Konami's new Castlevania NFTs have been a big success with over $164,000 USD earned so far.

Note: All figures current at the time of writing.

Konami's NFTs are doing much better than Ubisoft's Quartz NFTs. The publisher has sold its limited-edition Castlevania NFTs for a total of 49 WETH, or about $164,535 USD. The data we've collected shows a highly speculative market with the intent of re-selling and collecting. The most expensive NFT was the Castlevania - Dracula's Castle Pixel Art which sold for over $25,000, and the lowest is Castlevania - Dagger VS Frankenstein & Igor that sold for $7,380.

The most interesting thing about the Open Sea auction is how disproportionate the offer amounts are to the sale price. For instance, the Castlevania: Circle of the Moon - Main Visual Art Global ver. NFT was purchased for 5.26 WETH, or about $17,600, but the offer price is only $3,351. Only one of the NFTs have an auction offer that beats the sale price, and it's the aforementioned pixel art map.

God of War has released on PC with thunderous acclaim and popularity, amassing tens of thousands of players in its first day of sale.

Sony's new God of War release on PC further cements a new cross-platform era for its once-console exclusive games. The gambit appears to be paying off quite well. God of War in particular has peaked at 49,411 players on Steam (as per SteamDB figures). God of War reviews are also overwhelmingly positive with a 97% approval rating.

Sales of God of War on Steam are estimated to be up to 217,000, but also remember the game is being sold on the Epic Games Store as well. We might get official numbers from Sony soon, but God of War 2018 has sold 19.5 million units as of August 2021.

343 Industries will finally starting reducing Halo Infinite's microtransactions to make cosmetics and collectibles more fairly priced.

Halo Infinite has been over-monetized since it released on December 8. There have been $20 bundles that include paltry value with one piece of armor and other meager customizables (some didn't have any armor at all), and 343i was even charging $5 for basic armor colors. Now more than 41 days later, 343i says it will start dropping prices; the store will be adjusted starting this Tuesday, January 18, studio head of design Jerry Hook says.

"Starting Tuesday, the Shop experience will vary week-to-week. We are focused on reducing pricing across the board, providing stronger values in our bundles, starting to put individual items outside of bundles, and more," Hook wrote on Twitter.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is responsible for the new map.

DESI was installed on the Mayall telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the Sonoran Desert and aims to achieve a better understanding of dark energy, the force hypothesized to drive the universe's expansion. Using a two-dimensional map of the universe released in January 2021, the DESI team prepared DESI to conduct its three-dimensional survey of the universe.

DESI's survey has created a map that contains over 7.5 million galaxies, far exceeding the approximately 930,000 galaxies comprising the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from 2008. DESI will expand this map, and the team expects the survey to be completed by 2026 after observing an estimated 35 million galaxies.

The World Economic Forum has released The Global Risks Report 2022 , with one of its seven chapters dedicated to space, entitled "Crowding and Competition in Space."

Credit: World Economic Forum

The report cites concerns such as Kessler Syndrome, which could arise from ever-increasing satellite numbers in orbit around Earth. The situation could get dramatically worse a lot sooner as military or defense-oriented presence increases. Another potential issue is how the governments and private companies may violate the United Nations' Outer Space Treaty, as some are concerned the Artemis Accords will.

The report also addresses the lack of effective governance tools for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), the governing body for space-based activity, to manage the evolving reality of space affairs. It states the pressing need for an authority that governs satellite launches and servicing and can control space traffic, enforcing various aspects of space travel.

A world-first study on the problem has been published in Nature Medicine.

Fourteen astronauts were studied over their six-month space missions, having direct measurements of their red blood cells taken. The study found that the astronauts lost 54% more red blood cells in space than they would otherwise on Earth, about 3 million per second being created and destroyed compared to only 2 million on Earth. The same result was observed for both female and male astronauts.

"Space anemia has consistently been reported when astronauts returned to Earth since the first space missions, but we didn't know why. Our study shows that upon arriving in space, more red blood cells are destroyed, and this continues for the entire duration of the astronaut's mission," said lead author Dr. Guy Trudel, a rehabilitation physician and researcher at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.

The sweltering record temperature was recorded in the town of Onslow in Western Australia.

Reaching a temperature of 50.7 degrees Celsius (123.26 degrees Fahrenheit) according to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), the temperature equals Australia's hottest day on record. It is the hottest recorded temperature for Western Australia.

The temperature was last recorded on January 2nd, 1960, at Oodnadatta Airport in South Australia. The country's Climate Council warms these temperatures could become commonplace as global warming continues, with Dr. Martin Rice stating the record cones as "part of a long-term warming trend driven by the burning of coal, oil, and gas."

The new study discussing the threat was published in the journal Biological Reviews.

Five major extinction events have been identified in the history of life on Earth. The five events are the Ordovician-Silurian, Late Devonian, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction events. Scientists suggest a sixth, Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is now underway, threatening global biodiversity.

Biologists from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France, extrapolated land snail and slug estimates to determine that between 7.5% and 13% of the two million identified species on Earth could already be extinct. The extinction rates are not equal across all ecosystems, with marine species somewhat less affected despite their own significant threats.

Apple's upcoming AR headset is meant to be a game-changer and would replace the iPhone over the next 10 years -- and is now facing delays of "at least a few months" according to sources of Bloomberg.

Bloomberg reports from the usual "people familiar with the situation" that Apple is "potentially delaying its first major new product since the Apple Watch in 2015". Apple was meant to unveil its next-gen headset that would combine the worlds of virtual and augmented realities at its WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) in June 2022, and a release later this year... but that isn't happening anymore.

The new Apple AR headset is reportedly facing "development challenges" that include overheating, cameras and software "have made it harder to stay on track" according to people involved in the project. The sources said that these issues could force Apple to delay the announcement of its AR headset until later this year, or even into 2023 -- while the headset itself is pretty much confirmed to be delayed into 2023 at the very earliest.

NVIDIA announced its new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card at CES 2022, but I've just reported exclusively that NVIDIA has halted production on the RTX 3090 Ti -- not stopping GIGABYTE from preparing its new GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards.

GIGABYTE has a fleet of new custom RTX 30 series GPUs on the way, with the new flagship GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 Ti AORUS Xtreme Waterforce -- a new watercooled card -- and the new GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Gaming OC graphics card. We should expect to see the RTX 3090 Ti Gaming OC be an air-cooled variant, both laden with RGB lighting.

In the new EEC listing, it wasn't just the new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti that gets some new custom card lovin' from GIGABYTE, but also the new GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Gaming OC Stealth, and not just 1 but 4 new GeForce RTX 3050 cards. The new GeForce RTX 3050 cards include the RTX 3050 Gaming OC, RTX 3050 Eagle OC, RTX 3050 Gaming, and RTX 3050 Mini.