With all the talk of the PS3 being too expensive compared to the other two consoles on the market, it seems Sony is still cashing in on sales with the high price. Sony plans to manufacture a white, 40GB PS3 for the American market, with pictures of the all-white version recently released. If they really needed to increase sales they would either lower the retail price or include more extras with the console, rather than simply changing the colour of the outer plastic. This proves to me that even with the lack of interesting titles currently available for the PS3, Sony has no intention of lowering the cost of the console any time soon. And with great new titles yet to be released, gamers will have all the more reason to purchase a PS3 for its ridiculous price. Black or white outer casing, it’s up to you to pay as much as Sony is asking for its PS3 with Blu-Ray capabilities.

The ceramic white PS3 will sell for $499.00.

After Warner Brothers put the kibosh on their HD-DVD production effective this March, the final two studios backing Toshiba‘s format, NBC Universal and Paramount, have dropped their exclusivity and will be producing on Blu-ray as well. This huge slant in the format war came as a surprise to nearly everyone during this years CES 2008 where Warner Brothers made their decision public. The HD-DVD group decided to sit out of the rest of the show to recoup as best they could. Apparently NBC and Paramount saw this as there way out.

But let’s be serious here, who really wins? HD-DVD was at least a policed format with high standards for the players they endorsed. The bonus features on each disc outweighed their competition on their Blu-ray equivalent too. Blu-ray players aren’t even all up to spec, meaning that early Blu-ray adopters won’t be able to enjoy all the new features of future movies, or, and this seems much more likely until HD-DVD is buried, none of that extra content will be implement as to not oust their supporters in an iPhone-like fashion. While HD-DVD offers the better content at a more reasonable price, perhaps it’s the fact that the Playstation 3 has it built in that makes Blu-ray the victor. As a word of caution however, HD-DVD is not dead yet, so although I won’t be purchasing anymore HD-DVD’s, I will accept any and all that you would like to send me.

I’d hate to say it, owning a Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and all, but the signs where on the wall when I couldn’t even rent a HD-DVD movie. What made it worse was that unless I was in Best Buy, all the other stores would spread several copies of the same Blu-ray movie over 6 rows while HD-DVD sat on 4 at tops. It will be great to pull the ‘ole HD-DVD player out when my grandchildren come over, and I can tell them all about DVD, Laser disc, and Betamax.

Now excuse me, I’m going to go watch Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD.

Looks like Microsoft are not so sure about supporting HD DVD with new Xbox 360 now. And there’s no big surprise – just look at list of manufacturers that support Blu-ray and you’ll see who’s winning the battle of formats. I guess that’s why they changed their mind.

So anyway, Albert Penello, group-marketing manager for Xbox hardware has officially announced that Microsoft will consider offering a Blu-ray player for Xbox 360 gaming console. He said, “It should be consumer choice; and if that’s the way they vote, that’s something we’ll have to consider.”

An interesting fact that this statement came out right after Warner Bros.’ announcement about providing all their HD titles exclusively on the Blu-ray format. It seems to me that this was the last thing that they couldn’t stand. I’m really interested with this news and will follow any new rumors about Blu-ray player for Xbox 360.