The NPD Group reveals some interesting tidbits about U.S. gaming habits, revealing that roughly 14% of the country's population are heavy gamers.

According to The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella, the gaming habits of U.S. consumers are on the rise. The analyst notes that 3/4ths of the United States population are gamers that spend time and/or money on interactive entertainment, or roughly 244 million people. Out of these, 20% of them, or 48 million people, are considered heavy users that spend over 15 hours a week playing video games.

The analyst firm also notes that gamers are playing on more devices than ever. In 2020, 65% of surveyed users said they are playing titles across multiple platforms, including consoles, PCs, and mobile phones, up from 59% in 2018. This uptick will help pave the way to more innovative gaming access points like Stadia and Xbox cloud game streaming to mobile devices via Project xCloud.

343 Industries has revealed Halo: Infinite's box art ahead of tomorrow's huge campaign gameplay reveal, clearly highlighting the main themes and focus for the ambitious sequel.

Box art says a lot about a game and is still a big factor in whether or a not a consumer buys a product. Halo: Infinite's cover art is decidedly epic and gives us a big idea on what the game is all about.

Back in 2018, 343i's Dan Chosich said Infinite is returning to its roots to embrace Combat Evolve's main tenants: Sci-fi wonder, hope against desperation and loss, and a true sense of emboldened heroism.

We have another new rumor to share on Ampere GPU performance, this time with the GeForce RTX 3080 and insider KatCorgi on Twitter who tweeted:

This about lines up with previous estimates, with the new rumor suggesting the GeForce RTX 3080 is around 20% faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. There is nothing specific to go from here, but it lines up with the 40-50% upgrade that the RTX 3080 Ti / RTX 3090 is meant to bring over the RTX 2080 Ti.

If it's a raw 20% improvement over the RTX 2080 Ti without running magic DLSS 3.0 technology or something, then that will be a nice upgrade over the RTX 2080 Ti -- except I'm sure the RTX 3080 will deploy with 10GB of GDDR6 (and a much higher TDP at 300W or over).

Fortnite players have been waiting on what we all thought would be cars introduced to the massively popular Battle Royale game from Epic Games, but they're not here even with the just-released v13.30 update.

But, with the new update we've been teased with gas stations and petrol mechanics -- but more excitedly, a crashed spaceship that was flown by the "Ancient Astronaut". We should expect the spaceship to come with some new challenges, where you'll have to find the spaceship, find a missing part, install the part, and then launch the ship.

FortniteIntel goes into some great depth on what they think is coming with the spaceship-related update, where they write: "Our first thought upon seeing this ship takes us back to The Visitor. The ship might be different, but the objective of the Ancient Alien could have been the same. This Astronaut could even be one of The Seven - trying to break the loop from inside of the Apollo universe (coincidence that the new map is named Apollo?)"

A social media post had gamers excited that Sony was surprisingly rolling out PlayStation 5 demo stations starting in the UK, but it doesn't appear to be the case.

It started with a post on Twitter by IronCoreGames, and quickly squashed: no PS5 demo stations just yet. Some sites were contacted by Currys PC World, saying that these kiosks have been in their stores for "maybe about a year now".

Sony is going to have a hard time getting people to see their PlayStation 5 demo stations when they do eventually roll out globally, an unfortunate circumstance pushed on the company because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Justice Department has just slammed two suspected Chinese hackers with major charges, alleging they stole American trade secrets, IP, and aimed at US companies involved in COVID-19 research.

The above video was posted by the official Justice Department YouTube channel, which covers the entire thing. This is a big deal, with the Justice Department detailing the video with a description that reads: "Two Chinese Hackers Working with the Ministry of State Security Charged with Global Computer Intrusion Campaign Targeting Intellectual Property and Confidential Business Information, Including COVID-19 Research"

Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi allegedly conducted a hacking campaigned saw them stealing weapon designs and testing data from US defense contractors, source code from software companies, and even drugs that are currently in development by some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.

Twitter is cracking down on Qanon again, with the social networking giant to no longer recommend accounts with Qanon related content. Twitter isn't the only one doing this "all for a LARP", as Facebook removed as bunch of Qanon pages not too long ago.

This will include email, push, and follow recommendations as well as limiting Qanon content circulating through places in Twitter like trends and search. NBC News reporter that this move by Twitter could affect around 150,000 accounts according to a Twitter spokesperson, who "asked to remain unnamed due to concerns about the targeted harassment of social media employees".

According to the Twitter spokesperson, the company has taken down over 7000 accounts related to Qanon as they are breaking its rules on targeted harassment as part of its updated policies.

Crytek may have pushed out the release of Crysis Remastered on the PC and other consoles, but the Nintendo Switch version of the game is still going for a Maximum Launch on July 23, 2020.

In a recent developer livestream we found out some more details on the rendering resolution of Crysis Remastered on the Nintendo Switch. We previously heard reports that suggested it would be running at 720p 30FPS -- but now we know the rendering resolutions in both docked, and handheld modes.

Crysis Remastered will be running somewhere between 720p and 900p when in docked mode, while on-the-go the resolution takes a sharp hit dropping down to somewhere between 540p and 720p.

The entire world is pretty much on lockdown and millions of gamers are sitting inside, waiting out what feels like a deep winter for CD PROJEKT RED's gigantic release of Cyberpunk 2077 later this year.

Well before now and then, how about you virtually tour the offices of CD PROJEKT RED, which is based in Warsaw, Poland. You can use Google Maps street view to virtually few the offices, where you can get a glimpse into the work spaces CDPR has setup for its staff.

You're greeted with accolades, awards, magazine covers with CD PROJEKT RED games on them -- and an awesome Witcher statue in the front lobby.

I've just spotted Sabrent's new SSD that it should likely unveil any minute now while trawling Amazon, with a new Rocket Q4 NVMe 4.0 SSD that comes in a 4TB capacity -- another world first for Sabrent.

Sabrent's new 4TB Rocket Q4 NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 SSD has read speeds of up to an insane 4900MB/sec (4.9GB/sec) while writes are at up to 3500MB/sec (3.5GB/sec). As for pricing, the Sabrent 4TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD costs $770 -- a big premium from the 2TB that costs $320. You can get it without the heat sink for $750.

But you're getting 4TB of insane-fast PCIe 4.0-powered NVMe SSD storage... if you want the very best... Sabrent has your back, but it'll cost you a kidney. The 8TB version of Sabrent's Rocket Q4 NVMe SSD family could cost a pretty penny now, where we could be looking at up to $1600-$2000 at this rate.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake's upcoming second chapter could be release as a separate next-gen PlayStation 5 game, Tetsuya Nomura seems to hint.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, game director Tetsuya Nomura confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2 is in full-blown development. The team likely moved on to the second chapter weeks or even months before Final Fantasy 7 Remake shipped in April, and in the new interview Nomura promises to raise the quality even further than the PS4 release.

This is interesting considering how amazing FF7R looks and plays on PlayStation 4, especially with the backgrounds, CGI cinematics, and overall fluid gameplay. The next logical performance and quality jump is of course on Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5, which offers massive upgrades via new powerful CPU, GPU, RAM, and high-end PCIe 4.0 hardware with 5.5GB/sec transfer speeds.

Anton Castillo, played by Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito, is the villain in Ubisoft's new tropical Far Cry 6 game. Now Ubisoft takes a closer look at Anton's twisted psychology.

In Far Cry 6, there's one main opposing force: Anton Castillo, el presidente of the Latin island-country of Yara. Castillo rules the so-called Jewel of the Caribbean with an iron fist, aiming to smite any uprisings by sheer force. This only fans the flames of revolution, igniting a full-on Cuba-esque guerrilla revolution that sees Yara's streets filled with chaos. But Anton isn't going to let up. He plans to quell the rebellion by smashing it to bits. That's where you come in as Dani Rojas, a Yara native who leads the heart of the revolution.

Far Cry's villains are some of the most captivating and interesting parts of the games. Every time they're different and a little crazy in their own way. Anton, however, is a more reserved brand of crazy.

Ubisoft Quebec originally planned to have Kassandra as the sole playable character in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but company exec Serge Hascoet forced the team to add in a playable male character because "females don't sell."

According to Bloomberg's new lengthy expose into Ubisoft's alleged culture of misconduct, the company had very different plans for both its new Assassin's Creed games. Origins, for example, originally killed off the charismatic, stoic, and likable Medjay Bayek early on in the game. Players were supposed to play as his wife, Aya, for most of the game as she sought answers and revenge.

The ancient Greece-based Assassin's Creed Odyssey went farther and originally didn't even feature a playable male protagonist. Kassandra was to be the sole lead, as is obvious by her magnetism and excellent character development. Alexios was added in at the behest of Serge Hascoet, a now-departed high-level Ubisoft executive who's orbited by illicit allegations of sexism, sexual abuse, and harassment.

Before Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch was working on a medieval third-person action-adventure game called Prophecy.

The game features a gruff protagonist named Abel Taboora, the most-wanted person in the fantasy world of Glascony. Abel has turned into a thief who's being hunted down, and the vertical slice has him running through a medieval-style city in a kind of linear scripted sequence, complete with seamless blending of gameplay and cutscenes. The gameplay is brutal and visceral like The Last of Us 2, and death scenes are particularly grisly.

The game's mechanics are reminiscent of Assassin's Creed with leaping and parkour, but it's clear how Prophecy helped shape Ghost of Tsushima. The cancelled game has swordplay and stealth that resembles Jin Sakai's maneuvers, and enemies have Samurai-esque armor. Abel has an assortment of alchemical potions that dish out elemental damage like fire and explosions.

Nintendo's latest 2020 annual report shows a number of substantial investments into partner companies, but it's biggest is Bandai Namco.

While scouting Nintendo's new annual report, I noticed something interesting: The Japanese games-maker has invested considerably into Bandai Namco, one of its principal game development partners. Nintendo currently owns over 3.8 million shares of Bandai Namco that're worth roughly $186 million. The company says this investment serves the "purpose of maintaining and developing the business relationship."

This makes sense considering Bandai Namco has developed and is developing high-profile games for Nintendo, including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Nintendo's second best-selling game on Switch with over 18 million units sold, and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4.

Today House House and iam8bit announce the Untitled Goose Game Lovely Edition, a limited physical boxed edition of the infamous honkin' indie.

After tons of acclaim, sales, and awards, House House's beloved Untitled Goose Game is coming to physical retail stores as a boxed indie. The game releases on September 29 and will be sold as a boxed edition on PS4 ($29.99) and Nintendo Switch ($34.99), complete with a 24-page physical booklet, a poster, and a special anti-goose sticker.

The eco-friendly Lovely Edition is exclusive to iam8bit and is priced the same as the other SKU.

It's common for the average job to give an employee an opportunity to sometimes take home a hefty bonus, but imagine if you could take home $13 billion in bonuses in just a single day.

Well, that is similar to what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just achieved, as the multi-billionaire just saw the largest single-day increase to his net-worth since the Billionaire Index was created eight years ago. Bloomberg has reported that Bezos saw an increase of $13 billion in one day, as the stock for Amazon increased by 7.9%.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, the Amazon CEO has seen how net-worth increase by $74 billion since the start of the year. This increase is no doubt partly due to millions of people buying supplies for the coronavirus off of Amazon. Bezos is leading the pack as the world's richest individual with $189 billion, followed not-so-closely behind is former Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates, with $118 billion.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just updated their guidance on some critical COVID-19 information, changing their suggestion for just how long people spend in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.

The CDC has updated its guidance for COVID-19, where they've made some adjustments to the symptom-based criteria. The CDC explains:

So what now? If you've just tested positive for COVID-19 then the CDC still says you need to isolate yourself for 10 days starting the day you noticed the symptoms. But the new guidelines adjust what happens after those 10 days, where you'll now need to have "at least 24 hours" pass since you last had a fever -- and have not been taking fever-reducing medications.

AMD has just unleashed a new family of desktop processors if you can believe it, with the onslaught against Intel continuing in the form of the new Ryzen 4000 G-series CPUs.

What AMD is aiming for with the new Ryzen 4000 G-series processors is that they have kick ass built-in Radeon graphics, leverage the 7nm node and Zen efficiency, where it delivers the ultimate performance that AMD touts is 2.5x more than last gen.

AMD unleashed 6 new processors in its Ryzen 4000 G-series family, with the specs above showing that we have 3 x 65W offerings and 3 x 35W offerings. AMD offers an 8C/16T chip at both 35W and 65W, a 6C/12T chip at both 35W and 65W, and a 4C/8T chip also at both 35W and 65W.

Overcooked and Overcooked 2 are being remastered for next-gen consoles, with Overcooked: All You Can Eat announced. Check out the announcement trailer:

Ghost Town Games is remastering both of the Overcooked games for the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Overcooked: All You Can Eat will pack remasters of both games, all of the DLC from both games, and overhauled graphics.

Overcooked: All You Can Eat will be running at the glorious 4K resolution at 60FPS, as well as having super-fast load times. Ghost Town Games has also even rebuilt the original Overcooked using the newer Overcooked 2 engine, so the original game will look even better than before.