Apple launched its highly anticipated Vision Pro spatial computing headset last Feb. 2 amid significant hype and hopes it could finally push virtual or mixed reality into mainstream use.But with a price tag of $3,499 and a staggered rollout to countries outside the US, the idea of widespread adoption was always optimistic; fewer than 500,000 of the devices have been sold to date,according toBloomberg. (Others have provided similar estimates for first-year sales, though Apple itself declined to comment.)When you get right down to it, the numbers arent terrifically huge I wouldnt consider that something to jump up and down about, said Ramon Llamas, research directorforIDCs Devices and Displays team.He described the Vision Pro as a first iteration that, like other first-gen Apple devices, will take some time to find a broader audience.Youve got to start somewhere, and Apple swung for the fences, Llamas said. They did a very good job in terms of UI and also in terms of display. So, do I consider it a flop? Absolutely not.JLStock / ShutterstockDespite shortcomings the high price and a paucity of use cases, chief among themits too early to write off the device or Apples broader strategy around augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), according to Llamas. Apple is very quick to iterate and improve, such that a Gen. 2 or Gen. 3 Vision Pro is going to make the current device look quaint, he said.Vision Pro sales represent a small fraction of the number of iPhones sold each year (passing 200 million annually in recent years). The same goes for other devices in Apples line-up: iPads, Macbooks, and Apple Watches sell in the tens of millions a year. But those are well-established products, whereas the market for AR/VR devices is in its infancy: around 6.8 million devices were sold globally in 2023, according to thelatest IDC data available, compared to more than1billion smartphones. (IDC expected about 9.7 million AR/VR devices to be sold in 2024.)IDC expects continued growth for AR/VR devices during the next few years.IDCIt could be more than a decade before widespread adoption occurs, said Tuong Nguyen, director analyst and part of Gartners Emerging Technology and Trends team. So, a few hundred thousand [Vision Pro devices sold], I think thats plenty good, he said. Its a great start to a long journey.Vision Pros growing painsReviews of the Vision Pro at launch pegged it as an impressive feat of engineering with significant drawbacks that preclude regular use. Those issues includeda lack of content, short battery life, the neck-straining weight, and perhaps the biggest drawback the price. Most saw it more as a glimpse at the future of computing rather than a mainstream device.Nearly a year since launch, the Vision Pro remains a devise still in search of identity, with a key use case that has so far remained elusive.There was a lot of hype when the Apple Vision Pro was first announced, said Avi Greengart, president and founder of Techsponential. And that hype hasnt quite been matched with a killer app, or a set of killer apps, that have made people say: Forget the cost or the comfort, I must have this device. But thats how platforms evolve VisiCalc didnt show up on day one, or Excel. So, it will take time.Apple has cast a broad net in offering up potential uses for the headset.Entertainment has been a prominent one, and the Vision Pro has been praised for its immersive albeit solitary entertainment experience. But Apple has struggled to cultivate an ecosystem of apps and content that can keep users returning to the headset. AWall Street Journal reportin October highlighted the difficulty in attracting developers to the platform, with native apps from big names such as YouTube and Netflix missing, though HBO Max and Disney+ are available.Some of the most remarkable entertainment experiences are already available for the Apple Vision Pro, but they tend to be relatively short, said Greengart. We dont yet see regular sports or music content that you can experience, like a subscription to your favorite NBA or NFL team where you get 50-yard line seats.The slow uptake has put some consumer-facing companies off creating Vision Pro apps, said Jan Solecki, head of product strategy and growth at Nomtek, a software development agency that focuses on mobile and AR/VR apps. Theyre just waiting to see how the platform will perform: theyre not rushing to launch, he said. Nomtek talked to a number of meditation app providers that considered the Vision Pro and decided, We dont really have that user base there, he said.Aside from video and virtual environments, one notable feature in the VisionOS 2.0 release is the ability to turn old photos into spatial 3D images; its a relatively simple addition, yet hasproven popular with users.Google Trends shows interest in the Vision Pro peaked around the time it launched, then flatlined after.GoogleThough gaming is often a primary use for virtual of mixed reality devices, but its not one Apple seems particularly interested in pursuing. Apples eye detection and hand gesture inputs are well suited to some tasks, but most games require a controller and the Vision Pro is hampered by a lack of hardware support. To perhaps remedy that, Apple is reportedly partnering with Sony to enable the use of its PlayStation VR hand controllers.Personal productivity is another potential use, and one Apple has leaned into in its marketing materials. Work apps available on the Vision Pro include Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint alongside Apples own productivity tools.VisionOS updates in recent months have made it easier to use the headset in conjunction with a Macbook laptop, including the ability to connect a Bluetooth mouse and view a Macbook keyboard while in a virtual setting. Theres also wide-screen mode (and with the VisionOS 2.2 release an ultrawide screen option). You can array windows all around your space, physical space, and create the equivalent of a six-monitor setup, and thats pretty exciting, said Greengart.AppleThe weight of the device about 1.3 pounds makes it harder for people to use it for long periods. But replacement head straps developed by third-party vendors do promise some relief, said Greengart.One of the things that has made the biggest improvement is not a software update, but a hardware one, he said, pointing to options from the likes of Annapro and medical device manufacturer ResMed.Still, neither of them can completely negate the fact that this is still a rather heavy computer youre strapping to your face, he said. That is one of the biggest constraints of the device today. It is not the most comfortable thing to wear over long periods of time. srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 1394w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=300%2C233&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=768%2C597&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=1024%2C796&quality=50&strip=all 1024w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=896%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 896w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=216%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 216w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=108%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 108w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=617%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 617w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=463%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 463w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ANNAPRO-AVP-Strap-for-Vision-Pro.jpg?resize=321%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 321w" width="1024" height="796" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">ANNAPRO says its AVP Strap for Vision Pro can reduce facial pressure by about 60%-90%.ANNAPROOf course, those complaints can leveled at all mixed-reality headsets, and Apple has been lauded for the Vision Pros interface.Theres no question that the price and the weight are inhibitors, but the user experience you get on an Apple Vision Pro is as of yet unmatched by anything else on the market, said Greengart.Apple targets the enterpriseApple alsosees the Vision Pro as an enterprise tool,and has pitched as being useful for collaboration, employee training, and remote assistance for frontline workers.I would say they focus more on enterprise than they usually do with other products theyve launched in the past, at least early on, said Nguyen.With a less-than-expected consumer interest in the Vision Pro, Nomtek shifted its attention to developing apps for business customers. Very early on, we noticed a switch in Apples strategy to move more towards the enterprise customer. With that in mind, weve been also following this strategy and targeting enterprises, said Solecki.The company has worked on a variety of business-focused projects, including developing a Vision Pro app that provides step-by-step guidance and training for maintenance technicians at a jet manufacturer firm. A building material manufacturer is also exploring the development of a Vision Pro app to aid machinery maintenance for hundreds of factories around the world, Solecki said.The arrival of VisionOS 2.0 helped broaden the number ofpotential enterprise use cases, he said, with a set ofenterprise APIs.One API opens access to the main camera feed, allowing developers to create an anomaly detection app for a production worker to detect faulty components, according to Apple. Another enables QR code scanning and detection; that could beuseful for a warehouse worker scanning bar codes to verify packages have the correct item without the need for a hand-held scanner. Its also now possible for developers to exceed the default limits on the Vision Pros processors to handle more demanding scenarios, such as rendering a high-fidelity, mixed-reality display of a race car. (That kind of use, however, can reduce battery life and increase fan noise.)Teams users can join meetings using their Persona via the Vision Pro.MicrosoftTheaddition of device management capabilitiesearlier this year also made it easier for enterprises to deploy multiple Vision Pro headsets, said Solecki, with more parameters to manage and restrict usage. We are looking to implement this for an airline as an in-flight entertainment solutionwe can really narrow down what they can do and they cannot do, to only access the apps that weve approved, he said.More generally, the Vision Pro launch served to reignite business interest in mixed reality.Regardless of the actual sales of Apple Vision Pro, it has been very good for the XR scene as a whole industry, said Solecki. One company that came to us and wanted to build something on Vision Pro said: We tried HoloLens years ago, and we didnt like it and we just dropped it, but now Apple has released [the Vision Pro] and we want to try it. People got excited again by an XR headset.As with consumer adoption, business demand has been cautious. An IDC survey of US-based IT managers with responsibility for purchasing AR/VR devicesshowed thatonly around a third of respondents are keen on acquiring the Vision Pro for their organization.I think Apple has a lot to do on both a software and hardware front before the Vision Pro will become a must have device, even at a pilot level, at the typical US business, Lewis Ward, senior research analyst at IDC and the report author, toldComputerworldlast year.Some industry sectors, such as finance and healthcare, remain more bullish, however.The interest is there [from businesses], but there are still many hurdles that need to be overcome to make it viable for an enterprise, said Nguyen. One [is] price; two, well just call it content: what can I do with this to make it worth this investment?If Vision Pro is just the start, whats next?Almost as soon as the Vision Pro launched, rumors of follow-up devices began to spread, including talk of a lower-priced version that strips out some premium features, such as the front-facing EyeSight display.A cheaper version could help attract a wider audience of users (and developers), at least until a killer app arrives that convinces people to invest serious money in a headset. I dont know if they will release something cheaper, but I will say theyneedto in order to get any meaningful adoption beyond what theyve gotten already, saidNguyen.Image: CCS Insight slideTheres also talk of Apple developing lightweight augmented reality glasses the Holy Grail for Apple and others.But, similar to Metas Project Orion prototype, anyaugmented reality glasses from Apple are likelyyears away from release.In the meantime, the existence of the Vision Pro and Apples presence in the market could spur wider innovation. It reinvigorated the competition said Greengart, pointing to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who publicly talked up his companys devices as a more affordable rival to the Vision Pro.In addition, Google recently announced its Android XR operating system, which will be used in a new Samsung headset due to launch this year. The device and OS bear a resemblance to Apples own hardware and software, with mixed reality pass-through and a multi-screen interface.Android XR places greater emphasis on the use of artificial intelligence a strategy Apples likely to pursue, too, with potential to integrate Apple Intelligence into the mixed reality headset.The competitive environment is what fosters the innovation, said Nguyen. Thats an opportunity for you to improve your product, your solution, your offering, whatever it happens to be.One thing that all can agree on is that the Vision Pro has given the market a much-needed boost. The announcement and launch advanced us a few steps closer to creating the conditions necessary for meaningful adoption growth.

Inhabitants of the Marshall Islandsa chain of coral atolls in the center of the Pacific Oceanrely on sea transportation for almost everything: moving people from one island to another, importing daily necessities from faraway nations, and exporting their local produce. For millennia they sailed largely in canoes, but much of their seafaring movement today involves big, bulky, diesel-fueled cargo ships that are heavy polluters.Theyre not alone, of course. Cargo shipping is responsible for about 3% of the worlds annual greenhouse-gas emissions, and at the current rate of growth, the global industry could account for 10% of emissions by 2050.Marshallese shipping represents just a drop in the ocean of global greenhouse-gas pollution; larger, more industrially developed countries are responsible for far more. But the islands have been disproportionately experiencing the consequences of human-made climate change: warming waters, more frequent extreme weather, and rising sea levels.All this has created a sense of urgency for people like Alson Kelen, who lives and works in Majuro, the islands capital. Hes the founder of Waan Ael, a Marshallese canoeing organization that is focused on keeping the regions ancient and more environmentally sustainable maritime traditions alive. In doing so, he hopes to help his nation fully decarbonize its fleets. Efforts include training local youths to build traditional Marshallese canoes (to replace small, motor-powered speedboats) and larger sailboats fitted with solar panels (to replace medium-size cargo ships). He was also an advisor on construction of the Juren Ae, a cargo sailboat (shown at right) inspired by traditional Marshallese vessels, which made its maiden voyage in 2024 and can carry 300 metric tons of cargo. The Marshall Islands Shipping Corporation hopes it offers a blueprint for cleaner cargo transportation across the Pacific; relative to a fuel-powered cargo ship, the vessel could decrease emissions by up to 80%. Its a beautiful big sister of our little canoes, says Kelen.Though hyperlocal, Kelens work is part of a global project from the International Maritime Organization to reduce emissions associated with cargo shipping to net zero by 2050. Beyond these tiny islands, much of the effort to meet the IMOs goals focuses on replacing gasoline with alternatives such as ammonia, methane, nuclear power, and hydrogen. And theres also what the Marshallese people have long relied on: wind power. Its just one option on the table, but the industry cannot decarbonize quickly enough to meet the IMOs goals without a role for wind propulsion, says Christiaan De Beukelaer, a political anthropologist and author of Trade Winds: A Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping. If you take time into consideration, wind is indispensable, he says. Studies show that deploying wind power on vessels could lower the shipping industrys carbon dioxide emissions by 20%. What wind does is it effectively cuts out a few uncertainties, says De Beukelaervariables such as the fluctuation of fuel prices and the costs from any carbon pricing scheme the industry may adopt. The IMO is technology agnostic, meaning it sets the goals and safety standards but lets the market find the best ways to attain them. A spokesperson from the organization says wind propulsion is one of many avenues being explored. Sails can be used either to fully power a vessel or to supplement the motors as a way of reducing fuel consumption for large bulk carriers, oil tankers, and the roll-on/roll-off vessels used to transport airplanes and cars worldwide. Modern cargo sails come in several shapes, sizes, and styles, including wings, rotors, suction sails, and kites.If weve got five and a half thousand years of experience, isnt this just a no-brainer? says Gavin Allwright, secretary-general of the International Windship Association.Older cargo boats with new sails can use propulsive energy from the wind for up to 30% of their power, while cargo vessels designed specifically for wind could rely on it for up to 80% of their needs, says Allwright, who is still working on standardized measurement criteria to figure out which combination of ship and sail model is most efficient.There are so many variables involved, he saysfrom the size of the ship to the captain steering it. The 50th large vessel fitted with wind-harnessing tech set sail in October 2024, and he predicts that maritime wind power is set to boom by the beginning of 2026.COURTESY OF OCEANBIRDHard wingsOne of the more popular designs for cargo ships is a rigid saila hard, winglike structure that is placed vertically on top of the vessel.Its very much like an airplane wing, says Niclas Dahl, managing director of Oceanbird, a Swedish company that develops these sails. Each one has a main and a flap, which creates a chamber where the wind speed is faster on the outside than the inside. In an aircraft, that discrepancy generates lift force, but in this case, says Dahl, it propels the ship forward. The wings are rigid, but they can be swiveled around and adjusted to capture the wind depending on where its coming from, and they can be folded and retracted close to the deck of the ship when it is nearing a dock.One of Oceanbirds sailsthe 40-meter-high, 14-meter-wide Wing 560, made of high-strength steel, glass fiber, and recycled polyethylene terephthalatecould help cargo ships reduce fuel use by up to 10% per trip, according to the companys calculations. Oceanbird is installing its first set of wings on a cargo vessel that transports cars, which was scheduled to be ready by the end of 2024.Oceanbird, though, is just one manufacturer; by late 2024, eight cargo vessels propelled by hard wings were cruising around the world, most of them generalized bulk carriers and oil tankers.COURTESY OF CARGOKITEKitesOther engineers and scientists are working to power cargo vessels with kites like those that propel paragliders. These kites are made from mixtures of UV-resistant polyester, and they are tethered to the ships bow and fly up to 200 to 300 meters above the ship, where they can make the best use of the constant winds at that altitude to basically tug the boat forward. To maximize lift, the kites are controlled by computers to operate in the sweet spot where wind is most constant. Studies show that a 400-square-meter kite can produce fuel savings of 9% to 15%.The main reason for us believing in kites is high-altitude winds, says Tim Linnenweber, cofounder of CargoKite, which designs micro cargo ships that can be powered this way. You basically have an increasing wind speed the higher you go, and so more consistent, more reliable, more steady winds.COURTESY OF BOUND4BLUESuction sailsInitially used for airplanes in the 1930s, suction sails were designed and tested on boats in the 1980s by the oceanographer and diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau.Suction sails are chubby metal sails that look something like rotors but more oval, with a pointed side. And instead of making the whole sail spin around, the motor turns on a fan on the inside of the sail that sucks in wind from the outside. Cristina Aleixendri, cofounder of Bound4Blue, a Spanish company building suction sails, explains that the vent pulls air in through lots of little holes in the shell of the sail and creates what physicists call a boundary layera thin layer of air blanketing the sail and thrusting it forward. Bound4Blues modern model generates 20% more thrust per square meter of sail than Cousteaus original design, says Aleixendri, and up to seven times more thrust than a conventional sail.Twelve ships fitted with a total of 26 suction sails are currently operating, ranging from fishing boats and oil tankers to roll-on/roll-off vessels. Bound4Blue is working on fitting six ships and has fitted four alreadyincluding one with the largest suction sail ever installed, at 22 meters tall.COURTESY OF NORSEPOWERRotor sailsIn the 1920s, the German engineer Anton Flettner had a vision for a wind-powered ship that used vertical, revolving metal cylinders in place of traditional sails. In 1926, a vessel using his novel design, known as the Flettner rotor, crossed the Atlantic for the first time.Flettner rotors work thanks to the Magnus effect, a phenomenon that occurs when a spinning object moves through a fluid, causing a lift force that can deflect the objects path. With Flettners design, motors spin the cylinders around, and the pressure difference between the sides of the spinning object generates thrust forward, much like a soccer player bending the trajectory of a ball.In a modern upgrade of the rotor sail, designed by the Finnish company Norsepower, the cylinders can spin up to 300 times per minute. This produces 10 times more thrust power than a conventional sail. Norsepower has fitted 27 rotor sails on 14 ships out at sea so far, and six more ships equipped with rotor sails from other companies set sail in 2024.According to our calculations, the rotor sail is, at the moment, the most efficient wind-assistive power when you look at eurocent per kilowatt-hour, says Heikki Pntynen, Norsepowers CEO. Results from their vessels currently out at sea suggest that fuel savings are anywhere between 5% to 30% on the whole voyage.Sofia Quaglia is a freelance science journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, and New Scientist.

With Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 reaching the halfway point in its roadmap, Saber Interactive has outlined what to expect from the third-person shooter in the coming months.Patch 7.0 is first up, adding a new PvP map featuring a closed environment with many narrow passages and custom lobbies. Players can adjust the number of players, time and score limits, and even add modifiers. You can also remove any class restrictions, meaning six of the same on a single team.Horde Mode is set for later this year, with Saber promising more updates before its release. In the meantime, Season 3 will introduce Prestige Rank, new Operations and enemy types, and a new difficulty level with even more rewards. Furthermore, the next Champion for PvE and PvP will be The Salamander, who acts as a sniper.Players can also look forward to other customization elements, including the Mark VI Corvus, to represent more iconic Chapters and the arrival of the Datavault in the Battle Barge. The Datavault will provide a new area where players can unlock additional information on enemies and other elements using a special currency earned from in-game achievements. More details will arrive at the beginning of the year, so stay tuned.Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC check out our review where we gave it a nine out of ten. Its sold over five million copies since its launch.

After reaching 30 million sales in February 2024, ConcernedApes Stardew Valley closed the year with a massive new milestone. As of December, its sold over 41 million units, per Barone in a new press release. PC leads the pack with over 26 million sales, followed by Nintendo Switch with 7.9 million.Stardew Valley had an eventful year with Update 1.6, adding eight-player multiplayer, festivals, new end-game content, balance changes, a new farm type, and more. Another patch would add 40 new layouts for mines alongside additional fairy styles, mystery boxes, and fish frenzies. The free updates follow Barones pledge for free post-launch support.His next project, Haunted Chocolatier, is currently on hold while the developer focused on Stardew Valley (despite the promise to resume after Update 1.6). Whether this means more new content for the latter remains to be seen.Stardew Valley is available on iOS, Android, PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

SNK opens new studio for fighting game IPs | News-in-briefKOF Studio will focus on the continuation of franchises including Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, and The King of FightersImage credit: KOF Studio News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on Jan. 2, 2025 This is a News-in-brief article, our short format linking to an official source for more information. Read more about this story by following the link below:SNK opens new studio for fighting game IPs

DoubleU Games acquires Paxie Games for up to $67mDeal expected to close in Q1 2025Image credit: Paxie Games News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on Jan. 2, 2025 DoubleU Games has acquired Turkish studio Paxie Games for up to $67 million.The South Korean firm has obtained a 60% stake in the Merge Studio: Fashion Makeover developer for $27 million.The remaining 40% will be acquired over the next three years for up to $40 million, according to Pocket Gamer.The deal will be financed through cash and treasury shares, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025."We believe the acquisition of Paxie Games represents a significant move to secure an expanded portfolio of new mobile gaming titles, driving growth and unlocking new opportunities," said DoubleU Games CFO Jay Choi.Paxie Games CEO Diren elik added: "Through our full-scale collaboration with DoubleU Games, we are set to achieve even greater growth by expanding our portfolio with exciting games, reaching a broader audience, and further growing our business."By leveraging DoubleU Games' established marketing network in the US, we plan to drive substantial growth and expand our reach."

Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks has officially relaunched as Tango Gameworks Inc. under the stewardship of new parent company Krafton."We're excited to continue crafting games that bring joy to players around the world," reads a post on X. "Thank you for your continued support as we embark on this new journey."It's a moment that marks a fresh start for the studio. Tango was shuttered by former owner Microsoft in May 2024 amid layoffs and closures at the Xbox maker, which also resulted in the demise of Alpha Dog Games and Arkane Austin.Tango was deemed surplus to requirements by the company despite launching Hi-Fi Rush a year earlier. The title was called a "break out hit" by one Xbox exec, but that couldn't save the studio from closure.It was, however, granted a second chance by PUBG maker Krafton, which acquired the Japanese company from Microsoft in August 2024months after Tango looked dead in the water.At the time, Krafton said it intended to "maintain continuity at Tango Gameworks, allowing the talented team to continue developing the Hi-Fi Rush IP and explore future projects."Speaking to Game Developer about the acquisition a few weeks later, Krafton CEO Changhan 'CH' Kim said the move was about preserving the legacy of Tango Gameworks and described it as a "last minute deal."Kim acknowledged that projects like Hi-Fi Rush might not rake in cash, but suggested studios like Tango should be encouraged to experiment with new ideas regardless."We wanted to maintain their legacy," said Kim. "Although they did not have a big success in their games, we saw many creatives worth pursuing. That's why we wanted to work with that organization."Krafton acquired the Hi-Fi Rush franchise alongside Tango, and a sequel is very much on the cards. Discussing how Tango would look under Krafton, Kim claimed the studio would look to hire "a minimum of 100 people," including many former employees."Perhaps they'll need a bigger team. We haven't decided on that, but we don't plan to reduce the size of the team at all," added Kim. "They have to work on new projects as well, so there is a great possibility the team will scale up even further."

Graph Neural Networks GNNs have become a powerful tool for analyzing graph-structured data, with applications ranging from social networks and recommendation systems to bioinformatics and drug discovery. Despite their effectiveness, GNNs face challenges like poor generalization, interpretability issues, oversmoothing, and sensitivity to noise. Noisy or irrelevant node features can propagate through the network, negatively impacting performance. To address these challenges, dropping strategies have been introduced, which improve robustness by selectively removing components such as edges, nodes, or messages during training. While methods like DropEdge, DropNode, and DropMessage rely on random or heuristic-based criteria, they lack a systematic approach to identify and exclude components that degrade model performance. This highlights the need for principled methods that prioritize explainability and reduce over-complexity during training.Recent work has explored explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) as a foundation for improving GNN-dropping strategies. Unlike existing random or heuristic-based methods, XAI-based approaches leverage instance-level explainability techniques to identify and exclude harmful graph components. These methods use saliency maps or perturbation-based explanations to pinpoint noisy or irrelevant nodes, ensuring that the retained graph structure aligns with meaningful contributions to the models predictions. XAI-based methods have significantly improved performance and robustness compared to traditional dropping techniques. This framework integrates seamlessly with gradient-based saliency methods but is adaptable to various explainability techniques, providing a more principled and effective approach for enhancing GNN training and generalization.Researchers from the University of Trento and the University of Cambridge have introduced xAI-Drop, an explainability-driven dropping regularizer for GNNs. xAI-Drop identifies and excludes noisy graph elements during training by leveraging local explainability and over-confidence as key indicators. This approach prevents the model from focusing on spurious patterns, enabling it to learn more robust and interpretable representations. Empirical evaluations on diverse benchmarks demonstrate xAI-Drops superior accuracy and improved explanation quality compared to existing dropping strategies. Key contributions include integrating explainability as a guiding principle and showcasing its effectiveness in node classification and link prediction tasks.The XAI-DROP framework enhances the training of GNNs by selectively removing nodes or edges based on explainability and confidence. For node classification, nodes with high prediction confidence but low explainability (measured by fidelity sufficiency) are identified and assigned dropping probabilities using a Box-Cox transformation. A Bernoulli distribution determines whether these nodes and their edges are removed, producing a modified adjacency matrix for training. The approach can also target edges for link prediction, evaluating edge-level confidence and explainability. XAI-DROP effectively reduces noise during training, improving model performance in transductive and inductive settings.The experimental results show that XAI-DROP consistently surpasses random and XAI-based strategies across all datasets and GNN architectures. It effectively identifies and removes noisy components within graphs, improving performance. XAI-DROPNODE achieved the highest test accuracy and explainability for node classification tasks compared to other methods. Similarly, XAI-DROPEDGE demonstrated superior AUC scores and enhanced explainability for link prediction tasks. These outcomes underline the methods robustness and effectiveness in optimizing GNN performance across diverse scenarios.In conclusion, XAI-DROP is a powerful framework for graph-based tasks that combines predictive accuracy and interpretability. Its ability to enhance explainability through saliency maps while maintaining or improving classification and prediction performance sets it apart from existing approaches. XAI-DROP proves its versatility by excelling across various datasets, architectures, and tasks, offering a promising solution for tackling challenges in graph-based learning applications.Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our60k+ ML SubReddit. Sana Hassan+ postsSana Hassan, a consulting intern at Marktechpost and dual-degree student at IIT Madras, is passionate about applying technology and AI to address real-world challenges. With a keen interest in solving practical problems, he brings a fresh perspective to the intersection of AI and real-life solutions. [Download] Evaluation of Large Language Model Vulnerabilities Report (Promoted)

The boss of Black Myth: Wukong developer Game Science has pointed the finger at the Xbox Series S over the lack of an Xbox version of the game.In a post on Chinese social media website Weibo, Game Science co-founder and CEO Feng Ji celebrated PC and PlayStation 5 action game Black Myth: Wukongs Game of the Year win at the 2024 Steam awards, and in doing so lamented the lack of an Xbox version of the game, which he blamed on optimization trouble with the Xbox Series S.The only thing missing is the Xbox, he said, per machine learning translation, which somehow feels a bit wrong, but that 10GB of shared memory without years of optimisation experience is really hard to make work.Thats a reference to the Xbox Series S power relative to the Xbox Series X. The Series S has 4TF of GPU compute compared to the Xbox Series Xs 12.2TF, but the killer is the drop in memory allocation, from 16GB down to 10GB.Microsofts Xbox release policy means publishers and developers must release their games across Xbox Series X and S. They are unable to release a game for Xbox Series X only, for example. This has caused difficulty for some studios in the past, perhaps most notably Baldurs Gate 3 developer Larian. Baldur's Gate 3 was originally released on PC and PS5 only, with the Xbox version delayed due to issues with the Xbox Series S specifically struggling to perform splitscreen co-op. In the past, Xbox had committed to parity between Xbox Series S and X for all games, but it ultimately made an exception for Baldur's Gate 3 so the game could launch later in 2023.In 2023, Remedy communications director Thomas Puha talked openly about the challenge the studio faced getting Alan Wake 2 running well on the Xbox Series S, saying the consoles GPU is an issue and having less memory is a pretty big problem. Before then, a VFX artist who had worked on an Xbox Series X and S game said in a now-deleted tweet that many developers have been sitting in meetings for the past year desperately trying to get Series S launch requirements dropped.Studios have been through one development cycle where Series S turned out to be an albatross around the neck of production, and now that games are firmly being developed with new consoles in mind, teams do not want to repeat the process, the developer said.In interviews with press including IGN, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has deflected questions about whether Xbox Series S is holding developers back, and rejected calls for developers to be allowed to release their games on Xbox Series X only. In an interview with Eurogamer, Spencer said: "Having an entry-level price point for a sub-$300 console is a good thing for the industry. I think it's important. The Switch has been able to do that, in terms of kind of the traditional plug-into-my-television consoles. I think it's important. So, we're committed."The situation with Black Myth: Wukong, however, is further muddled by Microsofts insistence that the games delay on Xbox has nothing to do with development issues. In a number of statements issued to IGN, Microsoft has suggested an exclusivity deal with Sony was the cause of the delay."As we have said before, were excited for the launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X and S and are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms, Microsoft has told IGN.We'd prefer not to comment on the deals made by our partners with other platform holders but we can confirm that the delay is not due to Xbox platform limitations that have been raised to us."Black Myth: Wukong launched on August 19 and sold an eye-watering 18 million copies in just two weeks across PC and PS5, reportedly making over $700 million in revenue in the process. That was enough to put Black Myth: Wukong up there with Grand Theft Auto 5 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as one of the fastest-selling games of all time, and is an astonishing return for a game that had a reported budget of $70 million over six years of development. It did so well that Sony pointed to Black Myth: Wukong as making a significant contribution to revenue during its last financial quarter, making up for the Concord disaster.DLC is set to follow. In September, Game Science investor Hero Games confirmed plans to release an Elden Ring-style expansion for Black Myth: Wukong ahead of any sequel.IGNs Black Myth: Wukong review returned an 8/10. We said: Despite some frustrating technical issues, Black Myth: Wukong is a great action game with fantastic combat, exciting bosses, tantalizing secrets, and a beautiful world.While youre here, IGN has plenty more Black Myth: Wukong guides to help you out, including Essential Tips and Tricks, Things Black Myth: Wukong Doesn't Tell You, and our Boss List and Guides.Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

In 2017, Brendan Greene (aka PlayerUnknown) pioneered the Battle Royale genre of games with the early access release of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds. The game has since gone on to become a massive hit, spawning countless more games like it, including some of the most successful games of all time.Next year, 2025, Greene wants to pioneer something new. He wants to make a metaverse. No, not the one youre thinking of. Greene doesnt think those count as actual metaverses.I hesitate to talk about this, because it's just such a dirty word, but I want to build a metaverse because I don't think anyone else is, he tells IGN. I think everyone's building IP bubbles that might talk to each other at some stage in the future, maybe if we're lucky, but it's not the metaverse. See, the Metaverse is a 3D internet. You should be able to create your own worlds and just have them all operating on the same protocol, like HTTP. So a world is a page, and that's what I'm trying to do with Artemis.Artemis, aka Greenes metaverse, is actually the third of three games hes currently cooking up at his studio, PlayerUnknown Productions. The first two are testing grounds for the technology Greene eventually wants to use to build his metaverse. Theyll each be games in their own right, but their real purpose is to work out the kinks in Greenes most ambitious ideas before they hit primetime in Artemis.Final Chapter PrologueThe first game, Prologue, is already being tested by players in Greenes Discord (in an early format Greene refers to as Preface) and is planned for a wider release in 2025. Its a fairly basic survival game, Greene says, with a simple loop of trying to reach an objective while dealing with typical survival mechanics. Theres weather, hunger, crafting, discoverable loot, and other such elements to deal with, but the real meat of Prologue is its terrain generation tech. Thats what Prologue is really about: testing high-tech terrain generation at a small scale, before implementing it more broadly in Artemis.Greene calls the terrain generation tech used by his studio Melba, and its basically a world generation machine. Melba uses machine learning, and is trained on NASA data of real-world Earth terrain. With that information, Melba is able to spit out entire maps, or even worlds, that have realistic geological features, and is able to do so either randomly or based on instructions, such as a request for a world with tons of mountains. These worlds are then filled with textures, assets, and other elements designed by actual artists, and are able to be customized in a similar fashion to have more forests, rivers, or whatever other elements are desired.PlayIGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!IGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!To start:...try asking a question that can be answered with a "Yes" or "No".000/250There's a new terrain every time you press play, Greene explains. The seed system gives us, I think 4.2 billion possible maps, but maybe millions of those would be interesting, I'm not sure yetBut this kind of tech is really cool because we're seeing it shaped day to day with the artists. They're going, Let's try this, let's update the masks we use for the river to this so we generate that slightly differently. And they're learning how to use this tech along with us, which is just great to see.It's more an emergent space to test our terrain tech, and we're going to work with the community to try to figure out: how can we make this test interesting? How can we make this game mode fun? What can we add to it that's systemic, and then will help us moving forward going into game two, and three, and building these bigger systems using the foundations we built in Prologue?Building the World MachinePrologue is just game one. Game two, which is currently unnamed, will come once the terrain tech is solidified. For Game Two, Greene wants a world thats 500 million square kilometers, earth scale to test a different sort of tech ahead of the release of Artemis: gameplay with a whole awful lot of characters all in one space together.Greene wont say much about this one. He tells me about his end goal for Artemis, which is to fit not thousands, but millions of players in a space together and have everything still work. In Game Two, Greene will test that via both multiplayer gameplay as well as AI character interaction. Youll be controlling an army, basically, is all I can really get out of him. Game Two will focus on multiplayer while controlling lots of assets...which, when combined with Melba, will lead to the massive, multiplayer metaverse that Greene is dreaming up for Artemis.The internet was empty when it first started, and it was just the way of sharing data, and I look at this the same.The metaverse has to have millions of people, and server client-side, you'll never get that. You'll maybe get a few thousand, maybe 10,000 if you're lucky, but it's attacking the problem at the wrong end, which is to solve the simulation locally, which we've done with Preface and then you can scale to hundreds of thousands, millions of people, hopefully.As for what all those millions of people will be doing in Greenes metaversethats largely up to them, he says. He compares it at one point to a Star Trek Holodeck, and then later to Minecraft Survival. In the tradition of the latter, Artemis will have a sort of basic game experience everyone can play, but then those users will be able to go off and make their own worlds, freely mod them, share them with others, and essentially treat them like 3D webpages and experiment, build, and create totally new things within these spaces. He says hes already seeing some of the beginnings of that within his Discord community as they tool around with and mod the early release of Prologue.The internet was empty when it first started, and it was just the way of sharing data, and I look at this the same, he says. This is probably going to be empty for the first few years, but then eventually you'll start to see the possibility of what you can do with this kind of world generator that it's like a multiverse of worlds.Critically, Greene wants Artemis to eventually be like the open internet in the sense that no one can really control whats on it, not even him. I ask him how content moderation will work in that case, and while Greene believes Artemis will need moderation, he wants that power to stay in the hands of the users.Prologue: Go Wayback! ScreenshotsI've been thinking a lot about this and what I want to do within this multiverse of digital spaces, you give the power to the community, that if someone acts like an asshole then they're locked out of spaces. And it comes down to identity. We have to solve the identity problem because anonymity online kind of breaks the social construct. But if on our network or on our system, it's tough for you to reenter it or to create an identity twice, you could still be anonymous, but at least there will be consequence to action.Greene also suggests that instead of outright banning people who cause issues, one path might be to turn miscreants into ghosts that cant interact with anyone. They can see everything happening and browse the world, but they are incapable of speaking or otherwise engaging with anything in it. If you look at Covid, there were 12 people that generated something like 96% of the misinformation that was online. [Authors note: The actual number was 65% of disinformation posts on Facebook, and 72% of all anti-vaccine content.]...If you shut out this small group of people that really actively try to upset the information space and deliver propaganda, then you've solved the problem kind of holisticallyI think that the future will be local. Everything will be local. You will have your identity locally and you will share it as you see fit, and it won't be stored by people across the world. At least I hope.I press Greene on this - what if people are doing illegal things in this metaverse? What about copyright violations, or worse, everything Roblox has been accused of? At what point does he become responsible? Greene admits he doesnt have an answer yet.That's where we're going to have to figure it out. As I said, I want to build games with the community, rather than for them, and I think with their help and finding out what tools they need to better do this, then we can figure out how to do this in a way better way for everyone. Thankfully we have good AI regulation in the EU as well so there are checks and balances there already, at least this side of the planet to help with this, right? I mean, let's see how long they last, but at least there are people smarter than me thinking about it already. So I'm happy to follow guidance, and work with the community to figure this out because it's important to get right.Long Road AheadGreenes vision is incredibly technically complex, and he mentions several times that he doesnt expect well see its final form Artemis for ten, maybe even 15 years. Hes already highlighted a number of the challenges ahead of the team, but I ask him about another one he hasnt yet mentioned: is Artemis going to be PC-only? No, he says. Itll be on everything, eventually.It has to. I mean, the device is just an access point to the world. It has to be. Kids in Africa on their mobile phones have to be able to access it the same as gaming PCs on the West Coast. The experience of the world might be slightly different, but because it's not a game, that's okay. It just has to run on every device.And theres another technological issue I need to raise with Greene: NFTs. Previously, its been reported that Artemis will implement them, but Greene says that was a misunderstanding stemming from an interview he did with Hit Points back in 2022.We need a platform where people can just create and not worry that you've got an exec team shooting it.[Nathan Brown] asked me about blockchain because it was the hype thing at the time, Greene says. And I explained that blockchain, I thought, was an interesting financial instrument, as a layer within a digital world. But that was it. I said maybe some future iteration of blockchain or hashgraph or that tech is interesting. Ultimately it's a digital ledger and if we can use a digital ledger, we'll find the best one and use it. But that's really it. The next day after I did that interview, [headlines were] PUBG Guy Making Blockchain Game, and that's not what I said. It's an interesting tech and I think it can be used if it's useful, but otherwise we'll use what is the best at the time.So hes not currently thinking about NFTs in Artemis, then?No, not even thinking about it. Our concern is about getting the engine to a state that we can make things in it and then as I said, Game Two, we'll test ideas then, but really now not even thought about it. More just getting some fun games made.Between the length of time Greene needs to build Artemis and the sheer amount of questions still looming about its final form, Greene and his studio have a difficult road ahead. Hell need time and personpower, which also means money, and the games industry is currently going through a funding drought amid layoffs, closures, and project cancellations. Greene says his project is fine, having gotten funding for Prologue early on and used it thoughtfully thus far. But that doesnt mean Artemis is guaranteed. He says theyll still need people to buy Prologue so they can sustain development long-term.Still, Greene isnt daunted by the fact that hes basically claiming he wants to build an entire second internet in a time of mass game and tech instability. In the same way that PUBG started out as a fairly barebones game but became a smash hit that launched a genre, he believes his new vision can grow to something massive with the help of a creative community. And maybe, he suggests, a successful Artemis could even help prevent the current games industry situation from happening again.Games are driven a lot by data points on Excel spreadsheets rather than making fun games and it's a little depressing, he says. So that's why I want to stick to my vision because I think we need a platform like this. We need a platform where people can just create and not worry that you've got an exec team shooting it.I want to find the next PlayerUnknown. I was really lucky to have been given this chance and providing people with a platform that can help do that, why wouldn't I do that? And yes, it's a big vision, but I've got a good team of industry professionals and they don't think it's that crazy. So yeah, I'm filled with confidence.Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.