▎Tencent Games "Sword and Soul 2" national server is open for reservation, and Xiao Ming Taiji jointly operates
The MMORPG game "Sword & Soul 2" developed by NCsoft officially opened pre-registration on all platforms today, and you will have a chance to obtain the qualification for the follow-up test by filling in the questionnaire. The game was granted a version number in December last year, and the national server will be jointly operated by Xiao Ming Taiji and Tencent Games, supporting cross-platform play on mobile devices and PCs.
▎Alibaba Cloud's core products in overseas markets have been reduced in price across the board
Alibaba Cloud announced that on April 8, the prices of core products in overseas regions will be lowered across the board, with a maximum increase of 65%. According to the announcement, Alibaba Cloud will reduce the prices of some public cloud products deployed in non-Chinese mainland regions, including: Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Block Storage Service (EBS), Object Storage Service (OSS), Cloud Data Transmission (CDT), ApsaraDB RDS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB), ApsaraDB for Redis, ApsaraDB for MongoDB, MaxCompute, Hologres, DataWorks, Realtime Compute for Apache Flink, OpenSearch, and Elasticsearch.
▎Disney Games recruits Blizzard and Ubisoft veterans to expand the leadership team
On April 9, Disney Games announced the expansion of its leadership team, appointing a number of game industry veterans from Blizzard and Ubisoft to join the company. The move comes as Disney and Epic Games entered into a partnership in February to create a new universe with Fortnite at its core, including gaming, entertainment, shopping, and interactive experiences.
Ray Gresko, who joins Disney's games division, joins Blizzard's World of Warcraft studio as Chief Development Officer, where he will lead the team in the newly created role of Senior Vice President of Product and Development. Another person who joined Disney is Bjorn Tornqvist, who serves as vice president of gaming technology. Tornqvist previously spent nearly 20 years at Ubisoft and its Swedish studio, Massive, in technical leadership roles.
Jay Ong, head of Marvel games after nearly a decade, will move to Disney as head of global game licensing, responsible for licensing for all of its brands. Haluk Mentes will take over Ong's position as the new head of Marvel Games. Gresko, Tornqvist and Ong will report directly to Sean Shoptaw, head of Disney's games division, who also assumed the role of executive vice president in this promotion.
▎Lenovo and JD.com reached a new strategic cooperation, clarifying a three-year sales target of 120 billion yuan
On April 7, Lenovo and JD.com signed a new strategic cooperation agreement at Lenovo headquarters. According to the agreement, the two parties will deepen cooperation in AI marketing, intelligent supply chain, AI services and AI technology integration, and clarify Lenovo's goal of 120 billion yuan in JD.com's omni-channel sales in the next three years.
▎Nintendo 3DS/Wii U online service officially closed today
At 8:00 a.m. Beijing time this morning, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U officially shut down their online servers. Upon termination of the 3DS and WiiU online services, players will no longer be able to continue playing online on 3DS and WiiU, while Internet rankings and data distribution will be disabled. However, Nintendo said that features such as StreetPass, Pokémon Virtual Banking, Pokémon Bank, and Pokémon Virtual Teleportation will continue to be available, while services such as Nintendo Badge Arcade and SpotPass will be closed.
▎Mistral Large模型现已在Amazon Bedrock上正式可用
On April 7, Amazon Web Services announced that Mistral AI's Mistral Large model is now generally available on Amazon Bedrock. According to reports, Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service of Amazon Web Services, which provides a secure and convenient way for users to access a comprehensive, high-performance, and fully managed base model (FM) on the market.
▎Konami announced a salary increase of 5,000 yen for all employees and a starting salary of 300,000 yen for new graduates
On April 8, game developer Konami announced that it will raise the basic salary of full-time employees of its Japanese group companies from March next year with the goal of stabilizing employee income and creating a satisfying work environment.
It is reported that this salary increase is the third consecutive fiscal year that Konami has implemented a total salary increase, raising the monthly basic salary by 5,000 yen (currently about 239 yuan), and raising the starting salary of new graduates from 295,000 yen to 300,000 yen (currently about 14,340 yuan).
Konami said that the company will be committed to sustainable growth by securing diverse human resources, maximizing the capabilities of employees, and creating a satisfying work environment.
▎ Zuckerberg surpassed Musk to become the third richest person in the world
Recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg became the third richest person in the world, surpassing Tesla CEO Elon Musk for the first time since 2020. In early March, Musk reportedly ranked first on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Recently, after the news broke that "Tesla canceled plans to launch a lower-priced car", although Musk has denied the relevant reports, his ranking has fallen. According to the report, in 2024, Musk's wealth will shrink by $48.4 billion. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg's fortune increased by $58.9 billion as Meta Platforms Inc. (META) stock price hit new highs.
▎Steam game weekly sales list: "Jedi Submarine 2", "Call of Duty", and "Content Warning" top three
V Company today announced the latest weekly sales list on the Steam platform (April 2 to April 9, 2024), "Jedi Submarine 2" still maintains a very high popularity, and the newly released "Content Warning" successfully entered the top three.
The global rankings are as follows (excluding free-to-play games and Steam Deck):
1. Jedi Diver 2
2. Call of Duty
3. 《Content Warning》
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Black Organization (Season 3)
5. Cyberpunk 2077
6. The Elder Scrolls Online
7. "Rainbow Six: Siege"
8. Baldur's Gate 3
9. Dragon's Dogma 2
10. "ARK: Survival Ascension"
11. "Zoo Star"
12. "Elden Ring"
13.《GTA5》