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 quick one-two of Blockbuster and Netflix officially supporting only Blu-Ray. After all the bad news Toshiba’s concession quickly followed the final Friday announcement by Wal-Mart that they would follow suit.

I’m actually shocked that Toshiba dropped out of the race so gracefully. Their losses may be into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the move should save consumers a bundle as higher sales should lead Blu-Ray drive and disc prices to fall.

Speaking of falling prices, new and used XBox HD DVD drives accompanied by stacks of games are already littering eBay. Prices are only half what they were last week – and they’ll probably be half that after the holiday on Tuesday.

If you’re now in the market for a Blu-Ray player, the PS3 is future-proofed with support for version 2.0 of the Blu-Ray format. Oh, And, it plays games too.

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, which each come with a $10 Target gift card. Hop on over to CheapAssGamer for the full list and copies of Target’s Sunday flyer.

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 list, minus released songs, is posted after the jump.

• Garbage “Why Do You Love Me?“
• Stone Temple Pilots “Sex Type Thing“
• Weezer “El Scorcho“

Click for 30-sec song previews.

Full, hidden song list:

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
Alabama Getaway
Beetlebum
Behind Blue Eyes
Blinded By Fear
Breed
Brown Sugar
Casey Jones
China Cat Sunflower
Come as You Are
D.O.A.
Drain You
El Scorcho
Franklin’s Tower
Fuel
Hysteria
I Need A Miracle
Lithium
Lounge Act
March Of The Pigs
Message In A Bottle
On a Plain
Pinball Wizard
Polly
Received Your Letter
Rock ‘n’ Roll Star
Sex Type Thing
Shadow World
Shooting Star
Simple Man
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Something in the Way
Stay Away
Still Alive
Sugar Magnolia
Supernaut
Territorial Pissings
The Collector
The Perfect Drug
Thrasher
Through the Monsoon
Truckin’
Why Do You Love Me?
Wrathchild
Zero

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 going to get some videos that will be on YouTube before lunchtime on the 18th and a freaking keychain for $69.99.

Someone send us a pic of their keychain. I’d love to know if the thing is even made from a semi-real’ish poker chip.

• 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 of all three songs available – for a big 50¢ savings.

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 “could still develop a Blu-ray Disc drive for the Xbox 360.” Get with it already Microsoft, you’re falling even farther behind PS3 in the tech race.

Anyone reading this actually buy an HD DVD add-on for the XBox 360? It’s hard to be sympathetic to money bags, but tell about it in the comments and we’ll try.

Update: It looks like Best Buy has followed the Netflix lead today. They’ll be pushing Blu-Ray players in stores, though they’ll continue to sell HD DVD discs.

Game publishers need to wake up and realize it’s a lot easier to buy a console than a new PC. Both Crysis and Bioshock were huge titles available, on the PC, and made headlines. Neither made the PC top 10 list though. The numbers are over at Shacknews (2007 PC sales and 2007 console sales) and are worth some attention. WoW is actually the number one and two PC game for sales. It doesn’t change that fact that Mario Party 8 beat out the whole rest of the PC game field, but it stands out to me that none of the six Warcraft or The Sims games on the top 10 list require much PC hardware to run.

What does that mean to gamers? … you’re better off paying eBay release-day prices for a Wii, PS3, and XBox 360 than you are to drop $4,000 on a new gaming PC.

The different-from-normal weapons are a big draw too. A bit more challenging to fight with than typical Halo 3 cannons. The bow is a sweet weapon as long as you’re holding it and avoiding the knife is a really good idea. The most fun weapon is the shotgun’s secondary mode and the havoc it causes. It’s a heck of a lot of fun to lob a flare into a crowded room or a sniper post. Dinosaurs like the heat, they’ll move in on the flare and tear up the place.

There are some problems reported with MP server lag. They mostly seem to be resolved tonight. Things are good enough that my wireless network is probably dropping more often than the servers.

The real problem … if you want to play with the cool kids stay off the busy Turok servers and drop a comment on Kotaku.

The guys over at College Humor TV aren’t very good at Guitar Hero (it’s OK guys, neither am I). To make up for their poor playing they’re going to be mopping up the mess and leftovers from the Guitar Hero rockstars. Check out the Roadie Hero trailer above.

Devil May Cry 4 looks like one of the best games (other than Super Smash Bros Brawl) there is to wait around for. These trailer (above) and gameplay (that’s HD, low-def here) videos are leaving me drooling to grab it on Tuesday (Feb 5th).

Gameplay is far more important to me than graphics or storyline (Gah! Did I just say that?). Seriously though, there are some pretty sweet pictures on Flickr but you can’t play them and I don’t care if I’m shooting, slashing, or smashing as long as it’s fun and going somewhere. Based on the reviews (and #2) there’s going to be a lot of gameplay too. Enemies regenerate and Capcom is known for making hard games – it’s a good thing that the action is fast and combat is so sweet. There are two characters to play in this over-the-top action too, first Dante and then Nero from earlier in the series. Rumors of all sorts of secret extras that the game press can’t talk about should keep things exciting too. Play up.

The site reviews video games for all systems (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, & older consoles) and gives each a rating. None of these ratings are on a 9-out-of-10 scale either. What They Play uses ESRB ratings to pronounce games “safe” for various ages. I’ll lay odds that the site is affiliated with Jack Thompson given that the game ratings are fairly harsh and put almost every popular game on the market in the “Teen” (13 or older) category and anything remotely like a shooter in the “Mature” (17 and older) category.

Some examples:

• Halo 3 is rated “Mature” – as in only for ages 17 and over
• It takes a lightweight like Lego Star Wars to pull in an “Everyone 10+” (like they need two levels of Everyone ratings…)
• Major games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero II & III, and Super Smash Bros Brawl are rated “Teen” – only for ages 13 and over

If you still live at home and rely on your parents’ green (or at least a credit card or ride to the store) to buy games you’d better add whattheyplay.com to the Hosts file on all household PCs.

Thanks to someone for making this available in the US – but why did we need to wait? Download is 1.17 GB and Turok drops on 2/5/2008.

Kudo is known for enjoying the spotlight (yeah that’s him with the tradeshow hottie in the pic). Expect to see him showing off plenty of demo screens and trailers once Gears gets off the ground, check his 1UP blog for those.

Rockstar Games gave a sneak peak to the elite of the new Grand Theft Auto yesterday and the internet is all abuzz with it’s fancy new bells and whistles. According to this article the new game features faster load times, a souped up physics system, and the ability to get totally freaking drunky pants. How drunk? Drunk enough to make the game shake and wobble like a fat guy singing Prince at a karaoke bar. Now that kids, is some good clean fun.

GTA IV has an expected release date of late April this year.

Quick, shoot! It’s a zebra … and a field … ?

Far Cry 2 is months off but Ubisoft is already bragging about their new graphics engine. It really is the most phenomenal-looking, uh, grass I’ve ever seen in a game. The 45-seconds of scenery contains no gameplay though. Keep watching for more trailers as they finally add more huts, a lion or two, and maybe some playable characters for the October 31, 2008 release.

The newest Turok trailer is DULL! Gameplay looks smooth, but is a sniper video supposed to keep us interested?

Speaking of not intereting, the graphics don’t measure up to Gears of War either. When Turok launches on Feb 5, 2008 (PS3, Xbox 360, and PC) I’ll still be in line for it. Where else can you stab dinosaurs in the neck and also shoot at 16 other players at a time? If you’re in line with me (short line, huh?) hop on over the the Making of Turok videos at GameTrailers.com, part 1 and part 2 for better video coverage of what to expect.

It’s not exactly a blockbuster game, but it’s free to everyone and nice for those of us who never saw any outages because we’d gorged ourselves on pie and were napping though most of a multi-generational, family event. Early reports were that the lack of choice was even harder on users who already paid for the game. They were supposedly out of luck on getting any freebies or paybacks.

Microsoft may not be remotely close to a customer-friendly company, but they may be learning fast. Today’s reports are that if you already own Undertow you can call 1-800-4MY-XBOX and have the original purchase price (yes, 800 points) refunded to your account. No one around here has a copy of Undertow to cash out (or the patience to fake like we have one so we can confirm the rumor), but please let us know your results. Also, is the service rep. on the other end as friendly as “Mark” is from Kotaku’s original report?

[via Kotaku]

Now that the Xbox Live version of Goldeneye has been halted the first leak in the wall of secrecy is above. Maybe some developer or laid-off game tester is ticked off that their work will never go live – maybe some fanboy just wants to screw with all of us. Regardless, we’re posting the vid.

Since the classic Goldeneye was awesome and the gameplay in the video (cover your ears audiophiles, sound bugs to cry over) looks sweet, we hope Nintendo and Microsoft will get a clue and realize this download could pull in some serious Microsoft Points payments.

[via Joystiq]

Check the video preview after the jump:

(If video is broken, sorry. It’s IGN’s video code – see it on their site)

[via IGN]