Famitsu has published its estimated physical game software and hardware sales data for Japan for the week of July 25, 2022 to July 31, 2022.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 for Switch was the top selling new release of the week, opening at 112,728 retail copies sold. Digimon Survive followed at 28,536 units sold on Switch. The PlayStation 4 version did not chart in the top 10.
On the hardware side, the Switch family sold 73,238 units, the PlayStation 5 family sold 39,336 units, the Xbox Series family sold 8,988 units, and the PlayStation 4 family sold 14 units. Next-generation consoles continue to face stock issues.
Google has started merging its Meet and Duo video-chat apps to create what the company calls a “single video communications service.”
Starting this week, Duo is getting an upgrade to include video calling and meeting capabilities. Once fully rolled out later this year, the app’s name and icon will also change to “Google Meet,” featuring a camera in Google’s familiar colors.
“We have been doing this carefully, first adding Google Meet features to the Duo app, and now rebranding Duo to Meet,” a company spokesperson tells PCMag. “And by the end of the year, [we’ll] have everything in one web and mobile experience under Google Meet.”
Confusingly, the existing Google Meet is sticking around for a bit—now with different-color logos to help differentiate the new “Google Meet” from “Google Meet (original),” the latter of which will one day be put out to pasture, (alongside Labs, Wave, Reader, and, soon, Hangouts).
Color schemes for Google Meet, Google Meet (original), and Google Duo
If you’re puzzled by the alterations (and, frankly, we all are a little), Google released a couple of help articles about changes to Duo and the impact this has on various app icons.
One-to-one video calling app Duo launched in August 2016 as a FaceTime alternative for iOS and Android mobile users. Based on your existing phone number, it taps into your contact list and automatically adjusts call quality to changing network conditions—switching between Wi-Fi and cellular data without dropping the conversation.
Google formally launched Meet, formerly known as Hangouts Meet, in March 2017, but the enterprise-friendly, video-conferencing service really picked up steam in April 2020, when the platform became free to everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the years, Google has bulked up the programs, introducing features like virtual effects, live captions, and noise cancellation. Now it’s combining all that (and more) into one app.
“Existing video calling features from Duo are here to stay, including the ability to make video calls to friends and family by phone number or email address, use fun filters and effects, send messages, and ask Google Assistant to call using existing devices,” according to a June blog announcement. “All conversation history, contacts, and messages will continue to be saved in the app and there will be no new app to download.”
Users can also expect enhanced functions like custom backgrounds, meeting scheduling, in-house chat, integration with other Google tools, and the ability to invite up to 100 participants.
Simulators can jumpstart the work of animation, but often return an overwhelming array of options for the animator to sort through. A new browser refines those options to a more manageable number.
View video here.
By Andrew Myers
Computer-based animators who are tasked with bringing to life imaginary worlds and characters are aided by simulators that can model the many possible ways an object or fluid might move through a physical space. Known as “solvers,” these simulators provide a significant head start on the work of animation. But there’s a catch. As computers have gotten faster, these solvers often create too many options for the animator to effectively sort through looking for just the right one.
“A simulator can return thousands of options. It’s so time consuming to sort through them that these helpful solvers can’t be used to their full potential,” said Purvi Goel, a doctoral candidate in computer science at Stanford, who with her mentor, professor Doug James, has created a new approach to refine the search and narrow results to the most promising options.
They call it “Unified Many-Worlds Browsing,” and they will debut their approach at the upcoming SIGGRAPH 2022 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, the premier annual gathering for computer graphics and interactive techniques. The approach could both speed the search process for animators and, by limiting the options the simulators must cycle through, reduce compute time and expense. Ultimately, the researchers hope, it will allow artists and scientists to interface with solvers with unparalleled ease and efficiency.
“We’ve got this interesting conflict in the field that every year computers get faster, more parallel, and they can do more, but it’s the humans who are getting maxed out,” said James, who is a professor of computer science.
parameters and time
Solvers are controlled by input parameters – the physical dimensions of the object in the animation. In one example, the researchers used Unified Many-Worlds Browsing to animate an imaginary bowling alley. The parameters include the starting velocity and position of the ball.
A solver simply steps through the parameters incrementally, one by one, and simulates the many potential outcomes over the course of time. The key point is that there can be many input parameters, and the longer and more complex an animation is, the more parameters and compute time are needed to create simulations, and the more options are generated.
“If you are an animator and you have some idea in mind, you have to tune those parameters manually, then sort through all the outcomes one by one,” Goel explained.
Unified Many-Worlds Browsing allows animators to create “queries” to narrow down the options to make the process of identifying very specific outcome options easier. Queries can, for instance, confine outcomes to only those the animator is most interested in – including those that are either “in” a desired range of possibilities or, conversely, excluding those that are “not in” that range. Sample animations are available to view on the researchers’ website.
Asked to animate a stuffed armadillo falling down a spiral staircase, for instance, the animator might create a query in the Unified Browser that says, “Show me only options where the armadillo falls all the way to and comes to rest on the lowest stair. ” Charged with animating cubes of Jell-O bounding into a bowl, the animator could limit options only to those where all the cubes stay in the bowl, or perhaps where one, but only one, falls out. A small blue ball launched at an imaginary sandcastle might specify “give me samples where the front-left turret is smashed” or “the top turret only.”
If the queries are well defined, Unified Many-Worlds Browsing could potentially reduce thousands of possible options to a handful that are interesting to the user, Goel says. Plus, the fact that this browsing framework can work with everything from fluids to smoke to fracturing solids – why it’s described as “unified” – sets it apart from previous options, which were limited in scope to a single physics-based phenomenon.
Finding the needle
James says Unified Many-Worlds Browsing can pay surprising dividends in creativity. The browser, he says, can increase the likelihood of finding that “needle in the haystack” option that the animator might never have found with the solver alone.
“We found it can help find unlikely outcomes that will surprise – or even delight – viewers by their novelty,” said James. “’Oh wow, the ball went right between those two turrets and hit this other one just perfectly.’”
The browser has clear implications in the fictional animation space, the researchers say, but could also be adopted to benefit engineers, physicists, biologists, and other scientists who increasingly rely on simulations in their work.
“Unified Many-Worlds Browsing certainly makes the animator’s work faster and easier,” said Goel, “but we think it makes it more fun, too.”
James is also a member of Stanford Bio-X, the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, and the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME). This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
/PublicRelease. This material from the originating organization/author(s) may be of a point-in-time nature, edited for clarity, style and length. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s).
WASHINGTON — Researchers have developed a new chip-based beam steering technology that provides a promising route to small, cost-effective and high-performance lidar (or light detection and ranging) systems. Lidar, which uses laser pulses to acquire 3D information about a scene or object, is used in a wide range of applications such as autonomous driving, free-space optical communications, 3D holography, biomedical sensing and virtual reality.
“Optical beam steering is a key technology for lidar systems, but conventional mechanical-based beam steering systems are bulky, expensive, sensitive to vibration and limited in speed,” said research team leader Hao Hu from the Technical University of Denmark. “Although devices known as chip-based optical phased arrays (OPAs) can quickly and precisely steer light in a non-mechanical way, so far, these devices have had poor beam quality and a field of view typically below 100 degrees.”
In Optica, Optica Publishing Group’s journal for high-impact research, Hu and co-author Yong Liu describe their new chip-based OPA that solves many of the problems that have plagued OPAs. They show that the device can eliminate a key optical artifact known as aliasing, achieving beam steering over a large field of view while maintaining high beam quality, a combination that could greatly improve lidar systems.
“We believe our results are groundbreaking in the field of optical beam steering,” said Hu. “This development lays the groundwork for OPA-based lidar that is low cost and compact, which would allow lidar to be widely used for a variety of applications such as high-level advanced driver-assistance systems that can assist in driving and parking and increase safety.”
A new OPA design
OPAs perform beam steering by electronically controlling light’s phase profile to form specific light patterns. Most OPAs use an array of waveguides to emit many beams of light and then interference is applied in far field (away from the emitter) to form the pattern. However, the fact that these waveguide emitters are typically spaced far apart from each other and generate multiple beams in the far field creates an optical artifact known as aliasing. To avoid the aliasing error and achieve a 180° field of view, the emitters need to be close together, but this causes strong crosstalk between adjacent emitters and degrades the beam quality. Thus, until now, there has been a trade-off between OPA field of view and beam quality.
To overcome this trade-off, the researchers designed a new type of OPA that replaces the multiple emitters of traditional OPAs with a slab grating to create a single emitter. This setup eliminates the aliasing error because the adjacent channels in the slab grating can be very close to each other. The coupling between the adjacent channels is not detrimental in the slab grating because it enables the interference and beam formation in the near field (close to the single emitter). The light can then be emitted to the far field with the desired angle. The researchers also applied additional optical techniques to lower the background noise and reduce other optical artifacts such as side lobes.
High quality and wide field of view
To test their new device, the researchers built a special imaging system to measure the average far-field optical power along the horizontal direction over a 180° field of view. They demonstrated aliasing-free beam steering in this direction, including steering beyond ±70°, although some beam degradation was seen.
They then characterized beam steering in the vertical direction by tuning the wavelength from 1480 nm to 1580 nm, achieving a 13.5° tuning range. Finally, they showed the versatility of the OPA by using it to form 2D images of the letters “D”, “T” and “U” centered at the angles of -60°, 0° and 60° by tuning both the wavelength and the phase shifters. The experiments were performed with a beam width of 2.1°, which the researchers are now working to decrease to achieve beam steering with a higher resolution and a longer range.
“Our new chip-based OPA shows an unprecedented performance and overcomes the long-standing issues of OPAs by simultaneously achieving aliasing-free 2D beam over the entire 180° field of view and high beam quality with a low side lobe level,” said Huh.
This work is funded by VILLUM FONDEN and Innovationsfonden Denmark.
Paper: Y. Liu, H. Hu, “Silicon optical phased array with 180-degree field of view for 2D optical beam steering,” Optica, 9.8 (2022).
DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.458642.
About Optica
/PublicRelease. This material from the originating organization/author(s) may be of a point-in-time nature, edited for clarity, style and length. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s).
It’s been just a year since Indkal Technologies, the official licensee of the Acer brand forayed into the lucrative smart TV business in India.
Recently, the company launched another new I-series smart television in four sizes– 32-inch (HD) with prices ranging between Rs 19,990 and Rs 47,990 in the sub-continent.
I have been using the 43-inch model (Rs 34,990) for close to a week and here are my thoughts on the new Acer smart TV.
Design and build quality: The new Acer 4K TV flaunts a slim design language. It has uniform thin bezels around the sides and the top. At the base, it has a slightly thicker chin with Acer branding at the middle, but in no way harms the visual aesthetics of the television.
Also, it features premium metallic rail around the edges offering stability to the structure. On the back, it has a minimalistic design and the company has ensured all the connectivity features are on one side and the power port on the other side.
The back side view of the Acer I-series Android Smart TV. Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit
Each port is clearly marked with names to help users avoid plugging the wrong type of cords. It comes with one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, one LAN port, one antenna cable port, one digital audio out optical port, three HMDI ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack port and a mini audio AV port. On the other side, it has a two-point power port (100 – 240Vac). It also supports Bluetooth 5.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi (2.5GHz & 5GHz).
The company is offering both wall mount tools and also table stands with the retail box. Owners can either install it themselves or call up customer care to set them up.
I myself set up the Acer TV with the table stands. The company offers two screws for each stand. They are made of polycarbonate material and are sturdy too. Once the screws are tightened into their places, the TV stands stable on the flat surface and doesn’t wobble.
User-interface and performance Setting up the Acer I-series Android TV was way easy. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to do it. Once you switch on the TV, you will be asked to pair the TV Remote via Bluetooth wireless connection. It was able to instantly detect the controller.
The next step is to connect your Android phone via the Home app and just invoke Google Assistant and say the phrase– ‘Hey Google, set up my TV’. And, just follow the instructions on the TV screen and the phone’s display and you will be done with full set-up in around 15 minutes if not less.
It comes with Chromecast built-in and runs Android 11 TV OS and the user interface is very simple. It is easy to find apps and event contents thanks to a card-like presentation on the home screen. Also, the TV supports more than 5000 apps including OTTs such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar+Disney, and many more.
Also, users can even make video calls through the Google Duo app. And, cast the phone’s home screen on the TV too.
Inside, the Acer TV comes with a 64-bit class quad-core processor backed by an ARM Mali G31 graphics processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB storage.
On the front, the TV features a 43-inch UHD (Ultra High Definition) display panel with 3840×2160p resolution. It supports Wide Color Gamut+ and HDR10+ with HLG promises the TV reproduces multimedia content with objects in the scene look more natural and vibrant in terms of colors are brighter in a good way for an immersive viewing experience.
caption
Acer TV supports 4K Upscaling technology. Even if the content is 1080p or less, the TV can upgrade the motion picture quality for better viewing. It also comes with Digital Noise
Reduction, Micro Dimming, Intelligent Frame Stabilization Engine (IFSE), Dynamic Signal Calibration (DSC) and Super Brightness, ensure the colors of subjects in the movie or any multimedia content come off vibrant to the eyes.
It also features a Blue Light Reduction feature. Similar to the technology we see in the smartphone when activated, it will reduce the blue light emission and lessen the strain on the eyes while binge-watching content during the night.
Does it succeed in delivering the goods? Yes, it does a remarkably fine job. I had a really good time with Acer I-series TV watching nature documentaries. As you can see from the photos of the television, the colors look rich, the green looks greener (other shades too, look real) and the black is darker. The details within the shadows of the objects too are distinguishable, offering a wonderful viewing experience.
Acer I-series Android Smart TV from a side angle. Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit
Also, there is less reflection when viewed from side angles.
Another notable aspect of the new Acer TV is the high fidelity 30W speakers, which is very rare among affordable smart TVs, which often come with inferior speakers (max 20W) due to cost-cutting.
Here, Acer TV with the Dolby Audio system delivers really good audio quality. With the volume set to high, it lives up the whole living room and there was very less distortion.
As far as the remote is concerned, it is very handy and the keys are tactile and responsive. The buttons are easy to reach for the fingers even for people with small hands.
The remote has direct shortcut buttons for four popular OTT apps– Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video and YouTube.
If your house has four or five members, I recommend Wi-Fi router speed be at least 100Mbps for buffer-free streaming of high-quality multi-media content and other smart devices such as phones and laptops, which can still be able to get stable wireless internet connectivity.
final thoughts
Overall, the new Acer I-series TV is a really good value-for-money smart television.
However, there is stiff competition in the smart TV business in India. As per Counterpoint Research report (Q1,20220, the top two Xiaomi (& Redmi with 14 per cent share ) are Samsung (13 per cent share) are fighting neck-to-neck and others LG (8 per cent), OnePlus (7 per cent), and Sony (5 per cent), are intensifying the competition.
The rest of 53 per cent market share is shared by TCL, Vu, Realme and others. But, with the new I-series, Acer can make a mark in the industry, provided they create awareness among the consumers, as most of them identify the Taiwan-based company as just a computer maker.
The new Acer I-series TVs cost– Rs 19,990 for 32-inch model, Rs 34,990 for 43-inch TV, Rs 40,990 for 50-inch television and Rs 47,990 for the 55-inch model.
Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech.
a new vampire survivors patch releasing today (August 4) adds cheat codes, new characters and more to the game.
As outlined by developer Poncle, patch 0.10.0 (not the version 1.0 patch, for which fans will have to “wait a bit longer”) is nicknamed “The Not One”, adding in two new achievements, two characters (Cosmo Pavone and Big Trousers), a new arcana, weapon and cheats.
There are a lot of cheats being added into vampire survivorswith some being much more helpful than the last.
A joke cheat will make the user interface spin for a short while, whilst other cheats can unlock each of the five stages in the game. Cheats are also available for all the characters and relics in the game, instantly unlocking them. There are also eight cheat codes for secret characters too.
Check out the trailer for patch 0.10.0 below:
All of the cheat codes for each individual unlock should go up on the game’s Steam page when the patch notes are live.
Earlier this year vampire survivors creator Luca Galante talked to NME about quitting his job to develop the game full time: “I just felt like I didn’t have a choice, really. I just thought that I would regret not trying to spend as much time as I could on this. This is clearly a success, I spent almost nothing on the original game, I really wasn’t expecting this kind of attention – I just wanted a little something I could play and relax [with] over the weekend.”
After releasing at the end of 2021, vampire survivors is in Early Access to help ensure that all ongoing tweaks can be properly influenced by community feedback, according to the game’s Steam page.
In other news, more details surrounding the harassment of Bungie employees have been revealed via the company’s lawsuit of a Twitch streamer.
Samsung Galaxy phones in South Korea are getting a new Repair Mode functionality via a software update.
The new mode will help lockdown personal data on the device, enabling just enough access for the techs to fix it.
Security experts welcomed the feature but asked Samsung to share more details about its implementation before rolling it out more widely.
Carol Yepes/Getty Images
Samsung is rolling out a new update that’ll help people overcome the uneasiness we all feel every time we hand over our phones for repairs.
The company is debuting a new Galaxy phone feature in South Korea. Called Repair Mode, it hides users’ data to prevent its theft when a device is turned over for repair. According to a translated version of the Korean press release, repair mode will block access to photos, messages, and account information when activated.
“This feature allows users to protect data, photos, attachments, contacts, and other data so that prying eyes cannot access information while a device is out for repair,” Stephanie Kurtz, Lead Faculty for the College of Information Systems and Technology at the University of Phoenix, told Lifewire over email “This is a great new feature for users with no other options to lock down the data they have stored on a device.”
Limited Access
In an email discussion, Dimitri Shelest, founder and CEO of OneRep, an online privacy company that helps people remove their sensitive information from the internet, told Lifewire that the feature makes very good sense as many people store personal and often very sensitive data on their devices, from passwords and pin codes to financial accounts and credit card details.
The press release mentions scant details about the new feature, saying it’s being rolled out via a software update, will reboot the device when activated, and can be turned off only using the owner’s pattern or biometric recognition.
This is why Shelest, while welcoming the feature, stressed that to build trust, Samsung must be absolutely transparent about what this protection entails and how it is provided to ensure no consumer information is compromised.
“Consumers, on their end, should be more curious about how devices and apps installed on them handle their data and adopt the privacy-first approach that helps to avoid breaches, identity theft, and other privacy issues that may cause financial damage and other far -reaching consequences,” said Shelest.
Be Your Own Watchdog
While the feature sounds useful, Kurtz said it doesn’t absolve people from taking care of what they manage, store, and send from personal devices. She cautioned against long-term storage of personally identifiable information (PII) on mobile devices.
“Beyond repair incidents, data can be exfiltrated off of mobile devices through unsecure applications and are a target for bad actors now that mobile payments have become more common,” said Kurtz. “Ensure you set up security, passwords, virus scanning, and offload data that is no longer in use.”
Kurtz praised Samsung for facilitating end-user security but also cautioned people that the repair mode should not be used as an excuse to avoid backing up data on the device before bringing it in for repairs.
But know that the ultimate end-user security is your responsibility.
“Remember, just because a device is locked down does not mean that the device might [not] need a reset due to failures,” said Kurtz. “Avoid the potential data loss by backing up if you can before allowing any repair work to take place.”
The repair mode is being rolled out on the Galaxy S21 series within South Korea. In the release, Samsung noted that the feature will be added to more models over time, though it didn’t mention if and when the feature will be available in other countries.
However, experts think the feature should definitely be more generally available. “So many things seem to be absolutely essential after they have come into our lives that we wonder how we ever functioned before,” said Shelest.
He believes Repair Mode has the potential to become one of those essential features that’ll make us wonder how we ever lived without it. However, the bigger takeaway for him is the fact that privacy and data protection are becoming the focus of many people and companies. This he argued will lead to a flurry of new products and features centered around data safety.
“I love that Samsung is thinking about end-user security,” said Kurtz. “But know that the ultimate end-user security is your responsibility. Make sure to consider what you store, manage and maintain on your device and how to protect your personal information.”
A guy gets a mysterious letter from his girlfriend, arrives at a castle to find her missing, and loads of rooms full of monsters… It’s the setup to 1996’s classic Super Mario 64sure, but it’s also very much also a survival horror pitch, which is why this new fan-made project is such a perfect fit.
Via nintendo lifethis is Another Princess Is In Our Castle“a Super Mario 64 inspired Horror Experience,” where you “decide to come back to Peach’s castle a few years after the princess’ death, but something isn’t quite right…”
While this looks like a first-person mod, it’s actually an entirely fan-made project from the ground up, designed with the perspective in mind. While it’s currently just a short playable demo, its creator Claudio Mondin hopes to eventually flesh it out into something more substantial.
Here’s a trailer made by Mondin:
Another Princess is in our Castle – Super Mario 64 Horror Game Trailer
And here’s some gameplay footage, showing how the main point is to sneak around the castle collecting items, all the while trying to avoid a Princess who is definitely not peachy:
Like Mondin says, it’s pretty much just a demo, so don’t go expecting too much out of it, outside of some sneaking (and the very cool novelty of it). I’m going to play some more later today though, just to see what the promised mystery really is though (hopefully the ghost is just upset that her cake turned out dogshit).
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Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse
Gaming! Uses exclusive ultra-fast wireless tech to make sure your mouse is faster than you are, can be sued alongside special software for highly-customizable performance, and has 11 buttons to mess around with, a hyper-fast scroll wheel, and RGB lighting too .
You can download the demo and play it yourself here. I don’t wanna hear anything about lawyers in the commentseither, just go and enjoy something cool that a fan made.
Yesterday, on a Square Enix earnings call, the company explained its recent sale of Crystal Dynamics and Eidos to Embracer Group, which was at the fire sale price of $300 million for the pair of them.
Their explanation is…bizarre to say the least, and according to Square Enix, the sale was “driven by concerns that the titles cannibalized sales of the rest of the group and so it could improve capital efficiency”
Asanalyst David Gibson explained in a thread about the call, this makes little sense, especially when by the time the sale is over, Square Enix has tons of cash on hand, more than enough to fund games and studios, and the real reason appears to be making itself a more attractive target for acquisition, but they refuse to say that.
At baseline, the notion that Crystal Dynamics or Eidos games are cannibalizing other Square Enix games makes little sense to anyone. First of all, Square Enix is constantly complaining that games from those studios are underperforming and not selling. enoughso how could they be significantly cannibalizing Square Enix’s other games?
Then of course, the scheduling of releases and the genres of the games have literally nothing to do with each other. There’s no coherent argument about what Tomb Raider, Avengers, Deus Ex or Guardians of the Galaxy games are “cannibalizing.” The only thing I can even remotely think of here is the release of Avengers and Outriders in the same window, two live service looters, albeit if anything Avengers got the worse end of that stick, and Outriders has been extolled by Square Enix as a success and important IP for their future. But what do any CD/Eidos games have to do with “cannibalizing” other big Square Enix series like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest?
Again, the overwhelmingly common theory here is that Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics/Eidos have not been a good fit for years, and they wanted to offload them in order to become a slimmed down, more desirable target for acquisition by someone like Sony. While nothing official has been announced, an eventual Sony acquisition, given the history between the two companies and the current state of the market where all independent publishers are getting snapped up by megacorps, would be less than a surprising development. But the fact that Square Enix is being this disingenuous about what’s really happening here is somewhat tiresome and corporate speak at its worst.
Meanwhile, Crystal Dynamics is still making Avengers content, helping Microsoft with Perfect Dark and starting a new Unreal Engine 5 Tomb Raider game for Embracer. Eidos is working on a number of secretive UE5 projects, and we could see the return of IPs like Thief or Legacy of Kain from them. Square Enix, meanwhile, is set to release its highest profile game in a long while, Final Fantasy XVI, next year.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the hero killer seriesand The Earthborn Trilogy.
Image: The Pokémon Company / Micromania-Zing / Nintendo Life
We admit it, we’re suckers for a really nice pre-order bonus. Especially when it comes to figurines. And with Pokémon Scarlet & Violet coming out this November, we’re eager to see just what kind of bonuses or gifts will be on offer from various retailers.
So far, we only know about a few digital gifts — such as an exclusive backpack and that cute little Pikachu who’s Terastral form means he gets balloons! — but Nintendo Wire has discovered that French retailer Micromania-Zing is already ahead of the pack with this lovely physical pre-order bonus.
This exclusive pre-order bonus is a little figurine of all three of generation 9’s starters — Sprigatito, Fuecoco, and Quaxley. It’s really rather lovely, and we really rather want it.
You’ll get this trio if you pre-order either Scarlet, Violet, or the Double Pack from Micromania-Zing. So, if you love it and you live in France, there’s no reason not to!
Here in the UK, we sometimes get figurine pre-order bonuses for Pokémon games too, and maybe this will head our way too (if it does, we’ll be sure to tell you), but for now, we’ll have to admire this from a distance.
If you haven’t already, make sure you check out our list of everywhere you can pre-order the upcoming Pokémon games.
Do you like this pre-order bonus as much as we do? Do you hope a retailer near you gets something like this? Let us know in the comments!
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