CD Projekt RED proves it understands how to successfully re-market a game many times over, using powerful strategies like The Netflix Effect to re-sell and re-invigorate its main franchise.

A lot of CD Projekt Group's business doesn't revolve around making games, but advertising, marketing, and distributing them. Merchandising is a huge focus of CD Projekt's business strategy. Once CD Projekt RED ships a game, the other branches take over and find new ways to make those games last for years. Case in point: The Witcher 3, which released in 2015, is still more relevant than ever today.

CD Projekt's marketing masterstroke is the Witcher Netflix series, a carefully-designed transmedia sales point that's proven to be extremely potent. The Netflix Effect sparks sales of all kinds of mediums--when a Netflix book adaptation pops up, people rush out to buy the books. The Witcher is benefiting from the Netflix Effect in two ways. We're seeing Witcher book sales jump up, and CD Projekt RED's The Witcher 3 is currently at its highest playercount since 2015.

Just last year, it was revealed that a Stanford-trained scientist had created the world's first gene-altered human baby. That scientists and a few of his colleagues have now been sentenced in a secret Chinese court.

He Jiankui and his two colleagues are facing prison time of three years for being found guilty of "illegal medical practice". Jiankui is also required to pay a huge 3 million yuan fine, which is equivalent to $429,000 USD). Think that's where the pain for Jiankui stops? Nope. He is also banned from reproductive medical work for life.

China's state-run Xinhua News Agency says that back in 2016 the scientists and his co-workers (Zhang Renli and Qin Jinzhou) assisted in enabling the reproduction of "multiple couples of HIV-infected persons." The team edited the embryos of two of the babies that were implanted into women, removing the CCR5 gene in hopes of making the offspring resistant to HIV. The women eventually gave birth to three gene-edited babies.

If you didn't know, every planet in the solar system spins at a different speed. This is due to each of the planet's size and mass. So how fast are other planets spinning in comparison to Earth?

James O'Donoghue, a planetary scientist at the Japanese space agency (JAXA) and a former scientist over at NASA, has comprised a short animated video that gives us a clear visualization of each of the planets rotation speed. The video shows one globe, but each of the sections of the globe is the different planets in the solar system. Each is rotating at their respective speeds.

Earth rotates at 460 meters per second or roughly 1,000 miles per hour. This is how we established that there are 24 hours in one day. The above video shows how each of the other planet's full rotations compares to Earth's relative to our star. O'Donoghue said on Twitter, "I had the idea to make this back in December last year but I didn't think people would be interested in it." Since then, the video has had over 215,000 views.

If Kirby is your favorite video game character, or if you have wondered what it would be like to rest your head in his mouth and have a nap, then you need this pillow.

On the Bandai website, the listing for a Kirby nap pillow demonstrates that buyers will be able to slide their heads into Kirby's mouth hole to have a rest either for a couple hours or the entire night if they like. Kirby's mouth hole measures in at 23 cm x 21 cm, which exceeds the head size of even the largest of people.

The Bandai website lists the Kirby nap pillow for 9,500 yen, which works out to be about $87USD. If that is too much for the official pillow, you can check out Amazon where some other sellers are selling the same designed pillow for much cheaper. Keep in mind though, these sellers might not be selling the officially licensed Nintendo version, so the mouth dimensions could be slightly off.

NASA's Curiosity rover is hard on work uncovering mysteries and creating new ones on the distant red planet, and now it's at the center of another one.

Curiosity has given planetary scientists another brain teaser to wrap their heads around as the SUV-sized laboratory has found "significant seasonal and year-to-year variability" in Mar's oxygen levels. The SAM instrument aboard Curiosity measures what molecules makeup Mars' atmosphere. Scientists know that as the planet goes through its seasonal changes - CO2 freezes in winter, reducing air pressure. During summer and spring, things thaw out, and the CO2 raises air pressure.

Oxygen, on the other hand, accounts for only 0.16% of the Mars atmosphere but didn't follow the expected rises and falls. Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and first author on the new study, said "The fact that the oxygen behavior isn't perfectly repeatable every season makes us think that it's not an issue that has to do with atmospheric dynamics. It has to be some chemical source and sink that we can't yet account for."

We are at the turn of the decade, and gamers are no doubt wondering what game release will be crowned "Best Game Of The Decade" and why.

Well, according to one poll done by the LADbible Twitter account that was run for over a week, and accumulated over 9,000 individual votes, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V has been deemed "Best Game Of The Decade". Grand Theft Auto V released back in 2013, and was no doubt a massive leap in what game development can offer players in regards to massive open-world environments.

Grand Theft Auto V was competing against the Call of Duty (franchise), FIFA (franchise), and Red Dead Redemption. The poll doesn't include some other prime candidates such as The Last of Us, Nintendo titles, God of War, and The Witcher 3. I think there should be a larger poll done with more titles listed and more votes, this way we can get a better consensus of what game should truly wear the crown of "Best Game Of The Decade". (Grand Theft Auto V would no doubt be top 5).

It's been quite some time since we have heard any updates regarding Platinum Games' coming Bayonetta 3. Luckily, the studio has broken radio silence, and now we have some news.

The last we heard about Bayonetta 3 was way back at E3 when fans expected Platinum Games to show off some gameplay footage or at least announce some more news. Instead, Platinum Games didn't appear at E3 with Bayonetta 3 and head producer of the studio, Atsushi Inaba said this was the reason why - "Giving updates for everything at E3 isn't the smartest PR strategy to begin with. So just because we're not showing it here doesn't mean it's not going well."

We are now hearing an update from Platinum Games boss, Hideki Kamiya, on his personal Twitter account which says, " Development's going really well. There you go." We do know that Bayonetta 3 will feature some design changes that will be different from the previous installments in the franchise, and while we don't know what those changes are specifically, we know that Platinum Games is putting in their all for the sequel.

Many Apple users that love their iPhone also love their Apple Watch to go alongside it. One of the main features of the Apple Watch is its heartbeat monitoring, and that the Watch can measure a wearer's irregular heartbeat, an amazing feature for fitness users.

Unfortunately, Apple seemed to have stepped in a bit of trouble when it comes to the Apple Watch's heartbeat monitor, as a New York doctor has claimed the company has ripped off his patented invention. Dr. Joseph Wiesel is suing Apple over allegations that the Watch is using his patented invention that covered "pioneering steps" in atrial fibrillation.

According to Wiesel, his invention allowed for the monitoring of "irregular pulse rhythms from a succession of time intervals." Wiesel also said that he contacted Apple back in 2017 in regard to the patent, giving them sufficient information. He is now going forward with the lawsuit and is asking the court to make Apple pay him royalties and to block the company from adding his invention to their product without his permission.

The first season of The Witcher TV show has overall been a popular success, and with fans asking for more and more, rumors have already begun flying about season 3 being greenlit.

According to sources close to WGTC (WeGotThisCovered), Netflix has seen the hype surrounding the show and has secretly greenlit the series for season three. It wasn't too long ago that the show was already greenlit for season two, and it should be noted that Netflix did this before the show was even aired - this shows their confidence in what the show can do.

At the moment, Netflix hasn't officially announced that season three is in the pipeline just yet, so these are just rumors at this stage. If I was to give my opinion on whether or not these rumors could be true, I'd say that Netflix would certainly be heavily considering greenlighting season three and will most likely do it after seeing what season one did. Season two of The Witcher is set to begin production in February 2020, and the release is slated for early 202

While the reviews for The Witcher TV show are accurately mixed, it can't be debated that the new TV show has caused a spike in overall Witcher IP attention.

The TV show has had some dividing opinions since its release, with critics giving it some tough love, but the majority of the people that watched it rating it well. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 93% and IMDB has settled on 8.7/10, and both scores reflect that most people who watched the show at least enjoyed it more than average.

Since the release of the TV show, a portion of people wanted more of The Witcher universe and have since sought out new content to consume. We can see this primarily in Amazon's Author Rank chart as The Witcher creator, Andrzej Sapkowski, is placed at #1. All of CD Projekt Reds games are also getting massive attention, the spikes in players have basically revived the series once again. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in particular.

If there was a reason to sign up for Disney+ then it would be for Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian, which co-creator Jon Favreau has just confirmed Season 2 is coming.

The Mandalorian just finished its first season on Disney+ with Favreau tweeting the Season 2 of the show would be coming in Fall 2020. Favreau tweeted out a picture of what looks like a near-nude Gamorrean, a green-skinned, pig-nosed species that was featured in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi as guards at Jabba the Hutt's palace.

Favreau was a co-creator on The Mandalorian and while he wrote some episodes of the first season, he was too busy to direct an episode. Favreau was busy filming The Lion King at the time, but has said that he wants to direct an episode of Season 2 of The Mandalorian.

Ryan Reynolds has given the world an update on the process of Deadpool 3, now that Disney acquired Fox -- and Marvel Studios.

After the Disney-Fox merger, people were concerned over what would happen to the next Deadpool movie. Fox had the rights, but Disney owned the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- of which Deadpool was hard to fit in, and vica versa, because of various legalities. But now? Well, it's all water under Disney's gigantic bridge

During a recent appearance on Live! With Kelly and Ryan, Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds was asked about Deadpool 3 and we have some news to share. Reynolds said: "Yeah, we're working on it right now with the whole team. We're over at Marvel now, which is like the big leagues all of a sudden. It's kinda crazy. So yeah, we're working on it".

ASRock let slip that AMD is about to launch its new Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card, with a product listing on ASRock's own website that had the full specs for their upcoming Radeon RX 5600 XT 6GB Challenger graphics card.

The full specs on AMD's new Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card is now here, so we know that it will use a decent Navi GPU with 36 compute units and 2304 stream processors -- the same core count as the higher-end Radeon RX 5700. Where the new RX 5600 XT is different, is in its GDDR6 configuration.

AMD will be offering its new Radeon RX 5600 XT with 6GB of GDDR6 at 12Gbps on a 192-bit memory bus which will result in 288GB/sec of memory bandwidth. This is a big difference to the 14Gbps modules used on the higher-end Radeon RX 5700/XT (as well as more of it with 8GB versus 6GB) which results in 448GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

ADATA is about to step into a few different markets in the PC business at CES 2020, with a new 15.6-inch gaming laptop, full gaming PCs, and a new 27-inch gaming monitor.

The new ADATA XPG Photon gaming monitor uses a 27-inch IPS panel with Vivid Color Eye-Safe Display technology from PixelDisplay Inc -- the first-ever in a gaming monitor. ADATA says that this new technology will reduce eye strain for those late-night gaming sessions.

This technology eliminates blue light but does so without washing out all of the colors, using film, or using blue-blocking glasses. ADATA will provide the ability for XPG Photon gaming monitor owns to switch between the wide-color gamut during the day, and then switch over during the night.

MSI has just announced its new Optix MA272QR gaming monitor, a new 27-inch gaming display with a native 2560 x 1440 resolution and super-fast 165Hz refresh rate for a damn good price of just $350.

You can buy MSI's new monitor on Amazon and Newegg right now, and considering its price... I'm quick off the mark on recommending it if you're in the market for a new gaming display. MSI is selling its new Optix MAG272QR monitor for $350 in a world when 1440p 144/165Hz gaming monitors are over $400 -- and sometimes, even up to $600 or more.

MSI is using an 8-bit+FRC VA panel which is just better than a normal TN panel, so we have a nice blend of image quality and price here with the MAG272QR. MSI includes a slew of connectivity in the form of DisplayPort, HDMI 2.0b, USB 2.0 Type-A ports, USB 2.0 Type-B ports, and USB-C connectors as well as the yay-it's-still-included 3.5mm audio jack.

Sony's new DualShock 5 controller may come standard with two extra trigger-buttons on the back of the controller.

We know Sony is sprucing up the PS5's next-gen controller with nifty additions like USB-C, a built-in mic, and the removal of top energy-draining lightbar. But a brand new patent suggests the DualShock 5 could come stock with two extra buttons on the back, similar to the premium Xbox Elite controller.

The patent mostly discusses the orientation of the buttons to the controller itself, including their angle and how the sensors are placed within the housing. The description is on the layout rather than the actual functionality of the back paddles themselves. There's no talk of the buttons being customizable or programmable, but expect this to be the case.

Lexar is planning for a massive year in 2020 with rumors pegging the company to launch a new PCIe 4.0-based NVMe SSD which is capable of 7GB/sec reads... exceeding the 5GB/sec we're seeing on the market now.

Lexar has been teasing a new prototype SSD t hat pushes 7GB/sec in IOMeter, and pushes 6442MB/sec in sequential reads in CrystalDiskMark, while pushing 4246MB/sec in sequential writes. Lexar itself has said the final retail version of this SSD will have close to the same speeds as it does in its current prototype form.

Right now, the fastest SSD in Lexar's product stack is the Lexar NM610 -- which comes in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities. Lexar's current flagship NM610 SSD reaches just 2.1GB/sec reads and 1.6GB/sec writes, so this new SSD is over 3x faster in reads alone which is a gigantic upgrade. 7GB/sec is no joke.

Apple is reporting working on a new "gaming-focused" Mac that it would introduce in 2020, with new reports suggesting that Apple's new gaming Mac would compete against high-end pre-built gaming PCs.

A new report by Patently Apple suggests that Apple's new gaming Mac could cost up to $5000, which is no surprise given Apple is not afraid of charging ridiculous prices for its products. Hell, we have a new Mac Pro that costs over $50,000 -- with its Pro Display XDR costing $5000 and requiring Apple's specific-made cloth to clean, and it can even be configured with wheels that cost $400.

Apple's new gaming-focused Mac would cost up to $5000 and be aimed at the esports market, which would be an interesting flex for Apple which has -- at least right now -- zero interest in the esports market. The new Apple gaming PC could be an all-in-one desktop gaming PC or a new gaming-ready MacBook Pro (or a new moniker).

It looks like we just learned another fact about the human race -- where we took our first footsteps, with new research suggesting humanity's earliest footsteps took place in a pre-historic wetland called Makgadikgadi-Okavango, south of the Great Zambezi River.

The ancestors of Homo sapiens started over 200,000 years ago according to the researchers, where Botswana, and even parts of Namibia and Zimbabwe are just south of the where modern day humanity's first footsteps took place. Climate change is being blamed as to why the ancestors of modern day humans moved some 70,000 years ago -- forcing them to migrate out of Africa and then spread throughout the planet.

Previous fossil evidence led researchers to believe that modern humans started out in eastern Africa, but new DNA evidence is showing that the Botswana/Africa region is where it all started. Vanessa Hayes, lead study author at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the University of Sydney explains: "It has been clear for some time that anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago. What has been long debated is the exact location of this emergence and subsequent dispersal of our earliest ancestors. We've been able to pinpoint what we believe is our human homeland".

It looks like AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards could get a little more expensive in 2020, with a new report from DigiTimes suggesting graphics card prices will rise because of the current DRAM shortages.

DigiTimes reports that GDDR memory is expected to rise in price sometime during Q1 2020, somewhere over 5% according to DigiTimes' source in DRAMeXchange. DRAMeXchange explains: "Graphics DRAM is more sensitive to demand change than other types of memory products, so its price fluctuations can be dramatic as well. With OEM clients raising their stock-up demand, Graphics DRAM contract prices are projected to increase by over 5% QoQ, the highest among all memory products".

The move by both NVIDIA first with its new Turing-based GeForce RTX graphics cards, and then continued with the Navi-based Radeon RX 5700 series prompted this as both GPU makers moved on to GDDR6 memory. The upgrade from GDDR5 memory to GDDR6 is causing supply issues as less and less GDDR5 is ordered, while GDDR6 memory is in huge demand.