Just last August, Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox 360 from $399 down to $349. Now, they plan to cut it again to bring it to a far more mainstream price point of $299.

This will make the Xbox 360 Pro just $50 more than the Nintendo Wii.

If they follow suit and reduce the price of the Xbox 360 Arcade sku as well, it could be the same price, if not cheaper than the Nintendo Wii.

We have heard a lot of news about the Sony Playstation 3 since the recent press release from Japan, today we are hearing about new RSX Chips for the PS3 and a new service called “Life with Playstation”. We had a few details leaked from Sony’s Kaz Hirai about future cost cutting in making the PS3 hardware and the original Cell was using 90nm technology, this moved to 65nm last Holiday season.

We should start seeing Sony PS3 consoles having 65nm RSX Chips inside from Fall 2008, the current RSX graphics chips are developed by NVIDIA and still 90nm technology. This is all part of Sony’s plan in keeping the price of the PS3 as low as possible and giving it the best technology for money.

And after playing through this instant classic, I can't help but wonder if the video game industry has finally realized that it commands mainstream attention and must favor a new type of gaming that creates unprecedented entertainment value.

I'm a firm believer that video games have replaced movies as the de facto leader in entertainment. Games offer greater entertainment value, usually have better stories, and generally appeal to people far more than any movie currently in theaters.

The way I see it, movies are the next logical entertainment vehicle.

I'm sure you're thinking that I've lost it (again) and video games could never replace movies as entertainment leaders, but I ask that you don't underestimate the power of gaming and the value it offers to the average person.

Even though I don't feel that I have brand loyalty to any particular gaming company, it's a fact that I've owned five different Nintendo consoles. I do tend to love Nintendo, but I love any console that's fun and works well. But what about you? Do you tend to stick to Sony and get PlayStations, or are you strictly a Nintendo-head, or something else?

Lose that image. A new game is afoot.

Cellphones have already surpassed the technical capabilities of the Nintendo (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) DS and are rapidly approaching and matching those of Sony's (nyse: SNE - news - people ) PlayStation Portable (PSP)--specifically handsets like the Nokia N95, Research In Motion's (nasdaq: RIMM - news - people ) BlackBerry Bold and the Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) iPhone. The introduction of new platforms, like N-Gage, and Android, will radically alter the handheld gamescape. And unlike dedicated game systems, cellphones are almost always with you.

True, most mobile games so far have had graphics that pale in comparison to games on dedicated platforms. "Snake," with its two-dimensional graphics, simple control scheme and primary color palette, looks like a joke when compared with graphical powerhouses like "God of War: Chains of Olympus" for Sony's PlayStation Portable, a handheld game system capable of replicating PlayStation 2 graphics.

But like rodents vs. carnivorous dinosaurs, the numbers are on the side of the handsets. The handheld industry sold over a billion new handsets last year; handheld gaming platform sales were 12 million.

Designed and manufactured in the UK, the Reee chair competes with virgin plastic rivals on price and quality - but critically communicates the recycling message in what the company describes as a "witty, thought provoking way".

London Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) helped the company with research into the plastics market and with the tooling process for recycled plastics.

London MAS also supported environmental design company Sprout Design to help with the design of "The Reee Chair" - and the collaboration resulted in Pli winning an 18,000 Euro grant from London Remade's Enhance Capital Fund for production tooling.

50 Cent remains hopeful that his new game, Blood on the Sand, will be a true gaming hit and not something that rides on the coattails of his music like he did with Bulletproof.

The game's producer, Aaron Blean, told MTV that he sat through a demo of the game three times several weeks ago and was "really excited."

The producer also talked up a mysterious love interest in the game that, brace yourself, 50 Cent came up with. Oh, this is going to be a grrrrreat game.

The idea may explain why men tend to like video games more than their female counterparts.

Allan Reiss MD and his colleagues at Stanford University studied a group of 11 young men and 11 young women playing numerous 24-second intervals of a specially designed game.

The game involved players clicking balls on the screen in a particular sequence in order to gain territory.

The participants were hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine which monitors those parts of the brain which are active during a given task.

"These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become 'hooked' on, video games than females," the researchers wrote in their paper.

After analysing the imaging data for the entire group, the researchers found that the participants showed activation in the brain's mesocorticolimbic centre, the region typically associated with reward and addiction.

However, the males showed much greater activation, and the amount of activation was correlated with how much territory they gained in the game, which was not the case with the female players.

To begin with, there's the daddy of all Xbox 360 games Gears of War. This is a game that sold millions of copies and gave gamers more meat to mince than any other Xbox title. The game was almost prefect in terms of visuals and sound; the gameplay was also very good and yet it was criticized for being very repetitive. However, the action freaks never complained as they went off chainsaw-crazy against the Locusts.

The sequel GOW 2 promises to have better visuals as well as more depth in the multiplayer. The single player plot will take Marcus Phoenix further down the Locusts lair and hopefully finish them off for good, unless the game sells 7-8 million units, thereby urging the developers to make another one. The game has a few new tricks including a chainsaw duel as well as the option to pick up your enemy and use him as a meat shield. The game is bound to be a major hit and add numbers to the already massive GOW community.

The will continue to host Zunes on its online shelves until its current stocks are all dried out.
Needless to say, this is bad news for Microsoft, on both business and public image image fields. The video game retailer has over 5,400 stores worldwide, with around 600 new ones scheduled to be opened this year. GameStop's business is going well, with the company reporting that its profits have gone up to $62.1 million in the first quarter of the year (up 151%), while sales rose to $1.8 billion (uo 42%) when compared to the same period a year ago.

Furthermore, when such a big player chooses to dump your product, the consumers is likely to understand this: “we're no longer betting on a sure loser”.

Microsoft's response came from Adam Sohn, director of marketing for the Zune:

"We have a set of great retail partnerships that give Zune a strong presence at retail including Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, and others. We will continue to invest in deep retail partnerships, and have seen good momentum online and at retail over the last few months including a great response to our recent spring update."

Microsoft launched the Zune player two years ago. Back then, expectations were high and the device was first dubbed the “iPod killer”. However, Zune failed to convince consumers and currently accounts for only 4% of the specific market in the US, while its rival is sitting comfortably on its huge market share slice: 71%.