all pretty quick. To simulate longer async tasks, I updated both the async and synchronous versions of my sample to have a Task.Delay(200) in each controller action (which, of course, I used await with when async and .Wait() with when synchronous). In the async case, average response time went from 0.27s to 0.46s which is more or less what we would expect if each request has an extra pause or 200ms. In the synchronous case, though, the average time went from 0.32 seconds to 1.47 seconds!

The charts below demonstrate where a lot of this slowdown comes from. The green lines in the charts represent requests served per second and the red lines represent user load. In the first chart (which was taken while running the async version of my sample), you can see that as users increase, more requests are being served. In the second chart (corresponding to theTask.Wait() case), on the other hand, there’s a strange pattern of requests per second remaining flat for several minutes after user load increases and only then increasing to keep up. This is because the existing pool of threads serving requests couldn’t keep up with more users (since they were all blocked on Task.Wait() calls) and throughput didn’t improve until more threads were created.

Asynchronous RPS compared to user load

Synchronous RPS compared to user load

Attaching a debugger to both scenarios, I found that 75 managed threads were being used in the async test but 232 were in use in the synchronous test. Even though the synchronous test did eventually add enough threads to handle the incoming requests, calling Task.Result and Task.Wait can cause slowdowns when user load changes. Analyzers (like AsyncFixer) can help to find places where asynchronous alternatives can be used and there are EventSource events that can be used to find blocking calls at runtime, if needed.

Wrap-Up

There were some other perf issues in the application I helped investigate (server GC wasn’t enabled in ASP.NET Core 1.1 templates, for example, something that has been corrected in ASP.NET Core 2.0), but one common theme of the problems we found was around blocking threads unnecessarily. Whether it’s from lock contention or waiting on tasks to finish, it’s important to keep threads unblocked for good performance in ASP.NET Core apps.

If you’d like to dig into your own apps to look for perf trouble areas, check out the Channel9 PerfView tutorials for an overview of how PerfView can help uncover CPU and memory-related perf issues in .NET applications.

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. It’s a slow week coming out of the long weekend in the United States, but we’ve still got several games worth checking out.

Out Now

Bardbarian Premium Edition (iOS Universal and Android) – Full review coming soon!

Once upon a time there was an iOS game called Bardbarian. It was a dollar to buy and the developers hoped players would buy IAPs to speed up progress. Players did not, and due to some publisher problems the game went away (on iOS). The developers remade the game and rebalanced it as a premium game. This new premium edition, called the Golden Axe Edition on Android, has just been released on iOS and is supposed to play faster and be more skill based.

You play as Brad the Bardbarian. He was an axe-wielding berserker type, but he got tired of that and turned his axe into a lute to become a bard. Brad’s days of taking on foes aren’t over, however, as his town has come under attack. You play as Brad and must fend off waves of monsters, and bosses, not with your axe, but by summoning allies with your sweet lute music. You run around luting it up and dodging attacks while your buddies attack and hopefully beat down the bad guys. As you fend off waves you’re able to grab loot (lute-driven loot!), unlock new units, and upgrade them in time to face tougher and tougher foes. It plays out like a mix of action-RPG (combat and progression) and tower-defense (defending the town against waves of enemies) and is if you dig that type of game Bardbarian Premium Edition is an entertaining option.

WindWord (iOS Universal)

Sail the seas in a trading ship one word at a time in WindWord. It’s part simulation game, part word game where you spell words to sail your ship around, attempting to get to various ports to buy and sell goods. If your words are too short you risk attack by pirates. As you voyage and make money you can upgrade your ship, buy canons to take on pirates, and even pick up pieces of treasure maps. It’s a really intriguing idea that ends up being a bit flat in execution. It’s hard to find good, long words so it takes some time to move from one port to another. Coupled with the fact that you can’t really afford a lot of the trade goods until you’ve advanced the result is kind of puttering around. If early advancement moved quicker I think this could be a really fun game.

Mazes and Mages (iOS Universal and Android) – Full review coming soon!

Mazes and Mages is a new roguelike deckbuilder where you, a mage, work your way through mazes and battle enemies. Combat is a card game and will be easily picked up by anybody familiar with the genre. The game is fairly simple, both in terms of gameplay and graphics, but not bad if you’re looking for a new roguelike deckbuilder to mess around with. I like the character progression and always enjoy some card slinging, but combat is too biased toward aggro decks and fast starts with little opportunity to catch up if you miss an early drop.

Sir Questionnaire (iOS Universal  and Android) – Full review coming soon!

Just last week I mentioned Orange Pixel’s new roguelike dungeon crawler Sir Questionnaire when it launched on iOS. Now Android users can get in on the fast-paced fun.

Updates

Portal Knights (iOS Universal and Android)

A fancy new creative mode has been added to action-RPG/craft-and-survive game Portal Knights. You can create and share your own islands with unlimited resources that can be mined with a single strike. You’ll have every item in your inventory in unlimited quantities, you can fly, and there’s nothing to kill you. Heck, you can’t even die by falling from on high or drowning. There’s also no quests or events, since you have everything. Same deal as Minecraft creative mode, really.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

If you are a pixel artist, one of the most challenging tasks you have to deal with is handling multiple resolutions and aspect ratios that your game might run at.  Thankfully if you are using the newest (Unity 2018.2b3 or later) version of Unity there is now a new component that makes this job borderline trivial.

Announced in the following tweet:

You can download the component and a couple sample scenes here on Github, and you can read more about it here.

The 2D Pixel Perfect package contains the Pixel Perfect Camera component which ensures your pixel art remains crisp and clear at different resolutions, and stable in motion.

It is a single component that makes all the calculations needed to scale the viewport with resolution changes, removing the hassle from the user. The user can adjust the definition of the pixel art rendered within the camera viewport through the component settings, as well preview any changes immediately in Game view by using the Run in Edit Mode feature.

Using the camera is simple, once the package is installed, it’s simply added to a camera and configure:

Your game should now scale gracefully across resolutions and aspect ratios.  To see the Pixel Perfect Camera in action be sure to watch this video, also embedded below.

UPDATE: Date corrected to May 29.

As readers may be aware, Fedora 28 recently released to great acclaim. That means Fedora 26 hits its End of Life (EOL) status on May 29, 2018. Read more here about what this means, and what steps you can take with your older Fedora systems.

After May 29, packages in the Fedora 26 repositories no longer receive any security, bugfix, or enhancement updates. Furthermore, at that point the community adds no new packages to the F26 collection.

The Fedora Project highly recommends you upgrade all systems to Fedora 28 or Fedora 27 before the EOL date. Upgrades are an easy way to keep your system setup while you move to the latest technology.

Looking back at Fedora 26

Fedora 26 was released in July 2017. During its lifetime, the Fedora community published nearly 10,000 updates to the F26 repositories. Fedora 26 Workstation featured version 3.24 of GNOME. The release also carried numerous improvements and highlights:

• A new partitioning tool in Anaconda for expert setup
• DNF 2.5 with new software management capabilities
•  The Python Classroom Lab which helps educators introduce students to the latest technology

About the Fedora Release Cycle

The Fedora Project provides updates for a particular release until a month after the second subsequent version of Fedora is released. For example, updates for Fedora 26 continue until one month after the release of Fedora 28. Fedora 27 continues to be supported up until one month after the release of Fedora 29.

Since Fedora 28 released on time on May 1, 2018, Fedora 26 reaches EOL even though it’s been around less than 11 months. So if that lifecycle seems shorter than usual to you, you’re right!

The Fedora Project wiki contains more detailed information about the entire Fedora Release lifecycle. The lifecycle includes milestones from development to release, and the post-release support period.

May was the month for learning at Linux.com and The Linux Foundation, and we covered a range of topics and offered an array of free resources to help you expand your knowledge of Linux and open source. Let’s take a look at some of the month’s most popular content.

Free Training 

We just released the latest in our series of free Open Source Guides for the Enterprise. This guide, produced in conjunction with The TODO Group, provides practical advice for Building Leadership in an Open Source Community. You’ll find the complete guide here, and you can browse the entire list of Open Source Guides here.

With the rapid adoption of open source in the enterprise comes the need for sound security practices. This article by Sam Dean looks at various resources for securing your open source code, including links to free tools, checklists, and best practices.

Looking for more free training? Enrollment is now open for The Linux Foundation’s new Introduction to Open Source Networking Technologies training course (LFS165x). This online course, available for free on edX.org, teaches the fundamentals needed to understand and adopt SDN, NFV, network automation, and modern networking.

Check out additional training resources in our recent series of tutorials previewing the Cloud Foundry for Developers training course (including a free sample chapter) and more cloud-related articles here.

Open Source AI

A new ebook Open Source AI: Projects, Insights, and Trends by Ibrahim Haddad covers 16 open source AI projects, including Acumos AI, Apache Spark, Caffe, and TensorFlow. This free, 100+ page ebook provides in-depth information on the projects’ histories, codebases, and GitHub contributions, and more.

Interested in more about AI? Check out these open source AI and machine learning articles and enter the Acumos AI developer challenge.

Tutorials and More

You can learn even more about Linux in these popular articles and tutorials from May:

Get started with Linux through the free “Introduction to Linux” course from The Linux Foundation and edX.

Finnish edugaming startup TeacherGaming has teamed up with publisher Paradox Interactive to bring an educational version of Colossal Order’s Cities: Skylines city-building game to classrooms around the world.

It’s a nice bit of news for the 2015 game ((which has sold over 5 million copies) that’s well in line with the folks at TeacherGaming’s history of advocating for (and helping realize) the use of video games as practical teaching tools.

If TeacherGaming sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same group of folks that also helped bring about MinecraftEdu (since acquired by Microsoft) and KerbalEdu. 

The educational version of Cities: Skylines that’s now available to teachers (via TeacherGaming’s online storefront) includes custom educational tutorials and eight custom teaching scenarios that can be pared with lesson plans. Like other TeacherGaming games, it’s also been modified to allow teachers to track students’ progress.

We are excited to officially announce that Hyper Universe will launch as an Xbox One console exclusive on August 7! Hyper Universe will be available to download and play for free with Xbox Live Gold upon release and starting today, fans of the game can pre-order the Ultimate Hypers Pack, which will instantly unlock all current and future playable Hypers in the game. This pack also includes a total of six Xbox One exclusive Aurora-themed cosmetic skins, and anyone who pre-orders the Ultimate Hypers Pack before August 7 will also receive a seventh limited edition additional bonus skin featuring Aurora’s Arrow for Celine.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Hyper Universe is a 2D side-scrolling MOBA that combines fast-paced combat with easy to pick-up-and-play controls. At launch, players can choose from a diverse cast of 39 playable characters, called Hypers, each bringing their own unique personalities and skills to the battlefield.

There are six different classes of Hypers to choose from: Tank, Support, Specialist, Striker, Bruiser, and Assassin. Each class receives specific stat bonuses that both complement and amplify their strengths in combat, benefitting you and your teammates. That said, even within the same class, every Hyper has their own fully-developed move set and ability kit, so no matter what playstyle you enjoy you’re sure to find a Hyper that suits you perfectly.

Hyper Universe has all the gameplay elements players would come to expect from a traditional MOBA, including minions, towers, jungle camps, and (of course) lots of PvP combat. However, both new and veteran MOBA players will find that Hyper Universe also introduces many improvements to the genre as well. Unlike traditional MOBAs, matches in Hyper Universe are fairly fast-paced, lasting roughly 15-20 minutes each. Another one of the unique aspects of Hyper Universe is the noticeably lower learning curve of expectations set for newer players, particularly when compared with other MOBAs. There are no specific laning positions or metas players are required to learn before starting a match, resources are shared when killing monsters within the jungle, and all players start off with a generous learning curve buff to help them seamlessly get accustomed to the game.

​Hyper Universe also maps perfectly to the Xbox One controller, resulting in a gaming experience that is (quite literally) easy to pick up and play, while the diverse roster of Hypers simultaneously provides a rewarding and excitingly unique experience each time players queue up and enter a new match.

Hyper Universe will be free to play with Xbox Live Gold and the Ultimate Hypers Pack will be available for $19.99.

For more information about the game, please visit our website at http://hyperuniverse.nexon.net and stay tuned to Xbox Wire.

See you in the battlefield!