Since we launched Visual Studio 2017 in March of that year, it has become our most popular Visual Studio release ever. Your feedback has helped our team publish seven updates since our initial GA, which have improved solution load performance, build performance, and unit test discovery performance. We’ve also made Visual Studio 2017 our most accessible releases ever, helping developers with low-vision or no-vision be more productive.

Our team is focused on introducing features that make every developer more productive: better navigation features like “go to all” (Ctrl + ,), features to improve code quality like Live Unit Testing, and most recently, to enable real time collaboration with Live Share. And we have even started to show how we will use artificial intelligence to assist developers with IntelliCode.

Now, it’s time to start to look at what comes next.

The short answer is Visual Studio 2019

Because the Developer Tools teams (especially .NET and Roslyn) do so much work in GitHub, you’ll start to see check-ins that indicate that we’re laying the foundation for Visual Studio 2019, and we’re now in the early planning phase of Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio for Mac. We remain committed to making Visual Studio faster, more reliable, more productive for individuals and teams, easier to use, and easier to get started with. Expect more and better refactorings, better navigation, more capabilities in the debugger, faster solution load, and faster builds. But also expect us to continue to explore how connected capabilities like Live Share can enable developers to collaborate in real time from across the world and how we can make cloud scenarios like working with online source repositories more seamless. Expect us to push the boundaries of individual and team productivity with capabilities like IntelliCode, where Visual Studio can use Azure to train and deliver AI-powered assistance into the IDE.

Our goal with this next release is to make it a simple, easy upgrade for everyone – for example, Visual Studio 2019 previews will install side by side with Visual Studio 2017 and won’t require a major operating system upgrade.

As for timing of the next release, we’ll say more in the coming months, but be assured we want to deliver Visual Studio 2019 quickly and iteratively. We’ve learned a lot from the cadence we’ve used with Visual Studio 2017, and one of the biggest things we have learned is that we can do a lot of good work if we focus on continually delivering and listening to your feedback. There are no bits to preview yet, but the best way to ensure you are on the cutting edge will be to watch this blog and to subscribe to the Visual Studio 2017 Preview.

In the meantime, our team will continue to publish a roadmap of what we’re planning online, work in many open source repositories, and take your feedback through our Developer Community website. This blog post is just another example of sharing our plans with you early, so you can plan and work with us to continue to make Visual Studio a great coding environment.

John

John Montgomery, Director of Program Management for Visual Studio @JohnMont John is responsible for product design and customer success for all of Visual Studio, C++, C#, VB, JavaScript, and .NET. John has been at Microsoft for 17 years, working in developer technologies the whole time.

A clash of explosive proportions has arrived!

Get ready to create your own dream team and take on opponents from four different franchises!

Created through an all-star collaboration between BlazBlue, Atlus’ Persona, French Bread’s Under Night In-Birth, and Rooster Teeth’s hugely popular RWBY web series, Cross Tag Battle celebrates the fighting genre for pros and newcomers alike.

Engage in fast-paced 2v2 team battles filled with stylish action, smooth gameplay, and striking 2D graphics.

Features

• CROSS: Cross over between 4 different universes! Play as characters from the BlazBlue, Persona, Under Night In-Birth, and (for the first time ever in a fighting game), RWBY series.
• TAG: Dive deep into the accessible 2 vs 2 gameplay system in a gorgeous 2D tag team based fighting game. Overwhelm your opponents with the tag-team “Crush Assault”!
• BATTLE: Take the fight to your friends, online, or against CPU opponents in robust single and multiplayer modes.
• LOOK GOOD DOING IT: High definition anime-styled 2D characters, alongside beautiful 3D backgrounds and smooth animation, brings the game to life.
• ARC ASSEMBLED: Developed by Arc System Works, creators and developers of critically acclaimed and fan favorite fighting series BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, and Dragon Ball Fighter Z.
• Enjoy English and Japanese in-game voices and English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese text.

If you would like to purchase the digital version of the game, please visit https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/blazblue-cross-tag-battle-switch.

Language
Suggestive Themes
Violence

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr is Now Available on Steam and is 10% off!*

Enter the Chaos-infested Caligari Sector and purge the unclean with the most powerful agents of the Imperium of Man!

W40k: Inquisitor – Martyr is a grim Action-RPG featuring multiple classes of the Inquisition who will carry out the Emperor’s will.

*Offer ends June 12 at 10AM Pacific Time

Attention movie lovers, this post is a sequel! Before reading, it’s advised to see the previous one here. But in case you didn’t, here’s a piece of unceremonious exposition: previously our hard rock anti-heroes under the band of Vile Monarch managed to get one step closer to world domination by creating a successful video game called Oh…Sir! The Insult Simulator. The Vile Monarch can rest now… or can he? Announcing Oh…Sir! The Hollywood Roast.

The Insult Simulator was a game where you could build absurdly rude sentences against a living or artificial enemy in unlikely conflict scenarios ripping-off inspired by Monty Python. What started as a fun 42-hour game jam experiment, eventually turned into a full-fledged, surprisingly successful game that conquered many platforms (Xbox One being among them) and hearts of millions of YouTube viewers. As we learned from the movie industry, this is when you should make a quickly glued together, direct-to-DVD, cash-grabbing continuation.

Which we didn’t do. Instead, we wanted to – firstly – improve the things we considered lackluster in the previous game and – secondly – refresh the setting, so the insult-based combat can be enjoyed by people with an allergy to tea and crumpets. So, using a movie jargon, it was meant to be more of a spin-off than a total sequel. And yes, all the insolent film-related vocabulary in this post is for a reason, as we ultimately decided to insult the movies and the movie industry.

Movie parody seems like the easiest kind of comedy, right? Everyone does that, including movies parodying other movies and millions of bad YouTube videos. But early on we realized there’s gonna be some hurdles. First of all, we didn’t want to get into trouble, being sued by movie studios. People to this day keep asking us, “How could you use Gandalf, Harry Potter, or Deadpool?” The answer is: we couldn’t.

The decision to stay away from real properties was made early on and it was an easy one. But then we realized it’s not a parody if you stop at turning famous characters to Gundalf or Herry Putter – this is a cheap knock-off. So, the idea was to squeeze some comedy out of not having these properties.

The first one to figure out was Gandalf, who at first was meant to be a mix of all wise wizards in the history of fiction. But this didn’t seem to lead to anything particularly funny. Then we made what we called internally “Gandalf The Pink” – Gandalf dressed as an elderly lady. Obviously, he needed a better name and… well, he wore pink and that’s it, the joke’s over.

Finally, it turned out that a good idea is to start with a story – what happened to Gandalf after his famous adventures? Maybe he moved to a normal neighborhood  Maybe he still wears a robe for the sake of the old times but thought that a bathrobe would allow him to blend in. This is how The Greasy Wizard was born – if Gandalf was your creepy old neighbor, he would be our man. Goes with a Hobbit-style basement, a full set of Tolkien-inspired innuendos and a booming voice of an amazing British actor Rosko Lewis.

The Greasy Wizard is still one of our favorite characters and he taught us how to build the rest of the cast. The key was to build each of them around a single, clear and hopefully humorous idea. Dirty Potter – what if Harry Potter’s story takes place in the wild west and he’s played by Clint Eastwood? Groan the Destroyinator – what if Conan and Terminator are really the same character? Nosferateen – what if Nosferatu became a vampire as a teenager and is even whinier than the pale dude from “Twilight?” This approach worked for most of the characters, but of course, some turned out better than the rest. Chop Sue E. is one that you might like if you get her, but we didn’t make it easy. She’s a combination of a lot of ideas related to Asian martial arts cinema but would probably find more fans if this mix had a clear dominating part. We did it the right way with Wisecrack – he represents all superhero blockbusters in one Frankenstein body, but with Deadpool as a centerpiece (although his earlier iteration wasn’t as clear – nor as good!).

This basically concludes the relatively unadventurous story of how we managed to get away with roasting Hollywood, while still having a lot of fun. We were sharing this fun across different platforms for a while now and are finally able to bring it to Xbox One. As a special treat for the boxiest of consoles, we added Mixer integration, that lets you watch other people insult each other while messing with the result by voting on the sickest burn.

We’ve been following the story of Crazy Justice for some time here at Nintendo Life; Black Riddles Studios’ attempt to add something new to the crazy-popular battle royale genre has been shaping up quite nicely, and is set to be the first of its kind on Nintendo Switch.

As it happens, in response to the recent rumours that suggest battle royale superstar Fortnite will be appearing on Switch at E3 next week, the studio wants to put out a strong and clear message to potential customers: “Crazy Justice is a very different game to Fortnite”.

The response comes after numerous comments appeared online from users thinking that Crazy Justice won’t be able to compete with the likes of Fortnite, especially should the game also arrive on Switch. Here’s a snippet of a press release from the studio explaining its thoughts on the matter.

“Crazy Justice is not a Fortnite replica; we don’t consider our game to be a clone by any means (we have been working on it since 2016), we don’t believe Crazy Justice is an inferior experience, and we don’t even consider our game to be at a disadvantage if Fortnite happens to release for Nintendo Switch during E3. The reason for all of this is simple: Crazy Justice is a very different game to Fortnite. It might look similar at first glance, but we are bringing a unique and alternative playstyle to the massively popular genre of Battle Royale, and for you (as a player) this is great news. Having different options to choose from is a beautiful thing, and Crazy Justice is coming to ALL major platforms”.

The press release goes on to say that the studio would actually describe the upcoming title as “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds meets Overwatch with a touch of Fortnite-y looking graphics”. You can check out a full feature list below.

Key Features that make Crazy Justice a different experience to Fortnite

– Gameplay is based on heroes and abilities: There will be 23 heroes in the game (with more to come in future updates), each with their own set of unique skills and stats. There will be passive and active abilities to choose from, and you can upgrade and customise them (to a certain degree) through a collectable card deck system.
– Different game modes than Fortnite/PUBG: Including a Story Mode (co-op), Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag with your friends.
– Not focused on instant building: While there will be spells and skills that allow you to build structures, fast building is not an essential part of Crazy Justice.
– A larger map than Fortnite: There will also be regular new map updates in the future.
– Different biomes: Crazy Justice features a desert, and a snowy area, with procedurally generated building interiors which will change every game being considered for the future. Changing weather cycles (night/day/rain etc.) are also being considered.
– Vehicles: At some point, we want you to be able to drive even a bulldozer to escape deadly fire – or ram people into oblivion with it!
– No microtransactions: This doesn’t mean that we won’t have skins available in the future. We will always listen to the community, and if we do bring skins, we plan for them to be a reward for your time and achievements obtained in the game.

Crazy Justice will arrive on the Nintendo Switch eShop this month. Will you be keeping an eye on this one? Do you think it can stand strong against the scarily popular competition? Let us know down below.