214 million Americans play video games for at least an hour a week and 75% have at least one gamer in their household, according to the Entertainment Software Association. The annual video game industry report found that 70% of kids under 18–51.1 million–and 64% of people 18 and older–163.3 million–play games.
The report, based on survey data, also found that 65% of gamers play games with other people, primarily their in-person friends and significant others. A large portion of gamers over the age of 65 have been playing games for less than 10 years, 46% for men and 63% of women.
The average age of a gamer is between 35-44 years old. 73% of gamers reported having a console and 43% having a handheld system.
Other key information:
79% of gamers say games provide relaxation and stress relief
87% of male gamers ages 55-64 and 82% of female gamers ages 55-64 believe games provide mental stimulation
There are about 46 million gamers with disabilities
61% play on a smartphone, 52% on a console, 49% on a person computer
45% of ESRB rated games are E, with 14% E10+, 28% T, and 13% M
Most popular genres are casual, action, and shooters
40% of gamers have met someone through gaming they wouldn’t have normally
55% of parents play video games with their children
The film adaptation of video game series Just Cause has landed Michael Dowse as its director. Dowse, whose directing credits include the action-comedies Stuber and Netflix’s Coffee and Kareem, will direct a screenplay from Derek Kolstad (The John Wick trilogy).
According to Deadline, the film “will follow the video game’s blueprint, as Rico Rodriguez is on a race-against-time mission to stop the mercenary group The Black Hand. The series draws its name from the real-life United States invasion of Panama, code-named ‘Operation Just Cause.'” Deadline is also reporting that the film will be getting a female co-lead giving the movie a Romancing The Stone vibe, referencing the 1984 romantic comedy-adventure starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
Dowse’s Just Cause movie is a co-production between Constantin Films and Prime Universe. Constantin Films is the German studio behind the Resident Evil movies and the above-mentioned Monster Hunter movie.
Best Buy is bringing the heat when it comes to video game deals this week. Today’s Deal of the Day delivers Borderlands 3’s lowest price we’ve seen so far, but there are plenty of other incredible deals available this entire week. PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch games all see significant discounts, with some dropping below $20. If you’ve wanted to snag a few new games to play through the summer, this is an excellent opportunity to do so.
Borderlands 3 is only $13 on both PS4 and Xbox One, though this deal ends soon, so you’ll want to snag it as soon as possible if you’re interested. That’s incredibly cheap for one of last year’s most popular games. Persona 5 Royal also hits one of its lowest prices. For only $40, you get the definitive version of this beloved JRPG, which GameSpot awarded a 10/10 in our Persona 5 Royal review.
The recently released Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath Kollection is only $41 on PS4 and $50 on Xbox One. This gets you all of the DLC fighters that have been released for Mortal Kombat 11 so far, including Spawn, The Joker, and RoboCop. It also comes with the new story expansion that features the voice talents of Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa as Shang Tsung, reprising his role from the original 1995 movie.
These deals are available all week, though it’s unclear when exactly they’ll end. Be sure to check out the full sale at Best Buy to see all of the available deals.
Mario’s been having quite the party for his 35th birthday. Lego Super Mario and a really cool-looking Lego NES release August 1, and now we know they will be joined on the same day by new Mario-themed Monopoly and Jenga editions. First revealed by GameSpot sister site CNET, the Super Mario Celebration edition of Monopoly costs $30, while Jenga goes for $20.
Jenga Super Mario edition — $20
Jenga Super Mario has a unique and appropriate spin on the classic block-stacking game. Up to four players–Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad–can go on a quest to slay Bowser. The four characters have pegs that slot into the sides of the bricks, and it’s a race to the top. Each turn starts with a spin, which tells you to remove blocks like traditional Jenga, awards you coins, or moves you further up (or down) the tower.
Monopoly – Super Mario Celebration edition — $30
Super Mario-themed versions of Monopoly have been a thing for years, but the Celebration edition offers a trip across series history, starting with the original Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 and ending with Bowser’s Kingdom in place of Boardwalk. The player icons are based on popular items, including the Super Star, a Yoshi Egg, and Koopa Shell, while little Toad homes stand in for regular houses, and castles replace hotels. Currency, of course, is presented as coins rather than paper money, and there’s an interactive Question Block that serves as a replacement for Chance cards.
Neither board game is available to pre-order right now, but you can pick them up at major retailers in a few short weeks. And for those interested in building Mario levels brick-by-brick, make sure to check out our Lego Super Mario pre-order guide detailing the Starter Course, many expansions, and the Lego NES. While we’re still waiting for Nintendo to confirm the existence of remastered Mario games for Nintendo Switch, a new Mario game releases this Friday, and it earned an 8/10 in our Paper Mario: The Origami King review.
It’s looking to be a great year for Pokemon spin-off games, with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX released this spring and a Pokemon Snap sequel coming to Nintendo Switch “soon.” As someone who wasn’t too impressed with the latest mainline Pokemon games, Pokemon Sword and Shield, it was a relief to see a new Pokemon game release on Switch this year, one filled to the brim with charm while also packing some seriously challenging combat and a truly memorable story. I’m talking about Rescue Team DX, of course, and if you missed out on this gem when it released back in March, you can grab it on sale for $40 with free shipping right now at GameFly.
GameFly, a service that lets you rent video games and purchase them to keep if you like, currently has the best deal we’ve seen on Rescue Team DX. Keep in mind this is a used copy, but it comes with everything but the shrink wrap, including the colorful case. For $20 off, I think this deal is pretty worth it for a Switch game that’s hovered around $60 since release. It was worth it for me at $60, but for $40, there’s plenty of content here to keep you busy.
Rescue Team DX is a stunning remake of the very first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, Red Rescue Team (on Game Boy Advance) and Blue Rescue Team (on Nintendo DS). Like the originals, Rescue Team DX sees you wake up one day to find yourself transformed into a Pokemon (which is selected by a “personality quiz” at the very beginning). Soon enough, you encounter another Pokemon who quickly befriends you, and together, you form a rescue team, taking on missions to find items, rescue lost Pokemon, and escort clients through dangerous dungeons. Like other Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, Rescue Team DX is a roguelike and involves turn-based combat in grid-like dungeons, and you can recruit Pokemon you defeat to join your team. There’s an overarching story that’s quite interesting as well, involving a mystery surrounding your identity and a series of natural disasters that have been upsetting the Pokemon world.
The game earned an 8/10 in GameSpot’s Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX review for its charming art direction, improvements to combat and dungeon exploration, and its riveting story that still hits hard 15 years later.
“Whether or not you’re an old-school Mystery Dungeon aficionado or a total newcomer to the long-derelict spin-off series doesn’t necessarily matter: Mystery Dungeon on Switch improves upon the originals with some valuable quality-of-life tweaks, making it a worthwhile play regardless of your familiarity with the series,” wrote critic Cian Maher. “It features a distinct combat system that provides an intriguing alternative to the mainline Pokemon formula with tile-based strategizing, humanizes the Pokemon you’ve fallen in love with over the years, tells a riveting and emotional story that will make you view the franchise in a totally different light, and does so with a stylish suite of visuals and music.”
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The PC version of Microsoft Flight Simulator is releasing on August 18, and European players will have the option of picking up a physical copy of the ambitious flight sim. Published by Aerosoft, the physical version will come on 10 discs. This is due to the game’s massive size, which Microsoft has recommended players clear 150 GB of space for.
On Aerosoft’s official forums, community manager Mathijs Kok explained what will come on the 10 discs. He explains that there are four main parts to Microsoft Flight Simulator: the simulation itself, the world and aircraft that Microsoft has created, online content that is streamed, and third-party files. While the third-party and streamed content is optional, the world and aircraft must be downloaded and will take up around 90 GB of space.
“The boxed version makes it possible for people on a slower internet connection to get the sim installed without downloading the [world and aircraft],” Kok explained. “The simulator is in every way, 100 percent the same. The boxed retail version just gets you a nice box, printed manual, and about 90 GB you do not have to download.”
Microsoft Flight Simulator is available to pre-order now and comes in three versions. The standard release, priced at $60, will come with 20 planes and 30 airports to land at. Meanwhile, the $90 deluxe edition comes with five additional planes and airports, while the $120 Premium Deluxe features 30 planes and 40 airports in total.
Although it won’t be coming out in August, the Xbox One version of Flight Simulator is also in development.
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Pre-orders are now live for Ready Player Two, the sequel to Ernest Cline’s 2011 science fiction novel Ready Player One, and Amazon is selling the follow-up for a nice discount. Right now, you can pre-order Ready Player Two ahead of its November 24 publication date for $17.76, down from $29. While books are often sold for less than the list price ahead of release, this discount is fairly substantial for a new hardcover.
Ready Player Two — $17.76 (was $29)
Ready Player Two was officially announced last week, though we’ve known Cline was planning a sequel leading up to Steven Spielberg’s 2018 film adaptation of Ready Player One. However, no plot details have been revealed just yet for Ready Player Two, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out what Wade Watts is up to after becoming the new owner of the Oasis at the end of Ready Player One.
If you pre-order now at Amazon, you’ll get the lowest price offered between now and release thanks to Amazon’s pre-order price guarantee.
Ready Player Two is Cline’s third novel and his first since 2015’s Armada, which also heavily focuses on geek culture, namely video games. Armada has also been optioned for a feature film, but it’s been a couple of years since we’ve heard a new update on its status. We’d be surprised if Ready Player Two doesn’t eventually become a movie as well, especially since Ready Player One was Spielberg’s best opening in a decade and went on to gross more than $500 million.
NBC’s new streaming service, Peacock, has arrived, and it’s–well, it’s not great. But great or not, many fans of classic comedy show The Office are going to be making the leap next year as The Office leaves Netflix for its new home. It’s a devastating blow, but we’ve all been given plenty of time to prepare ourselves. The move was first announced back in January of 2019 and won’t actually be carried until January 2021.
But, Peacock has found a clever way to feature The Office on their platform five months early, without actually featuring The Office on their platform five months early.
On the Peacock homepage, if you navigate to the “channels” tab and then scroll down, you’ll find one labeled–you guessed it–The Office, where you’ll be able to watch what seems like an endless loop of “shorts,” playing in random order. You can’t pause, skip, or otherwise interact with the shorts at all–it really replicates the feeling of leaving a DVD menu open, or watching the endless looping advertisements in a movie theater before the previews start to play–but they’re definitely there, and you’re sure to eventually stumble across some of your favorite classic gags.
We can assume, based on the other channels available currently, that once The Office does make the movie, the “shorts” will be swapped out for full episodes–though it’s impossible to tell right now whether they’ll still be left in a shuffled, randomized order or if they’ll play one right after the other, chronologically, on a loop. It could potentially be a neat feature for those of us who habitually leave The Office running in our homes just to have something on in the background–and, let’s be real, we’ve all seen the whole thing enough times through to not need the episodes to be played in chronological order, right?
Of course, once The Office has fully migrated, it will be available to watch in the standard fashion as well–but be aware that it’ll have ads (if you don’t pony up for the premium tier subscription), so, best prepare yourself emotionally for that.
NBCUniversal’s Peacock has arrived, but if you’re like most people around the world, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to watch it on your favorite TV, as it’s not available on Roku or Amazon devices. With other major services like HBO Max–which has the same Roku and Amazon issue–and the dead-on-arrival Quibi also launching this year, where does Peacock fit?
It also isn’t available on Samsung smart TVs. You can, however, use one of Xfinity’s (Comcast) proprietary boxes to watch Peacock. Comcast users have the easiest time accessing this, but if you’re like me and want nothing to do with Comcast, then your options are limited.
Once you figure out how to access Peacock, what you see is a very pretty, and easy-to-use app. We tested Peacock on iOS, desktop browser, Xbox One, and Android. At first glance, it looks great. There are sections at the top to select from: Featured, TV Shows, Movies, Kids, News, Sports, and Latino–along with lower options consisting of Channels, Trending, Browse, and search. And again, aesthetically, it looks great–until you start actually trying to find something to watch within a certain genre.
Typically, you’d do this by looking through TV or movie selections under a specific genre you want to watch. However, Peacock has rebranded some genres and skipped using terms like “horror” and “comedy” altogether. Action & Adventure is there, along with Sci-Fi & Fantasy and Documentaries. But if you’re looking for horror, that’s under “Fright Night” or “Classic Monsters.” Comedy has been relabeled “Comic Relief” and maybe “Feel Good Features.” There’s also a Nicolas Cage section, in case you want to catch up on all the straight-to-VOD features he’s been in over the past decade. Is there ever a wrong time to watch Bangkok Dangerous? But why not just label things the way we’re all used to seeing? And while having a bank of Nicolas Cage movies to choose from may be up some people’s alleys, sections like that should be at the bottom of the categories list, with the genres up front. It’s a lot like how Netflix categorizes some niche genres like “Super-Powered Fantasy and Sci-Fi.” However, Netflix also includes its main genres when you’re browsing the service.
Peacock landing page
Additionally, when searching for movies or TV shows through the A-Z listing or in any of Peacock’s sections, the content is alphabetically listed but counts “The” and “A/An” as part of the title. This is nitpicky, but when searching for a movie, you come across an onslaught of films that start with “The,” and it’s frustrating.
As for the content itself, it’s nice to see that Peacock lets you know when something is leaving the service, but why are so many TV shows and movies leaving the service already? On launch day, there was a note on Fast & Furious that it was leaving in a matter of hours. Seeing the lack of films from the Furious franchise on this app, since it’s a Universal property, is a bit of a letdown. In fact, a lot of popular movies already on Peacock are leaving soon, like the Jurassic Park and Matrix films. When you remove the big films that are on their way out, what you’re left with is a lot of classic Universal Pictures movies, which is fine, but Peacock needs contemporary content to bring people in.
There are also plenty of originals to choose from at launch. If you want to find them, you’ll have to check out the Featured section of the site, below Peacock Picks, Continue Watching, and Watchlist–and the layout was the same on all the devices we tested. You’d think they’d make tracking them down easier, but I digress. A few of the higher-profile originals are featured at the very top of the section, like Brave New World and the original film Psych 2: Lassie Come Home. All the episodes for the original TV series were released at once, so you can binge-watch everything in one weekend if you’d like. Day One includes the launch of 11 original TV shows and movies, with three of the series being geared towards children and four being documentaries/docuseries. For those who are excited to watch the original programming, it can be a bit frustrating to figure out where these shows are. However, frustration quickly becomes normal while using the app.
Throughout Day One, Continuing Watching and Watchlist kept disappearing from the Featured sections on the app. When trying to add programming to my watchlist on an iPad, a message popped up saying I was offline; however, I could start playing a show with no problems. This was also an issue on Xbox as well. A browser on PC was the only place I could add or delete items from the list for the first few hours spent with the app.
Luckily, video playback on Peacock is smooth. Everything played immediately in high definition with no noticeable lag between hitting play and the content beginning. There was also no jumping back and forth between HD and SD, something Hulu, Netflix, and HBO Max do on occasion. This is one of the few bright spots for the streaming service. However, if you’re using a version of the service with ads, and you want to skip ahead, be prepared to deal with some ads, even if you just started the TV show or movie.
The other major bright spot for Peacock is a new feature that many other major services don’t have, which is “Channels.” In this section, you can watch non-stop SNL skits or The Office “shorts”–even though The Office is streaming on Netflix currently. These “shorts” are just clips from the show, largely consisting of cold opens from the series. If you’re into sports, there are live events as well, which primarily consists of Premier League soccer at this point. If you live for the thrill of this sport, that’s great, and lucky for you, Premier League soccer can be watched live with the free tier. Peacock was planning extensive coverage of this year’s Tokyo Olympics, which have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Channels section is great, especially if you want to have Saturday Night Live play in the background while you work, as it’s just a collection of skits and not full episodes. There are a variety of channels to choose from. However, you’ll come across ads from time to time, even if you have the “ad-free” version of the service.
The “ad-free” tier really isn’t “ad-free.” If you’re binge-watching a TV series, you’ll occasionally get ads in between episodes for Peacock, the service you’re already paying for. These ad-breaks are 30-seconds long, and they let you know about all the things you probably already know about, as the content covered is in the featured section on the app. If you’re paying more to not have ads, then there shouldn’t be ads. It’s that simple. Ad-breaks while watching the SNL channel were for soap and car insurance. Apparently, Peacock thinks I’m dirty and a reckless driver.
Peacock is the most disappointing streaming service launch of 2020, so far. While HBO Max had issues with accessibility, the service worked and had plenty of binge-worthy content. While Quibi was a poorly-formatted experience with lackluster programming, it was easy to use. Peacock has NBCUniversal behind it and it soft-launched in April, so why are there so many issues? There was time to fix these problems. The Channels section is the only real highlight here. Peacock could be a decent service, if it wasn’t bogged down with other issues, content leaving too quickly, and a market that’s already saturated with other bland streaming services, and some great ones as well. It doesn’t stand out, and until more original programming or tentpole movie franchises and TV shows come along, it is not worth your subscription dollars.
Newegg’s summer savings event has been extended, so if you missed out on savings earlier this week, there’s still hope. This is actually perfect timing for people with pay periods on the first and 15th of each month. If you were waiting on that check to come in, here’s your chance to start spending it while also saving some money.
Some of the deals are kind of weird, but still great. For example, you can get a $100 Lowe’s Gift Card for $90 as part of the sale. Not really what I imagine when I think of Newegg, but a deal’s a deal. There’s also a super great chance to save 68% on a pair of Pioneer bookshelf speakers, which is a little more inline with Newegg’s tech-focus.
