Asian characters have a long history in video games, thanks to Japanese giants like Nintendo and Sony. Now, US-based Microsoft is taking pains to acquire, promote, and create more games with Asian characters -- as the industry responds to increased calls for diverse representation. The move fits in with Microsoft's larger strategy to acquire new content and expand their global reach. The company has been on a spending spree, buying up game companies to broaden their roster on services like the subscription-based Xbox Game Pass. Earlier this year, Microsoft purchased the beleaguered Activision Blizzard.

The Covid-19 pandemic has cast a sobering spotlight on the unsustainable path we are on. One such truth is symbolized by the global #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has once again highlighted the embedded biases in our interconnected social fabric, forcing us all, to re-evaluate long standing notions of morality, fairness and ethics. It is worth taking pause to consider whether the exponential technological progress is not also amplifying some of the very same challenges we are trying to overcome as a global society. As we strive to meet the needs of customers, we continuously look towards technology. We see leading companies globally investing heavily in technologies such as cloud computing, internet of things, advanced analytics, edge computing, virtual and augmented reality, 3D printing and of course artificial intelligence.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Holberton School, the two-year tuition-deferred college alternative educating the next generation of digital workers, announced the launch of their brand new Machine Learning curriculum which will be available at all eight world-wide Holberton campuses. The announcement was made at the flagship San Francisco campus featuring Grammy award-winner NE-YO, Black Girls Code founder and CEO Kimberly Bryant and representatives from Google (Tensorflow) and IBM. "Machine Learning, and by extension Artificial Intelligence, are increasingly dominating how we interact with technology at all levels, and the need for diversity has never been so urgent," said Gabriela de Queiroz, founder, AI Inclusive and R-Ladies. "Having programming skills isn't enough -- we need people who are aware of the ethical implications of AI, who can bring their diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to the workplace and incorporate them into the algorithms that will increasingly play a major role in healthcare, safety, and every other element of our lives." Machine Learning, which gives computers the capability to learn without being explicitly programmed, is already in use across the globe and is rapidly supplementing, and even replacing, traditional software development.

I must not have got the memo, because as a young lecturer in computer science at the University of Southampton in 1985 I was unaware that "women didn't do computing". Southampton had always recruited a healthy number of women to study computing in our fledgling department, and a quarter of the staff were women, but the student lists for the new academic year showed that quite suddenly, or so it appeared, we'd achieved the unenviable record of having no female students in that year's intake. Many women made important contributions to computing in its early decades, figures such as Karen Spärck Jones in Britain or Grace Hopper in the US, among many others who worked in the vital field of cryptography during the Second World War or, later, on the enormous challenges of the space race. But it had become clear that by the mid-1980s something fundamental had changed. We found that UK university admission figures revealed that the number of girls studying computing had fallen dramatically compared to the number of boys: from 25% percent in 1978 to just 10% in 1985.

Glance at last year's big releases and you might think video games have cracked the issue of diversity. Two of 2016's most acclaimed action adventures Mafia III and Watchdogs 2 both had black male leads, while Mirror's Edge 2, Uncharted 4 and indie game, Virginia, all featured women of colour. This year, we have flagship PlayStation4 title Horizon Zero Dawn as well as Gravity Rush 2, Nier Automata and Tacoma, all showcasing female protagonists. But look beyond the games and into the companies that make them, and you get a very different picture. Representation is still very much a problem.