Animal Crossing: New Horizons is also releasing a day early at GameStop, and should be available at your nearest store.

GameStop just got the greenlight from Nintendo to sell Animal Crossing: New Horizons a day early. A local GameStop told me they received the go-ahead from its compliance department hours ago, and gamers are already sharing photos of successful Animal Crossing purchases from the retailer.

This move follows Doom Eternal's early release. Both games were originally to be staggered in an effort to curb coronavirus risk. Doom Eternal released today, and the plan was for Animal Crossing to release tomorrow. Now that GameStop's corporate offices issued a mandate that all stores must remain open amid the COVID-19 outbreak, it seems like all bets are off.

Today Square Enix confirms that it has not delayed Final Fantasy 7 Remake on PS4, and the game will release on April 10 as planned. But that doesn't mean you'll actually get it on that date.

A bit ago, Amazon started sending out emails to gamers saying their FF7 Remake pre-orders have been delayed. The number of delays grew and grew, prompting worries of another push-back for the game. Now Square Enix has confirmed the game won't be delayed, but the coronavirus has disrupted distribution and shipping of certain portions of worldwide stock. There's no guarantee you'll get your Final Fantasy 7 Remake disc copy at launch.

"The worldwide release of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on April 10 will go ahead. However, with the unforseeable changes in the distribution and retail landscape which varies across countries, it is increasingly likely that some of you will not get hold of your copy of the game on the release date," Square Enix said in a statement.

GameStop will stay open amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic because corporate thinks the store is "essential retail," sources tell Kotaku's Jason Schreier.

As countless businesses close down to curb COVID-19 spread, GameStop will remain open and put employees at further risk. Workers at the games retail chain are forbidden to close stores across the United States. A memo sent out by GameStop's leadership marks the store as "essential retail," putting it alongside critical businesses like grocery stores and gas stations.

"Due to the products we carry that enable and enhance our customers' experience in working from home, we believe GameStop is classified as essential retail and therefore is able to remain open during this time," GameStop said in the memo.

Amidst all the doom and gloom recently, fresh data was released earlier today from the European Space Agency (ESA), showing increased nitrogen dioxide emissions over China, as monitored by its Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor observation satellite.

In a recent tweet by ESA, embedded above, a 10-day moving average graphic shows levels of NO2 from December 20, 2019 till March 16, 2020 from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). In December and January, we saw a high measured amount of nitrogen dioxide, which starts to reduce over time. By the end of January, the levels of nitrogen dioxide reduced significantly till around the start of March, which shows a build-up again, particularly in the northern regions of China.

This animation, using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, shows the nitrogen dioxide emissions from 20 December 2019 until 16 March 2020 - using a 10-day moving average. The drop in emissions in late-January is visible, coinciding with the nationwide quarantine, and from the beginning of March, the nitrogen dioxide levels have begun to increase.

The PlayStation 5's built-in boost mode is much, much more powerful than the PlayStation 4 Pro's. Sony says the boost is so dramatic that some older PS4 games simply can't handle it.

The PS5's backward compatibility is pretty lackluster in terms of supported games. Unlike the Xbox Series X, which can play OG Xbox, Xbox 360, and all Xbox One games at launch, the PlayStation 5 will only support 100 of the most popular PS4 games. But why? The PS5's native boost mode is the culprit. Here's how it works.

Like the Xbox Series X, the PlayStation 5 will natively boost any PS4 game you put into it. For example, Xbox Series X will auto-upgrade 2015's Gears of War 4 to native 4K resolution. Sony's PS5 will also boost PS4 games, but Sony hasn't detailed specifics. We could see all sorts of perf boosts like 120FPS, ray tracing, and more--imagine playing Bloodborne at 1080p 120FPs.

The PlayStation 5's backward compatibility will be quite limited at launch. Sony confirms that roughly 100 of the most popular PS4 games will be backward compatible on the PS5 when it releases in Holiday 2020.

The PS5's backwards compatibility is a lot less expansive than we thought. Console architect Mark Cerny confirms the PS5 can only play PS4 games, and old PS1, PS2, and PS3 generation titles won't be supported natively via discs. Only ~100 of the most popular PS4 games will be playable on the PS5 on release, Cerny says, which is less than 1/40th of the system's overall library of games.

All backward compatible games on the PlayStation 5 must be added on a title-to-title basis, meaning developers and publishers will have to work closely with Sony to bring their games forward. Given the stakes involved in displacing the gaming libraries of 108 million PS4 owners, expect Sony and developers to take backwards compatibility seriously and grow the library over time.

Gamestop gets the greenlight from Bethesda to sell Doom Eternal one day early to curb customer volume. Yes, that means the next Doom game is now available at Gamestop.

With Animal Crossing and Doom Eternal set to release the same day, lots of people are expected to show up at Gamestop to pick up their pre-orders and/or buy the game. And where there's lots of people, there's lots of COVID-19 exposure risk. So Gamestop is separating the two massively-anticipated games into two separate launch days in an effort to sequence out the customer volume.

"To ensure we adhere to CDC-recommended social distancing guidelines, we will be selling DOOM Eternal a day early on Thursday, 3/19 as a safety precaution for our customers and associates. Animal Crossing will release on Friday 3/20 to further help separate the crowds," Gamestop wrote on Twitter.

Supermarket shelves in Australia are virtually bare of essentials, where it first started with toilet paper -- and quickly saw things like bottled water, frozen goods, pasta, and more ripped from shelves over coronavirus panic.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said the Australian government will be prosecuting those who stripped supermarket shelves of essential items, with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) also says these people could be linked to criminal enterprises. Mr Dutton told 2GB in Australia: "We will come down on them like a ton of bricks... I believe they are the ones who have created this pattern of hoarding".

Dutton continued: "They (Australians) are following the behaviour of people who aren't purchasing for themselves - they're doing it for profit, and reasons that are unacceptable. If you have photos, or registration numbers, or if you have instances ... photos, intelligence or information, I want you to call Crime Stoppers".

We are very close to the demo release for Resident Evil 3: Raccoon City, and now Capcom has made the pre-load available to download.

Both Xbox One and PS4 players can download the demo from their respective stores. The PS4 version is weighing in at 8.01 GB, and the Xbox One version is 7.47 GB. Unfortunately, the PC version, which is located on the Steam Store, isn't available to download just yet, but I'd imagine that it will soon become available since the console version is available.

In other Resident Evil news, the upcoming Resident Evil Resistance Open Beta has also been made available for download. The Resistance Open Beta is a 1v4 scenario where four players face off against one other player who is the "Mastermind." The Resistance Open Beta is the biggest out of the lot, weighing in at 10.63 GB. The Resistance Open Beta can't be played until March 27th when servers go online. Resident Evil 3 Remake will be officially launched on PC, PS4, and Xbox One on April 3rd.

When the term 'brain-computer interfaces' is mentioned, one of the first things that spring to mind is The Matrix. But just how close are we to bringing that movie into reality?

According to Valve CEO, Gabe Newell, we are closer than one might think. In a recent interview with IGN, Newell discussed designing Valve's new title, Half-Life: Alyx. At the same time as discussing the titles development, Newell touched on the future of computing and how eventually the human race will be able to link computers to brains for the ultimate interface. Here's what Newell said when talking about the future, "The area that I'm spending a lot of time on has been growing out of a bunch of research that occurred a while ago on brain-computer interfaces."

He continued and said, "I think that that's kind of long lead stuff, so that's kind of the background thread that I get pulled back into when other things aren't demanding my attention." At the moment, human brains can communicate with computers, but in mostly sending and receiving signals. Overall the communication can only happen in extremely limited ways. Even though that might be the case now, Newell believes that "We're way closer to The Matrix than people realize."