In other news, Microsoft is late to the party AGAIN. (I know it’s a lame analogy. At least I didn’t say “LAN party.”)
The HD DVD player for the XBox 360 is “officially” $50. Not recommended unless you have the shelf-space to buy one of every “limited edition”, made in China toy and keep it in [...]

Good rumors from the Destination Playstation conference. Per some sources at the retailer show, alongside the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue launch on April 15th will be a redesign of the Playstation Store.
The new Playstation Store is rumored to look a lot like the SingStore (that’s it in the picture) and have an improved navigation system. [...]

Ray Kurzweil, the famed futurist and author of a tall stack of smart books, just predicted that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence by 2029. Who knows what game systems will be out then, but it would be awesome to have AI challenging even elite gamers to a tough fight.
In-game AI has a bad reputation [...]

Blu-Ray wins. Toshiba officially announced they will discontinue production of new HD DVD hardware.
The killing blow was probably Warner’s well-timed (or poorly-timed, depending on which side of the battle you were cheering for) pre-CES announcement that it was dropping publication of the HD DVD format. A big studio switching formats like that likely motivated the [...]

Grab the Rock Band Special Edition bundle for $20 less than normal at Target this week. The Sunday sale flyer list both the PS3 and XBox 360 versions for just $149.
On sort-of-sale are the the 40GB PS3, which comes with a $40 Target gift card, and a stack of popular PS3 and XBox 360 shooters, [...]

Three more Rock Band song downloads available this week. One song each from Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, and Garbage. All are about $2 and available for XBox 360 on Tuesday or PS3 on Thursday.
All three songs are included in the hidden list found by laconic this week that everyone thinks is Harmonix’s future-song-list. The full [...]

The limited edition version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 gives you … hold on this is *so exciting* … pro tip videos, frag dolls, and a keychain (WTF?). If you can’t contain yourself either the box will be on store shelves March 18th for an extra $10. As if $60 wasn’t enough already, now we’re [...]

Game developers at top studios are rumored to work 100 hour weeks leading up to launch. All that work is starting to show. Their fantasies about what to do if they ever leave work keep showing up in games. This God of War clip for the PSP is the latest and least hidden example. I [...]

Between January 31st and today Super Smash Bros Brawl has sold 1.08 million copies in Japan. That’s the fastest-selling Wii game ever in Japan. Over 5 weeks faster than Wii Fit, sold separately from the console there, made it to the platinum sales mark.
We can hardly wait until March 9th, and it doesn’t seem like [...]

Three new downloadable songs for Rock Band this week. This week is old school punk week, with all three bands contributing to the earliest sound of punk. All are the real things too, no covers this week.

The Clash’s “Complete Control“
The Police’s “Truth Hits Everybody“
The Ramones’ “Teenage Lobotomy“

If you’re a punk fan there’s also a 3-pack [...]

The Australian copies of Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii were missing support for 32-player battles as noted on the box, the game’s site, advertisements, etc. Now EA has finally admitted their mistake and removed any mention of multiplayer from their website. Via IGN, they’ve also announced refunds to anyone who purchased the game [...]

Netflix has made their choice too. They’re officially choosing a high-definition format and dropping HD DVD in favor of Blu-Ray.
This won’t be the last nail in HD DVD’s coffin, but it’s a major one. It also means you should cancel your order for that XBox 360 HD DVD add-on. Microsoft has already admitted that they [...]

Activision made major bank in 2007. They published both Guitar Hero III and Call of Duty 4, the worldwide number one and two games in sales. Expect more of the same in 2008, with Activision being more than happy to stick to successful game franchises. Here’s the 2008 major releases we know about so far:

Guitar [...]

EA has started a new game division, named Blueprint. Plans are for Blueprint to launch both existing EA brands and new concepts from small developers into major social networks like Facebook. The division is already hooking up with mega-talent agency Creative Artists Agency for talent and funding. In stealth-mode since September, their first title takes [...]