The Switch Lite and transforming Switch have both sold over 800,000 units in the United States in April, the NPD Group reports.

April 2020 was a huge month for the games industry thanks to coronavirus lockdowns. Not only have digital earnings hit a new high of $10.5 billion, but game spending in the U.S. is up to an all-time new April high of $1.46 billion.

Now we have more insight on how these numbers break down. Hardware was up an incredible 163% YoY to $420 million, driven primarily by the Nintendo Switch's huge sales surge. The PS4 and Xbox One also saw a hefty uptick in sales too, despite being 7 years into their respective lifecycles and a brand new console generation on the way.

A neat little infograph from SatelliteInternet compiles Google Trends data to see which retro consoles U.S. states like the most.

The data compares current interest in three systems across the continental United States--Gamecube, Nintendo 64, and PlayStation 2. The info isn't representative of total historic console hardware or software sales, but moreso the overall current Google Trends data. Basically the idea here is to see what retro console that each state is currently searching for.

So far the PlayStation 2 is the most popular. These findings show gamers are more interested in replaying old PS2 games than other systems. Second is GameCube, which is interesting considering the Nintendo 64 has outsold the GameCube by 11 million units in lifetime sales. Still, though, the GameCube's game library is more mysterious and harder to find. The N64 takes last place in overall U.S. state interest.

According to a new graphic from Learn Bonds, the console and handheld hardware market has sold over 1.56 billion units since the Atari 2600's release in 1977. But some of the numbers are off.

So just how many consoles, Gameboys, Game Gears, and other handhelds have been sold to date? The latest findings from Learn Bonds give us ballpark figures of how 25 platforms sold across multiple geneartions, but there's lots of caveats.

Fist, some of the data is erroneous. The PlayStation 4, for example, has sold 110.4 million units to date, not 109.86 million. And the PS2's numbers from Sony are at 155 million, not 157 million. Other mix-ups include the 3DS' numbers, which at the time of writing sit at 77 23 million, not 75 million. Wii U sales are also slightly inflated--Nintendo's figures sit at 13.56 million.

Sony's PS Plus lineup for June gets a nice bump with Call of Duty WWII, but it's a bewildering move from Activision.

Today Sony confirmed Call of Duty WWII will be free on PS Plus in June. It's good news for gamers who can jump in and try it out and run through the campaign, but I'm curious why Activision greenlight this deal. Giving away CoD WWII will take attention away from Activision's real billion-dollar breadwinners: Modern Warfare and Warzone. It's a weird move because Warzone is already free-to-play and serves as an entry point to the franchise.

We've gone over why Warzone is such a big deal in our previous coverage, but ultimately it only works if everyone's playing it.

The worldwide digital games market raked in $10.5 billion in April 2020, a new record for one-month earnings,SuperData reports.

COVID-19 lockdowns have once again pushed digital game revenues to new heights. In April 2020, the digital market pulled in $10.5 billion, breaking March 2020's previous $10 billion record. April's earnings were up 17% YoY, and revenues have grown steadily quarter-over-quarter as key regions practiced shelter-in-place protocols.

Console was up a huge 42% YoY thanks to big monetization and sales across an array of games, including GTA Online, Fortnite, and Warzone. Mobile shot up by 14% YoY, and PC jumped by 12%. SuperData didn't release the per-platform earnings so we can't do a direct comparison. We have quarter-over-quarter numbers but not year-over-year.

Apple fans looking for a deal know that it's rare to find any significant discounts on Apple MacBook or other Apple items. Best Buy has a deal going today for Memorial Day that knocks a hefty chunk of money off the price of the mid-2017 MacBook Air. Shoppers can save $200 off the $999.99 standard price.

The discount brings the purchase price to $799.99. For the money, buyers will get the mid-2017 MacBook Air with a 13.3-inch display, Intel Core i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage. Graphics are handled by Intel HD Graphics 6000, and the machine has a pair of USB 3.0 ports along with a Thunderbolt 2 port.

It also has an SDXC port, multi-touch trackpad, and integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The battery promises up to 12 hours of use per charge. For those who don't want the older MacBook Air, Best Buy has a deal going on the latest version as well. The caveat here is that the discount is much lower at only $50 off the normal purchase price.

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, and while it's a day of remembrance, it's also a day of family get-togethers and good deals on all manner of items. Amazon has a special deal today that's only good for a few more hours that sees a hefty discount on the Microsoft Surface Pro X. The deal is good for approximately another 15 hours as of writing and knocks $249.01 off the regular price of the Surface Pro X tablet with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage.

For those unfamiliar with this tablet, it has integrated Wi-Fi and always-on 4G LTE connectivity. It's worth pointing out that this special price is for the tablet only, the keyboard accessory turning it into a laptop is an additional cost. The device is very thin at 7.3 mm and weighs only 1.7 pounds making it very portable and easy to use on the go.

It has a 13-inch screen and is powered by Qualcomm. The processor under the hood is the Microsoft SQ1 manufactured by Qualcomm for mobile productivity and always-on connectivity. For those wanting a full ready to go bundle, the Microsoft Surface Pro X Signature Keyboard with Slim Pen will add another $207.85.

We've been hearing about this new Matisse Refresh for the last few days, but it seems more details are emerging on the purported Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT processors.

According to a new post on the Chiphell forums, AMD will be injecting a pretty decent 200-300MHz boost over the current CPUs. This means that the Ryzen 9 3900XT would have a CPU boost of 4.8GHz, up 200MHz from the Ryzen 9 3900X and its CPU boost of 4.6GHz.

The Ryzen 7 3800XT would boost at up to 4.7GHz, which is 200MHz more than the Ryzen 7 3800X with its current 4.5GHz boost -- meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 3600XT would boost at up to 4.7GHz, up from the 4.4GHz boost on the Ryzen 5 3600X: a boost of 300MHz.

Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, has said to reporters this past Sunday that the United States has been infected by a "political virus".

BBC reports that tensions between the United States' Washington and China's Beijing have become more escalated as the virus has continued to ravage the country. On top of that, President Donald Trump has laid the blame of the virus at the feet of the Chinese government, escalating tensions even further. Now, China's top diplomat has said that the United States needs to "stop wasting time and stop wasting precious lives" in its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr. Wang spoke at an annual news conference during China's parliamentary session and said, "some political forces in the US are taking China-US relations hostage" and that they are trying to "push our two countries to the brink of a new Cold War". Mr. Wang went to the defense of China, saying, "Aside from the devastation caused by the novel coronavirus, there is also a political virus spreading through the US. This political virus is the use of every opportunity to attack and smear China. Some politicians completely disregard basic facts and have fabricated too many lies targeting China, and plotted too many conspiracies."

A big part of science is to make humans' quality of life better, and to do that, scientists create experiments and prototypes that can assist the instruments we use to interpret the world, or even replace them entirely.

Researchers from the United States and Hong Kong have developed one of the most important instruments the human body has - eyes. Yes, that's right, scientists have built a synthetic eye that was the potential of allowing blind people to see once again. The prototype is referred to as a "biomimetic eye", and is jam-packed with a whole bunch of sensors and an artificial retina.

One of the most difficult challenges the researchers face is interfacing the artificial eye with the brain, and making it so correct communication is occurring. At the moment, the biomimetic eye can render images, but the quality isn't fantastic, or even really close to what we see with our eyes. The biomimetic eye can render letters of the alphabet, and while that might sound extremely disappointing, the researchers behind the project say that as technology evolves, the biomimetic eye has the potential of being better than a real human eye.

If you thought every object out in the deep dark vastness of space was already discovered, you thought wrong.

Almost every day, astronomers spot something they haven't seen before, and only a few days ago, researchers from the University of Hawaii used the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System or ATLAS and found a Trojan asteroid called 2019 LD2. This asteroid was found to have a strange orbit, and also very active. On top of that it has an icy tail, and according to astronomers appears to be a unique "crossover" between an asteroid and a comet.

Trojans are usually found to be billions of years old, and most of the time, the ice has been melted due to exposure from the sun and they are no longer active. Astronomers also detailed that the newly found Jupiter Trojan has only been active for less than a year, suggesting that Jupiter may have captured the asteroid from a distant colder orbit. Another theory is that the asteroid was hit by another space rock that caused its once safe ice to be exposed. If you want to read more, check out the press release from the University of Hawaii here.

My wallet kinda cried a little when I originally saw ASRock's insane Z490 AQUA motherboard -- as it costs over $1000, but now it has been used by an overclocker to smash 4 world records.

Overclocker 'Splave' used the ASRock Z490 AQUA motherboard along with Intel's new Core i9-10900KF processor to secure himself 4 global first-place positions in benchmarks. The benchmarks in question are the wPrime-1024M, GPUPI for CPU, Cinebench R20, and Cinebench R11.5.

Splave smashed the wPrime-1014M benchmark, securing first place with the Core i9-10900KF with 35sec 562ms and the 10900KF processor clocked at 7070MHz. The GPUPI for CPU - 1B has a new record of 1min 25sec 15ms on the Core i9-10900KF and ASRock Z490 AQUA motherboard.

Have you ever wanted to taste food without eating it? The future is nearly ready for you, with researchers from Meiji University in Japan using LED lighting to replicate taste on the human tongue.

The study was done by Homei Miyashita, who names the "taste gadget" the "Norimaki Synthesizer". How does it work? It uses uses ion electrophoresis in five electrolyte gels to (at least in its early stages) recreate the five basic tastes. The study kicked off being inspired by how our eyes can be tricked into seeing something that doesn't necessarily exist.

For example, the monitor or screen you're sitting in front of consists of red, green, and blue (RGB) elements that combine to create full-cover images and video. Miyashita thought that he could use a similar method to trick the human tongue into "tasting" something that isn't there -- thus, the taste display was born.

Can you imagine paying $45 million for a single pizzas? Yeah, me either -- but Laszlo Hanyecz did such a thing on May 22, 2010 -- buying a single pizza for 10,000 bitcoin.

May 22 is now known as "Bitcoin Pizza Day" because of it, with the 10,000 bitcoins at $9500 today, translating to a gigantic $45 million on just a single pizza. Hanyecz is known as the first person to use bitcoin in a commercial transaction, buying two pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins back 10 years ago now.

The transaction was 10,000 BTC -- which today is worth over $90 million. Back on May 22, 2010, Hanyecz write on the BitcoinTalk forum: "I just want to report that I successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza".

SpaceX will be launching NASA astronauts into space from the United States, which might not sound like much -- but it's the first time it has happened in nearly 10 years.

President Trump will be attending the historic moment in Florida, where he will be in-person (even during the COVID-19 pandemic) in Florida for the Demo-2 mission launch on May 27 from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. This is the first time that the US has sent astronauts into space from US soil since 2011, when the Space Shuttle Program was wrapped up.

The White House said in a statement to CBS News: "President Trump is continuing to deliver on his promise to reassert American dominance in space. Our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of national security".

Iron Man VR is shaping up to be a blast for PlayStation VR owners, with the PS VR exclusive now available to download in demo form from the PlayStation Store right now. First, check out the Iron Man VR gameplay video that was just released:

The video is very detailed on how the game works, how you fly and use your blasters, and how the developers created the game to not just let you fly around in some form of glorified tech demo -- but actually act like a hero. In this particular part of Iron Man VR dubbed the 'Out of the Blue' Stark Jet mission, your mission is to save Pepper Potts from a plane flying through the clouds.

Instead of just blasting bad guys out of the sky, you will fly up to the plane and have to repair panels, pull debris out of the way, and more. It is much more immersive than a traditional superhero game and that is all thanks to VR. The developers have done a great job there, and even the graphics don't look too bad for a game running on a PlayStation 4.

The PlayStation 5's and Xbox Series X's customized PCIe 4.0 SSDs have the potential to revolutionize gaming, and developers like Netherrealm's Ed Boon are excited to tap that raw power.

The Zen 2 and Navi 2X GPU upgrades in next-gen consoles are exciting, but that processing power would be hindered without an ultra-fast SSD to feed the system data and assets at blinding-fast speeds. The inclusion of SSDs in next-gen systems is big in itself, but the raw speed will push next-gen to a whole new level beyond current PC tech. The PS5 can transfer uncompressed assets at 5.5GB/sec, or 100x the PS4, and the Xbox Series X can hit 2.4GB/sec, 40x the Xbox One's HDD. This means no loading times, seamless gameplay, and will change how games are made and played.

Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon is just one of the many devs who see great things in next-gen SSDs. "I think it's funny when these new systems come out, these new consoles, everyone's always like 'okay what do the graphics look like?' I think people underestimate the impact the almost-zero load times will have. That's suddenly going to open up new doors that just weren't considered possible before," Boon said in a recent interview with Geoff Keighley.

The Embracer Group (aka THQ Nordic) already owns 163 IPs across 92 studios, but it's still hungry for more.

The Embracer Group might own more IPs than any other games company on the market today.The company has bought up a ton of IPs and studios, from Deep Silver's entire catalog under Koch Media (Saints Row, Metro, Dead Island) to yesteryear franchises like Kingdoms of Amalur, Timesplitters, and even Gothic.

But that acquisition spreed is far from over. Embracer is looking to grow, and it just got a big $161 million financing surge via a new share issue. Over 100 investors bought into the share issue so Embracer could "continue our buy-to-build M&A journey."

The Embracer Group's annual operating income jumps 35% on the backs of strong game segment performance, and the company and expects this year will deliver strong earnings with a 10-game lineup.

The Embracer Group (formerly THQ Nordic) recently announced its FY20 financials, and the results are pretty good. Overall net sales are up slightly to $527 million, but operating income jumped 35% to $104 million due to sturdy games earnings--THQ Nordic saw a big 50% spike on the heels of big catalog earnings, Deep Silver was up thanks to Metro Exodus' latest expansion, and Coffee Stain was up over 100%.

Profit is down 10% year-over-year to $28.59 million due to increase expense spending of $602 million, and the lack of a big AAA release comparable to Metro Exodus (which was the company's record earner). We talk even more about Embracer's expense spending here, including depreciation and amortization of game dev and IP costs.

The Embracer Group (aka THQ Nordic) is ramping up expenses on games development and IP rights as it prepares a massive pipeline of games.

While scouting Embracer Group's latest financials, I noticed some interesting things on its spending habits. Expenses on intangible assets is up quite a bit, namely with game development and IP depreciation values.

Right now Embracer is working on 118 new games and 69 of them haven't been announced. So it makes sense the company is spending more to fund these projects across its 3,000-strong team of worldwide employees.