Halo: Infinite was just delayed to 2021, but some companies like Monster Energy didn't get enough time to postpone their promotional plans. So they're running an Xbox Series X / Halo: Infinite giveaway even though the game isn't coming out in 2020. As with any giveaway, Monster put up prize pool worth, and gamers have done some quick math to potentially extrapolate the Series X's price. This isn't accurate.

In the promo, Monster Energy is giving out 200 first-prize bundles that include an Xbox Series X and a copy of Halo: Infinite. The first place prize pool is worth a total of $199,998, Monster says. A bit of quick math dividing the total prize pool value from the amount of prizes gives us $599.99, which people have suspected is the console's final price.

This is erroneous for two reasons: It doesn't include the $59.99 cost of Halo: Infinite, and Monster Energy flat-out says this is an estimation of the total prize pool's value. With Halo: Infinite's $59.99 MSRP subtracted, the console's value is roughly $539.99, which leans much closer to a $499 base price for the Xbox Series X. Even this isn't entirely accurate and Monster is guesstimating to cover its bases.

Gamers have two choices when buying Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and both of them will net a next-gen version. Buy the current-gen version for $49.99 on Amazon and get the free PS5/Xbox Series X upgrade, or buy the next-gen version for $59.99. Why wouldn't you just buy the current-gen version and technically get two games for $49.99? Why is Ubisoft even discounting the current-gen version and giving us a choice?

Ubisoft has confirmed Xbox One and PS4 copies of Assassin's Creed Valhalla will come with free upgrades to the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions that release alongside each next-gen console. Since both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are backwards compatible, you can buy the PS4 and Xbox One versions and play them on next-gen systems. This isn't the beefy next-gen optimized flavor, though, just the backwards compatible version. You can still take advantage of the full next-gen upgrade as well. So why even buy the next-gen only version for $59.99?

It's worth noting the digital version of AC Valhalla on Xbox One is $59.99, presumably because of Smart Delivery, which will automatically scale it to the next-gen version.

At the start of the year, astronomers were observing a massive star dimming, and the original synopsis was that it was about to explode.

Since then, astronomers think they have determined the cause of one of the brightest stars in the night sky rapidly dimming, and the reason is that Betelgeuse ejected a large hot dense cloud of material into space that later cooled to form dust. This cooled dust cloud then covered most of the star's light, which from Earth made it look like it was dimming.

If you are wondering what Betelgeuse is, it's a red supergiant, which is the largest form of star. To put things into perspective for just how big the red supergiant is, if Betelgeuse were in the center of our solar system its surface would reach out to Jupiter. Additionally, astronomers suspect that Betelgeuse's life is coming to an end, which will result in the red supergiant going supernova and explode.

Resident Evil 7 is now the best-selling game in the series, and is now the second top-seller for Capcom's entire lineup.

Capcom's top 10 sales chart is dominated by Monster Hunter with 16.1 million copies, but Resident Evil 7 has secured the #2 spot. The 2017 first-person horror game has now sold 7.9 million units worldwide on all platforms, beating Resident Evil 5, which had previously sat on top of the RE series for years. More recently, Resident Evil 3 REmake has sold over 3 million copies since its early 2020 release.

The zombie franchise is Capcom's biggest earner and has currently sold more than 103 million copies across 141 releases, SKUs, and games. Resident Evil VIIIage may even beat RE7's sales in a shorter span. Capcom expects to sell a record 28 million games this fiscal year, and RE VIIIage will be a big mover for those numbers.

EA is combining the base versions of Origin Access and EA Access together in one package, and it's called EA Play.

As more and more publishers roll out their own subscription services, the need to converge and simplify is important. EA today announced its plans to do just that with EA Play, a new umbrella for its existing services. EA Play will include the base $4.99 versions of Origin Access (PC) and EA Access (PS4, Xbox One) in a single subscription package. That means one subscription carries over to PS4, Xbox One, or PC.

The big motivation behind EA Play is access to a vault of 40+ games. It's basically EA's version of Game Pass, and the library of available games varies on a platform-to-platform basis. It's a way to experience older EA games without having to buy them outright.

It really went into a dark timeline for Apple, Google, Epic Games, and gamers across the world with a huge battle that culminated in Epic Games suing Apple to "end Apple's dominance over tech markets".

Fortnite was pulled from the App Store in retaliation, and then Google ripped the battle royale juggernaut from its own Play Store. It all went down in a few hours time, blowing most people away -- and in the middle of it, some people are selling their older-gen iPad with Fortnite pre-installed for huge amounts of money second hand on eBay.

There's someone selling an iPad 7 with Fortnite pre-installed for $900 on eBay right now, which is pretty crazy considering that you can find the iPad 7 for well under $300 when it has been put on sale. You can even buy a brand new 11-inch iPad Pro for less than this.

Facebook is in the headlines for what could be its largest lawsuit ever, with the social networking giant facing a potential $500 billion (that's $500,000,000,000) fine over collecting users' biometric data through Instagram without their consent.

A new class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, claiming the social networking giant uses facial recognition to identify people and then create a "face template" that is stored in its database.

The lawsuit alleges that this face template tool automatically scans other people featured in the photos uploaded to Instagram, even if they don't use Instagram -- and hence, didn't agree to the terms of service like someone does when they install Instagram.

A new Sony patent hints the PS5 could use liquid metal compound instead of thermal grease to significantly reduce temperatures under load.

Before we dive into the patent, I want to remind everyone this isn't confirmed information. This is a patent and may not be included in the final console. The following is our interpretation of the patent and it is not our intention to mislead anyone.

Sony has gone through great lengths to keep the PlayStation 5 cool and quiet.

Today Ubisoft confirmed Ashraf Ismail, who served as creative director on Assassin's Creed Origins and Valhalla, has been fired from the company.

Ubisoft is cleaning house in an attempt to weed out abusers at its company, and has let go of some of the highest-level executives responsible for big decisions. Now it has fired another employee embroiled in abuse allegations: Ashraf Ismail. Back in June we reported Ismail had left Ubisoft after being caught cheating on his wife, but that wasn't entirely true. Ismail didn't leave Ubisoft but instead left his position. Now Ubisoft has officially fired him.

This is the latest step in Ubisoft's push back against its endemic abuse culture. The company was careful to say Ismail wasn't fired for infidelity, rather using his position as creative director to meet with a fan privately. Ismail was the creative director on two of the three recent Assassin's Creed games. Recent firings include longtime PR director Stone Chin, who was also accused of abuse, but was fired for workplace-related issues.

After years of development, Warner Bros. Montreal will finally reveal its new Batman game on Saturday, August 22 at 1:30PM.

WB Montreal's new Batman game, which is apparently called Batman: Gotham Knights, will be revealed at the DC Fandome event next week, the event's website confirms. The game will be announced in a 20-minute session and give gamers a "first look" at the title, complete with a Q&A panel from developers.

Gotham Knights is believed to follow the Batman comic series with the same name. Just like the comic series, the game is expected to have at least four playable characters, which folds into older Arkham Legacy rumors of a playable "Bat family". Main protagonists may include--but are not limited to--Batman, Batgirl, Robin and Nightwing.

Multiple reports say Sony's PlayStation 5 will cost more than the Xbox Series X. No one knows for sure how much the PS5 will cost, but Sony's yearly forecast gives us clues on an attractive mass-market price point.

The PlayStation 5 will be more expensive than the PS4. That's a given. The console features high-end specs that usher in the enthusiast age of console gaming, complete with a Navi GPU capable of native 4K (and even 8K) gaming, an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU at 3.5GHz, both of which are on an SoC with variable clock rates and set voltages, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, and the fastest storage ever to be put in a console with a 6-channel PCie 4.0 SSD that can hit 5.5GB/sec speeds. But how much will it be? Could the PS5 break $600? That's not very likely.

We don't know exactly how much the PlayStation 5 will cost, nor do we claim to. All we can do is tally up the evidence with current reports and look at what Sony's said so far--and more importantly, what its yearly earnings forecasts lay out for investors.

Micron just finished outing NVIDIA's not-yet-announced GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card, which we now know packs 12GB of ultra-fast GDDR6X memory at 21Gbps.

But they weren't finished with their surprise announcement of the new GDDR6X standard, where Micron has now just announced the development of its next generation memory standard: HBMnext. The new HBMnext memory is most likely what HBM3 was meant to be, but possibly with a new name.

Our friends at VideoCardz report: "Micron expects to produce JEDEC-compliant HBMnext memory in 4-stack 8Gb and 8-stack 16Gb densities. The manufacturer also revealed that the data rate is expected at 3.2 Gb/s. For comparison, the NVIDIA A100 accelerator based on HBM2e technology has a bandwidth of 2.4 Gbps, while AMD Radeon VII based on HBM2 features 2.0 Gbps data rates".

It seems today is another huge day for NVIDIA leaks on the purported new Ampere-based flagship GeForce RTX 3090, with Micron confirming the new card will use its next-gen GDDR6X memory.

Our good friends at VideoCardz have spotted a new technology brief, Micron confirmed it had worked with NVIDIA on the new GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card -- outing it right there in the documents itself. The company says it will have 12GB of GDDR6X on a 384-bit memory interface on the GeForce RTX 3090.

Micron explains: "Micron GDDR6X is the world's fastest graphics memory, delivering legendary performance to help driveray tracing, shadow mapping and silky-smooth animation for an immersive PC gaming experience".

Heavy breathing intensifies.

This could be our first look at NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX 3090 and its beefy PCB, thanks to a new leak over on the NVIDIA subreddit.

NVIDIA's purported GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card and its leaked PCB is coming from a non-reference board from COLORFUL, which would eventually form into the flagship iGame GeForce RTX 3090 Vulcan-X graphics card.

Apex Legends is about to receive its new Season 6 update, with developer Respawn Entertainment taking to the official Apex Legends Twitter account to tease the news.

Respawn gives us a YouTube link to where the Apex Legends Season 6 - Boosted Gameplay Trailer will premiere. The gameplay video will go live on August 4 at 8AM PT, where I'm sure we'll also get some more details on Season 6 itself, and its upcoming Battle Pass.

Apex Legends upcoming Season 6 will introduce a new legend with Rampant, who seems to love huge guns and bubble gum. There will be over 100 exclusive items included in the Boosted Battle Pass, crafting -- where you'll need to collect materials and build yourself some better weapons and gear -- and a new Ranked Season for people to get addicted to.

We all remember James Cameron's massively successful 1997 movie Titanic, catapulting its stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet into Hollywood super-stardom.

Well, Titanic is being turned into a board game with Titanic: The Game. Spin Master Games has used the 1997 movie Titanic for its inspiration for the game, pulling the characters that Cameron used in the movie with players able to play as Jack, Rose, Cal, Ruth or the Captain.

But get this, they thought it was a good idea to market Titanic: The Game, a tragedy where over 1500 people died on April 15, 1912. But yeah, they're serious -- check out how they describe the game:

We've had a couple of fresh nuggets of info about Battlefield 6, where industry insider Tom Henderson tweeting that the team at DICE have been designing Battlefield 6 maps for 128 players -- with 32 v 32 still a key focus.

But it was the second tweet about Battlefield 6 that had my attention, where Henderson tweets: "Battlefield news; There's also been increased interest in Battle Royale due to the success of Warzone. No confirmation of a BR in the next Battlefield yet, but could EA and DICE be planning a F2P Battlefield experience?"

So the EA DICE team have been eyeing off that huge success of Call of Duty: Warzone and its incredibly addictive battle royale mode. He has "no confirmation" of battle royale in Battlefield 6 just yet, but does note that the team could be planning a free-to-play Battlefield experience.

I'm sure EA DICE have been taking down some serious notes over the mega-success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and more specifically its battle royale mode that is addictive AF: Warzone.

In some new Battlefield 6 leaks, we have industry insider Tom Henderson tweeting out some "Battlefield news". Henderson tweeted: "Maps have been designed with 128+ players in mind. But 32 vs 32 will also be a standard playlist".

We recently saw an entire building collapse in Battlefield 6 -- or at least we thought we did, and we also heard about Battlefield 6 having a modern setting and supporting up to 128 players, and EA boss Laura Miele recently saying the team are "creating epic battles at a scale and fidelity unlike anything you've experienced before" in Battlefield 6.

It seems with each passing day the hype train for NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere GeForce RTX series graphics cards grow, with the Ultimate Countdown... well... counting down until the big special event on September 1.

The latest news on NVIDIA's next-gen GeForce RTX series is that the GA102 GPU board design will pack some delicious power delivery, seeing enthusiasts eyebrows raise (well, at least just one of them). NVIDIA has been slowly providing better and better power delivery designs with its high-end Founders Edition cards, but this is taking it to the next level.

NVIDIA's highest-end Ampere GA102 GPU board design should be the one expected in the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or GeForce RTX 3090, or GeForce RTX 3090 ULTRA or ULTIMATE -- whatever-the-hell NVIDIA end up calling it.

I think at this point we all know UFOs are real and it's only a matter of time before we're introduced to another race of beings from somewhere so far away we can't even fathom it. We knew the Pentagon's UFO department would turn dark to light in regards to UFOs soon, but soon is now very soon.

CNN is now reporting that the Pentagon is forming a new task force that will investigate UFO sightings by US military aircraft, "according to two defense officials". Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will oversee the task force, which will "be officially unveiled in the next few days, according to the officials".

Previously on UFOs we had Eric W. Davis who was a consultant on the Pentagon's UFO program, describing the mysterious UFOs as "off-world vehicles not made on this earth". That article blew up so much that Joe Rogan himself even shared it, with the The New York Times article titled 'No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon's U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public' detailing it all.