Fortnite mogul Tim Sweeney says the nascent and ambiguous Metaverse could become a trillion-dollar industry.

Right now video games are the most lucrative part of the entertainment industry. Analyst firm Newzoo predicts gaming will make $175 billion in 2021, and $200 billion in 2023. But what happens if the entire entertainment industry melds together with one another with a pinch of social networking too?

That's essentially the driving force behind the Metaverse, gaming's newest buzzword that's being bandied about by the likes of Facebook (who believes so strongly in the Metaverse they changed their name to Meta), Google, Microsoft, and Epic Games (and a concept originally envisioned by novels like Ready Player One). The Fortnite-maker has ambitious plans for the Metaverse and is buying up key companies like Harmonix to "make music for the Metaverse."

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney calls for a single storefront that works across all platforms...but that's very unlikely to happen.

Epic's Tim Sweeney has a wildly ambitious idea to unify and centralize video games under one store. The idea is to make a digital marketplace--like, say, the Epic Games Store--where game purchases carry across all platforms. It could go even further with cross-over purchases; think of it as a storefront that supports Play Anywhere: Buy a game once on PC, play it on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and even mobiles.

"What the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms," Sweeney said at the Global Conference for Mobile Application Ecosystem Fairness in Seoul, South Korea.

PureVPN reached out to us with an epic Black Friday deal for its VPN service. You can get an incredible 5 years of VPN for just $79. However, TweakTown readers have also been offered an additional 10% discount using code "discount10", bringing the total price down to just $71.10, or $14.22 per year and only just over $1 per month.

Why choose PureVPN? Besides, the great Black Friday deal we have for you right here, here are some other reasons:

• Up to 20Gbits Servers
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A key store reached out to us with some great deals for its Black Friday sales event. Below, you will find some epic deals on not only Windows 10, but also Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 11. There's also some hot deals on Microsoft Office (2016 and 2019), as well as some super bundle deals for Windows and Office together. Happy shopping!

35% off code: TT25 (will be switched to 25% or 30% after November ends)

• Genuine Lifetime Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM CD-KEY GLOBAL $13.28 (35% off code TT25)
• Genuine Lifetime Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OEM CD-KEY GLOBAL $17.67 (35% off code TT25)
• Genuine Lifetime Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM GLOBAL CD-KEY $10.95 (35% off code TT25)

In a newly released data dump by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, what we thought of as satellite galaxies to the Milky Way are not all they seem.

For decades scientists have believed the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way to be satellites, galaxies orbiting our own that have been doing so for billions of years. However, new data from ESA's Gaia mission has been used to calculate the movements of these galaxies, revealing they aren't orbiting the Milky Way at all.

Researchers computed the three-dimensional velocities for forty dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way, then used them to calculate the galaxy's orbital energies and angular (rotational) momentum. They found the galaxies to be moving significantly faster than other giant stars and star clusters known to orbit the Milky Way. The research team concluded that the dwarf galaxies could not yet be orbiting the Milky Way, as it would have attenuated their orbital energies and angular momentum.

The Milky Way has consumed smaller galaxies in the past, such as the dwarf galaxies Gaia-Enceladus and Sagittarius, 8-10 billion years ago and 4-5 billion years ago, respectively. Stars from both galaxies can be seen in the data from Gaia, where stars absorbed from Sagittarius possess higher orbital energies compared to those from Gaia-Enceladus, indicating their shorter exposure to the Milky Way's influence. The even higher energies of the dwarf galaxies now being studied indicate they have been around the Milky Way for even less time than Sagittarius.

The Russian cargo ship "Progress 78" has departed the International Space Station (ISS), freeing up space for the inbound Prichal module.

Also known as Progress MS-17, Progress 78 launched on June 29th, 2021, to the ISS, delivering over 3,600 pounds (1,630 kilograms) of supplies two days after it launched. Progress 78 undocked from Russia's Nauka science module at 11:22 UTC, November 25th, set on a destructive trajectory into Earth's atmosphere. A new Russian docking port module named Prichal (Russian for "pier") is set to take its place, launching toward the ISS on November 24th.

Prichal's role will be for "testing architecture for potentially permanent settlements in space" according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. Another Progress spacecraft is bringing the Prichal module to the ISS, after which it will undock from Prichal and meet the same fate as Progress 78. Progress 78 was expected to burn up upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere above the Pacific ocean, roughly four hours following undocking.

HyperX has selected a handful of its gaming keyboards, mice, and headsets to be discounted hugely on Amazon for Black Friday.

Of the mice available, you can pick up models from HyperX's Pulsefire line ranging from $64.99 to $19.99, including the Pulsefire Dart, Pulsefire Haste, and Pulsefire Core. All come with full RGB customization and at least six programmable buttons, enabled by HyperX's Ngenuity software.

HyperX's Cloud headset line is also up for grabs, with the Cloud II Wireless, Cloud Alpha, CloudX, Cloud Core, and Cloud, with prices ranging from $129.99 to $39.99.

Both mechanical and membrane options are available for keyboards, all sporting full RGB lighting, with prices from $99.99 to $29.99. The Alloy Core, Alloy Origins, and Alloy Elite 2 are all on sale.

New research has been published in Nature Communications, describing how a team of scientists from the University of Manchester used gene editing to manufacture new antibiotics.

The team used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to create new non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) enzymes, critical in the natural production of antibiotics like penicillin. Previously, manipulating these enzymes to create more potent antibiotics that are less susceptible to growing microbial antibiotic resistance has been a challenge.

The UK government has estimated that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will lead to 700,000 deaths each year globally and predict this will climb to 10 million by 2050, costing the global economy ~$100 trillion.

"The emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens is one of the biggest threats we face today. The gene-editing approach we developed is a very efficient and rapid way to engineer complex assembly line enzymes that can produce new antibiotic structures with potentially improved properties," said Jason Micklefield, Professor of Chemical Biology at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB).

The huge deals in the lead-up to Black Friday continue, where on Amazon, you can now find HTC Vive's and their accessories for discounts up to 41% off.

The HTC Vive Pro Eye is available in a complete kit, including the two controllers and two base stations, with the option to add in a Vive tracker, or you can opt for the headset on its own. The Vive Pro is also available in all the same configurations but lacks the built-in eye-tracking of the Vive Pro Eye.

Alternatively, the Vive Cosmos Elite comes in a complete kit, including two controllers and two base stations, with the option to purchase it as a standalone headset.

The accessories on sale include the wireless adapter for the Vive Pro and Vive Cosmos series and the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap to provide a first-party audio solution.

Black Friday is around the corner and to lead into the sales madness Amazon has slashed prices across a select range of microphones.

A good quality microphone is a staple part of any streaming setup, and while you can take a cheaper microphone and tweak it to sound like a higher-end microphone, sometimes it's just better to pick up a reputable brand of microphone that you know is going to be acceptable quality.

Blue Microphones certainly comes to mind when the topic of high-quality microphones is brought up and Amazon has discounted a large range of its microphone solutions by up to 25%. Amazon's early Black Friday deals feature discounts for popular Blue products such as the Blue Yeti, Blue Yeti X, Blue Yeti Nano, and Blue Snowball iCE. In the entirety of this article you will find the best deals for Blue's range of on sale products.