PlayStation’s ‘Retro and Remasters’ sale discounts several games, including Resident Evil 3, God of War III Remastered, Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and more. The sale runs until March 22nd.
Microsoft is optimistic that it could overcome the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch to bring Call of Duty to the platform.
In a filing to the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Microsoft outlined what could be done to make good on its 10-year “binding” agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo platforms should its acquisition of Activision Blizzard be approved.
According to Microsoft, the engine powering the popular battle royale series is “mature and has been optimized to run on a wide range of hardware devices.” This includes the Xbox One, a nearly 10-year-old console, and PC GPUs “released as far back as 2015” — both of which predate the Switch’s 2017 launch. Further, Microsoft notes that Activision also offers a (yet-to-be-released) mobile version of Warzone that “runs natively on mobile phones which have much lower performance specifications than the Nintendo Switch.”
More specifically, Microsoft said there are “standard techniques” that have been used for Switch ports of the likes of Apex Legends, Fortnite, Doom Eternal and Crysis 3. On top of that, Microsoft says it’s “confident” in Activision Blizzard’s developers, who have a “long history of optimizing game performance for available hardware capabilities.”
Of course, this is all hypothetical until Microsoft actually owns Activision Blizzard. As it stands, European regulators are still deliberating on the deal, although Reuters reported last week that Microsoft’s deals with the likes of Nintendo and Nvidia have helped stave off governmental anti-competition concerns. Sony, for its part, has staunchly opposed the acquisition, arguing that Call of Duty would give Microsoft an unfair advantage. Most recently, the company expressed concerns that Microsoft might release inferior versions of games on PlayStation.
We’ll know for sure which argument ultimately wins out when the CMA delivers its final ruling on April 26th.
“It was at that moment when we basically had to make decisions about Stadia that we realized that, at Google Cloud, we are at our best when we’re helping other people build this stuff, not necessarily building it ourselves,” said Buser of Google’s decision to shutter Stadia. When Google originally announced Stadia’s shutdown last October, Stadia boss Phil Harrison simply said the platform “[hadn’t] gained the traction with users that we expected” without providing any further insight.
Therefore, it’s interesting to see Buser be a bit more candid about the mistakes Google made with Stadia. Indeed, many had criticized Stadia for being a platform with a lack of compelling games, features and pricing options, while game makers hesitated to embrace it due to Google’s penchant for killing its own platforms.
While Buser told Axios that these streaming options are no longer offered following Stadia’s shutdown, he noted that the company now has an updated Google Cloud bundle that offers new solutions for companies running their live service games. So far, Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed), Niantic (Pokémon Go) and game engine company Unity have come on as active clients. Given all of the issues online games can face, Google is positioning its services as a way for companies to mitigate risks associated with investing in their own tech by using Google’s own massive Cloud platform.
Google is rolling out the expanded Google Cloud suite now ahead of the Game Developers Conference later this month to entice more companies to come aboard. Overall, Buser says Google is “committed” to the industry despite Stadia’s failure.
The anticipated open world title will now launch on September 6th, back from the previous release window of “the first half of 2023,” which was already a delay from its initial November 11th, 2022 release date.
In the release date’s announcement video, Todd Howard, the director of Starfield and the Fallout and Elder Scroll series, revealed that Bethesda and Microsoft will hold a Starfield direct event on June 11th to reveal more about the upcoming game.
Given the date, this could replace or be part of the keynote Microsoft typically holds during E3.
According to Howard, there’s still a lot to be revealed about the title.
Starfield was formally announced during Bethesda’s E3 press conference back in 2018. The game is set in space and is Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years.
Last year Bethesda showed off an extended first-look gameplay of Starfield, where we learned that the game features more than 1,000 explorable planets.
Starfield will release on Xbox Series X/S and will be part of Xbox Game Pass.
On February 9th, the three-person Toronto-based indie studio was awarded the Grand Prize at Ubisoft Indie Series, securing $50,000 in funding and mentorship opportunities from Ubisoft and National Bank. The team’s past two games, a smaller Itch.IO project called Order A Pizzaand the larger, more widely sold Raptor Boyfriend, were both visual novels.
Now, Psychroma, the team’s first crack at a narrative cyberpunk sidescroller, is already getting major recognition within the industry. The game follows a non-binary digital medium, Haze, as they piece together broken memories in a cybernetic house.
Rocket Adrift (Titus McNally, Lindsay Rollins and Sloane Smith).
Naturally, this whole experience has been overwhelming for Rocket Adrift.
“We had set ourselves up to accept the disappointment of not winning. We just didn’t expect that we would have won,” says co-founder, writer, programmer and character artist Lindsay Rollins.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet, still — it’s been weeks,” adds Sloane Smith, co-founder, writer, composer and background artist.
“I always try to get ready for the worst possible outcome and everything. I don’t really allow myself to enjoy it until it’s confirmed,” remarks Titus McNally, co-founder, writer, lead programmer and UI/UX designer, with a laugh. “That’s my strategy — I don’t know how healthy it is.”
They’ve come a long way since meeting at Toronto’s Seneca College in the Independent Illustration program. After working in animation for a few years, the trio made the pivotal decision in 2017 to break into the gaming industry through Rocket Adrift.
“It’s a medium where you can not have voice acting, and there’s a lot more flexibility in the world of video games,” says Smith of the decision to shift to game development. “But that gave us the opportunity to tell a longer story, versus doing two-minute animated shorts. We were stuck in that realm of animation because it’s too hard to produce anything else.”
Order A Pizza, Rocket Adrift’s first game.
Of course, making such a change is easier said than done. “We kind of came into it with the hyped-up ego of somebody who’s new at something thinking that they’re gonna change the industry and make some great game,” admits Smith with a laugh. “And then we were humbled quickly by how difficult it is to make games.”
What helps, however, is having a small, close-knit team that jives well together.
“We all just kind of switch hats when it comes to the development and design parts of the game,” explains Rollins. “We have our specializations […] but we all write, all design, and we all code to a degree.”
Tackling a new type of game
One quick look at Psychroma reveals a decidedly darker experience than the colourful Order A Pizza and Raptor Boyfriend. As Smith puts it, they’re both “kind of silly on their face.” While players have praised Rocket Adrift’s previous work for their emotional depth and 2SLGBTQIA+-friendly themes, Rocket Adrift does feel that the goofier elements sometimes misrepresented their intentions.
“It was really hard to sell people that we’re going to make something that says something interesting,” admits Smith. “We wanted to make it more obvious upfront that we like to tell stories that have an impact and say something and can go deep. We decided that a psychological horror game with a narrative-heavy direction was going to be easier to get people to understand what we were trying to do. As well, we wanted a bit of a departure — more interactivity in the gameplay, and to just kind of push ourselves a little bit to try something new.”
“We were kind of burnt out from like the teen coming-of-age, romantic dating sim comedy kind of genre, and in our true fashion, we pivoted completely opposite to less humorous and more horrifying,” adds Rollins with a laugh.
The darker tone also lets them expand on their love of the cyberpunk genre, which they currently explore in a recreational role-playing podcast called Dark Future Dice.
“[We wanted] a narrative that was representative of the disillusionment of marginalized identities within that kind of dystopian future,” says Rollins. “A lot of popular cyberpunk media really focuses on what we would describe as a ‘dad rock’ mentality of cyberpunk where it’s basically a male power fantasy. It’s not so much talking about the socio-economic issues that the cyberpunk genre has really pioneered.”
A key part of that, says Smith, is the “psychological” aspect of cyberpunk. “A pretty famous theme in cyberpunk is what makes humans human, and we wanted to focus on that and talk about identity. How much does your identity matter in who you are? And how much do memories play a part in that? So we want to just focus more on the cerebral side of it and less on the action side, technological side.”
One way they’re tackling said psychological elements is through non-linear storytelling. As Haze, players will encounter fragmented memories that distort space and time, giving the game more of a trippy feel. It’s that sense of unease over what might happen next that goes hand-in-hand with the type of cyberpunk tale they’re targeting.
“By making it in the horror genre, we’ve tried to really depart from that power fantasy,” says McNally. “It’s sort of the opposite thing where this stuff has control over you, rather than you having control over it.” He says he wants this narrative to have more of a profundity to it in the way that the best psychological horrors tend to grab you. “Your mind is constantly turning over the bits and pieces of it and it hits you in a way where there’s this unanswered question that lies with you while you’re in bed at night thinking about that media, and I hope to capture that in the game.”
This approach presented its own challenge, however, as the team needed to maintain a “pretty loose” narrative structure compared to the far more scripted and tightly laid out visual novels.
“In Raptor Boyfriend, [the narrative planning] was a slowly growing or merging kind of Google document that was continually expanding. And for this game, it’s a series of boards and murals that really look like that meme from Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” says McNally with a laugh.
“It’s super different, and there’s definitely a challenge to it. But I think with this style of game, you have to be okay with a little bit more ambiguity in the story,” notes Smith. “I actually think that’s a point for this type of storytelling, especially when it’s horror and psychological.”
Adds Rollins: “I’m realizing, too, that we’re probably going to be working on the narrative structure to the end!”
Bringing it closer to home
On its website, Rocket Adrift says its mission is to “tell personal narratives that highlight the perspectives of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC experiences while also showcasing an outsider lens to Canadian culture.”
Smith says that the “outsider lens” comes naturally to the team. “Our writing and our wits and our outlook on things is kind of uniquely Canadian. None of us feels like we super fit in when the Toronto culture specifically and stuff like that, but we still are obviously influenced by it. So it kind of helps to bring a unique angle toward stories.”
Raptor Boyfriend certainly leaned into the silliness.
While all of this subject matter factored into Raptor Boyfriend, the team says it was heightened. As Rollins notes, Raptor Boyfriend was meant to “give a sense” of what it was like to grow up in ’90s small-town Ontario, albeit in more of a “fantasy” version of that setting. “We wanted a nice, comfortable story where a marginalized identity person could enjoy that coming-of-age story without having to deal with the realities of that.”
Psychroma, then, is a chance to lean towards realistically portraying Canada. “For Psychroma, we need to think more about how Canadian culture might reflect the dystopia of the world. But I think one of the things that definitely we want to tackle is the rent problem, the housing crisis — that should play a big role in the narrative,” says Rollins. “And that’s something that Torontonians — and just a lot of other people in major cities — would be able to relate to.”
As McNally tells it, Psychroma presents the “worst-case scenario of what could happen if we don’t start thinking about neighbourhoods and communities” in Toronto.
“It takes place in this old house surrounded by these modern buildings, mega city structures, and it’s a safe haven for marginalized people to find some kind of housing,” says Smith. “Without going too much into the story, it struggles to stay up because of the outside world and past mistakes by other generations.”
But even if you’re not a Torontonian, Rocket Adrift hopes the larger explorations of representation and identity will resonate. As mentioned, Haze is a non-binary protagonist, and she’s also mixed-race. Some of the supporting characters, meanwhile, include Salem, a trans woman; her disabled lesbian partner, Agatha; and people with different kinds of neurodiversity. For characters whose lived experiences don’t directly relate to any of the Rocket Adrift team members, consultants have been brought on. But on the whole, the story and characters draw heavily from their creators’ own lives.
“I think stories about mixed race or non-binary people are very few and far between. And usually, when they’re included, they’re either not the main characters, or their identity doesn’t really play into the narrative in any meaningful way,” says Rollins. “When I go to play games, I want to see myself represented in them in that way. Why not be the example you want to see in the world?”
For Smith, a trans woman, stories like this can even be life-changing.
“Games are an incredible vehicle for people having some empathy for people that may not be like them, or may not look like them, but they are still figuring things out. For example, when I played a little indie game, Secret Little Haven, about a trans girl who was figuring herself out, it was like a lightbulb moment for me that I just didn’t see coming,” she says.
“It’s just something about being in the shoes of that character that can make you understand things a little bit better. Games are a really powerful tool in that way, too — just have some self-discovery while you play. Representation is more than just seeing yourself sometimes; it’s also about helping people understand.”
“I hope that [players] are able to cultivate empathy for people that might be in dire situations such as this,” adds Rollins. “But I’m also hoping to just scare the shit out of them and make them cry. I’m always looking to make people cry!”
This interview has been edited for language and clarity.
Psychroma is set to release in Q4 2023 on PC (Steam).
Now, we’ve learned where Troy Baker, the man who originated the role of Joel in The Last of Us game, likes to eat in the province.
Speaking to Daily Hive, Baker, who plays a villain named James in the TV adaptation’s eighth episode, was asked about his favourite food spot in Calgary. Although he notes that he “spent a lot of time in downtown Calgary,” he says much of that was dedicated to the Charcut Roast House.
“I got to know the staff. I’m a guy who likes the Cheers factor. So, wherever I go if someone knows my name I’m going to spend a lot of time with those people,” Baker added.
He went on to praise the city’s “incredible food scene” and mutual love of wine. “So spending a month there, I got to know the town really, really well.” Baker’s character serves as the right-hand man of David (Scott Shepherd), the leader of a group of survivors that has a run-in with Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the woods.
Notably, Baker’s The Last of Us co-star, Ashley Johnson (the original Ellie before Bella Ramsey), will also play a different role in the series. Specifically, Johnson will appear in this season’s ninth and final episode, March 12th’s “Look for the Light,” as Ellie’s mother, Anna. It remains to be seen what she might say about her own experiences in Alberta.
What we do know, though, is how much the cast and crew as a whole have loved the province. Jeffrey Pierce, who played Tomy in the games and Perry in the show, told MobileSyruphis time in Calgary was “maybe my favourite experience filming ever,” while production designer John Paino has said he was “shocked” at how “clean” Alberta was compared to the U.S.
The Last of Us is now streaming exclusively on Crave in Canada.
Niantic built a name for itself with Pokémon Go and is soon launching its own original take on the “catch em’ all’ formula, Peridot. The title is an original IP from the studio and focuses on collecting and attending to an array of colourful new creatures.
Peridot has long been in development following several not-so-successful releases from Niantic. Following titles like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Pikmin Bloom, and other licenced games, Niantic is pivoting to an original concept.
Niantic’s title soft launched in beta in Malaysia last year. This revealed a lot of information about the game, offering insight into what players will experience. Rather than a straight clone of Pokémon Go, Niantic appears to be instilling more Tamagotchi-like mechanics into Peridot.
In Peridot, players start with one creature. From there, they’ll be able to interact with other active players and breed their Peridot to spawn new creatures. In turn, the offspring inherit traits from their parent creatures, making them unique. However, breeding and growing a roster of Peridots is only one component of the game.
Much like Tamagotchi, players must actively take care of their creatures. This means you’ll be tasked with petting, playing, and feeding your Peridots. Additionally, you’ll need to go on walks with your creature to keep them happy.
Naturally, Niantic aims to introduce augmented reality (AR) elements into the game. Much like its other mobile titles, Peridot will bring the creatures to the real world through the use of a smartphone. Players can tap the screen and draw to interact and entertain their creature.
It remains to be seen whether Peridot will be a smashing success like Pokémon Go was upon its launch in 2016. However, not being tied to a licence could give Niantic some much-needed flexibility in its ongoing support of the game.
Preregistration for Peridot is available now on iOS and Android. The game will be available in Canada and worldwide on May 9th.
Every month, Xbox brings new games to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
Following the launch of a couple of new Game Pass titles in the first week of March, Xbox has revealed what’s coming to the service later this month.
Guilty Gear -Strive- (Cloud, Console, and PC) — March 7th
Dead Space 2 (Cloud) — March 9th [EA Play]
Dead Space 3 (Cloud) — March 9th [EA Play]
Valheim (Console, Game Preview) — March 14th
Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (Cloud, Console, and PC) — March 16th
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – The Prince’s Edition (Console and PC) — March 21st
Additionally, here’s what’s leaving Game Pass on March 15th:
F1 2020 (Console) EA Play
Goat Simulator (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Paradise Killer (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Undertale (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Young Souls (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Zero Escape: The Nonary Games (Cloud, Console, and PC)
An Xbox Game Pass subscription costs $11.99 CAD/month for either Console or PC, while a $16.99/month Game Pass Ultimate membership includes Game Pass for both Console and PC, Xbox Live Gold, EA Play and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Find out what most recently came to Game Pass here.
Xbox has announced a brand new ‘Velocity Green’ wireless controller.
As the month of March begins, Xbox is ringing in the spring months with a fresh new green controller. The colour is bold and punchy, joining the catalogue of colourful controllers alongside Shock Blue, Pulse Red, Deep Pink, and Electric Volt.
The Velocity Green controller boasts the design and aesthetics of the standard Xbox Wireless controller. Players can access the hybrid D-pad, textured grips and back case. The new Xbox Wireless Controllers, which debuted alongside the Xbox Series X and Series S also include the Share button. The Velocity Green colour model is no different.
The new Xbox wireless controller is compatible with Xbox consoles, PC and mobile devices thanks to Bluetooth connectivity.
March is the month of St. Patrick’s Day as well. To celebrate the season of green, Xbox is also launching the Xbox Icon Collection Velocity Green Hoodie on the Xbox Gear Shop. The hoodie includes the Xbox logo on the front and a small four-leaf clover sewn into the sleeve. Preorders for this piece of gear are available now.
Historically, news of the best-selling video games each year has been focused on the U.S. and you’d be hard-pressed to find any Canadian-specific data. Even when brands like PlayStation release sales breakdowns, Canada is lumped in with the U.S.
Now, however, that’s finally changing. The Entertainment Software Association of Canada (ESAC), the lobbying group on behalf of Canada’s booming video game industry, has partnered with NPD Group to reveal Canadian-specific figures each month. Until now, the market research firm has only publicly divulged U.S. data.
Canada’s 10 best-selling games in January 2023. Image credit: ESAC/NPD
It’s an initiative that Jayson Hilchie, ESAC president and CEO, says is particularly “exciting” to get out there.
“This idea of Canadian sales really spun out of an idea that we were going to write an op-ed about how important Canadian games were on a global stage,” Hilchie told MobileSyrup. “We were going around the world getting German sales, we were getting Pan-European sales, Australian sales, British sales, Türkiye, and NPD sales in the U.S. And the whole point was to show how many Canadian games were in the top 10, top 20, best-selling over the holidays, all around the world.”
The 10 best-selling games in the U.S. in January 2023. Image credit: NPD
While he says those plans ultimately fell through, he says his organization’s long-running relationship with NPD Group paved the way to a different initiative: publishing Canada’s top 10 best-selling games directly through the ESAC. So far, he’s happy with the results.
“Obviously, I was happy to see the three Canadian games in the top 10,” he says of Canada’s inaugural January 2023 list. Indeed, the third, fourth and fifth spots are held by Dead Space (Montreal’s EA Motive), NHL 23 and FIFA 23 (both developed by EA Vancouver), respectively. Notably, while FIFA appeared on both the Canadian and U.S. lists, Madden NFL 23 was the only other sports game on the American list — a testament to how much Canadians love their hockey.
Hilchie also notes that this list is lacking Ubisoft, the French publishing giant with several studios across Canada, including in Quebec and Ontario. “Normally, I think we would see some Ubisoft games in there, but I don’t think they had a release calendar that matched that particular month.” Indeed, the company confirmed in January that sales were down in part due to a comparatively lighter 2022 lineup; major franchises Assassin’s Creed and Far Crydidn’t see new releases last year, while Just Dance 2023 underperformed.
It’s worth noting that January’s best-selling game in Canada, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, also has a Canadian connection. While the game was primarily developed by California’s Infinity Ward, Quebec City-based Beenox handled the PC port.
Even a juggernaut like Call of Duty has ties to Canada. Image credit: Activision
“I think as time goes on throughout the year, we’re always going to see at least a couple of Canadian games,” says Hilchie. “And in that top 10, I think is really good considering we’re a big industry, but we’re a small country relative to some of these other places.”
One area in which the Canadian list stood out from its American counterpart was the prevalence of Nintendo. On the U.S. list, the Japanese gaming giant’s Fire Emblem Engage and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet placed fifth and tenth, respectively. In Canada, Fire Emblem Engage was second and Scarlet and Violet placed seventh, while a third Nintendo title that didn’t chart on the U.S. list, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, came in at 10th. This also follows Nintendo’s recent confirmation that the Switch has been Canada’s best-selling console for five consecutive years.
While Hilchie says this likely speaks to Nintendo’s long, storied history in the industry, he says he’s more surprised by how much the company’s fans responded to the results of this data.
“I can tell you that the Nintendo fans, based on our social media site, are not only surprised but excited about the number two game on the list, [Fire Emblem Engage], especially because it doesn’t even include digital sales,” he says. “So it’s done quite well. Obviously, there are some major fans of that franchise that were happy to see that the game is doing quite well. To me, that was one of the more fun things that came out of it.”
Fire Emblem Engage seems to have resonated with Canadians, in particular. Image credit: Nintendo
He says this speaks to the surprisingly substantial public interest in this data, especially since it was dropped without any prior tease.
“One thing that was really exciting for us was that I don’t think we expected to see as much enthusiasm as there was for the sales data. We got something like 30,000 impressions on that original tweet, non-boosted impressions, which is a considerably high social media post for us,” he says, noting that ESAC’s social media posts are usually more policy, government, or initiative-related. “I’d be lying if I told you I thought that it was going to get as much excitement as what actually came out of it. So we’re really thrilled to move forward with this every month because it looks like we’ve got a really great base audience and we can just build from that.”
Hilchie also says there’s other Canadian-specific data that can be revealed as the reports evolve over time. While he notes that they’ll never divulge how many copies each game has sold as that’s each publisher’s proprietary information, they do have data for up to 50 games that could be shared in the future.
“I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for us, and I think NPD wanted to see how this worked out. But they’ve definitely said that they’ve got other data that they can share with us, and so time will tell what we put out. So we’re starting with this and now that we know there’s an appetite for this type of information, we’ll go from there.”
Motive’s Dead Space remake received universal praise when it was released in January. Image credit: EA
Ultimately, he says this is “another vertical” through which the ESAC can elevate its platform, especially as its found “a whole new kind of audience.”
Naturally, data like this helps the ESAC in its larger push to get government support for the national games sector. Coincidentally, our discussion came mere days after the reveal of Alberta’s latest budget, in which video games were not given an expected tax credit. The fact that this also happened while the province is getting significant publicity from HBO’s The Last of Us, a series based on a video game, makes the lack of a gaming tax credit all the more standout.
“The ironic thing about The Last of Us is that because it’s a published and distributed television show that it’s eligible for the film and television tax incentive that Alberta offers,” says Hilchie. “Yet if The Last of Us video game was shot and designed and developed there, it would get absolutely zero government support.”
Per the ESAC’s Canadian Video Game Industry: 2021 report, there are nearly 100 development studios in Alberta, including, arguably, Canada’s most famous: BioWare Edmonton, the creator of beloved RPGs like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
“The seriousness of the matter is that the Alberta video game industry is a nice upstart industry,” says Hilchie. “They’ve got some serious capacity going there. There were investments in studios that set up there when the first iteration of the tax incentive came out, and you started to see a lot of interest in Calgary and Edmonton, and then the tax incentive was canceled.”
A provincial breakdown of the number of gaming studios in Canada, per ESAC’s 2021 report. (Image credit: ESAC)
He hopes that the spring election will offer an opportunity for ESAC, Digital Alberta and other groups to “put the issue back on the table” for all political parties.
“The fact of the matter is that the video game industry proves across Canada that when you put targeted government support toward it, it blows up. It grows. You can look anywhere, whether it’s the original Quebec tax incentive to Nova Scotia to Ontario,” he says.
He points to how such support has helped his native Nova Scotia grow immensely in 10 years, adding the likes of Ubisoft and Bethesda’s Alpha Dog Games (both in Halifax) and 2K Sports (Lunenberg) during this time.
“Now, there are not only those three big publishers but another 30 independent mobile game developers and PC game developers. It can show you what you can do in a place with a million people like Nova Scotia. Just think about what Alberta could pull off with two major cities and a larger population. So I’m disappointed but I’m not defeated.”
