It is strange, but Microsoft, the big supporter of HD-DVD Drives, might produce Blu-ray external-drives for Xbox 360.

Alberto Penello, global marketing director at Microsoft, told the press that even if they continue supporting HD-DVD format for the Xbox, a Blu-ray external drive will be shipped if the HD DVD standard loses the war against Blu-ray. Lately a lot of movie studios are selecting Blu-ray as their default top quality release standard. However, a lot of consuers are still choosing the HD-DVD instead of Blu-ray, partly because extremely convenient prices on Amazon.com. In this regard, Penello added: "Consumers are choosing HD DVD, but Hollywood isn't listening. While HD DVD has been trying to sell the format to consumers, Sony has focused on selling the Blu-ray brand and company."

 Sony has recently announced that the new size of the memory stick duo pro storage devices will go up as high as 16GB. You can only imagine how many PSP games you could store on it and also other media files, like music, videos, pictures. But the enjoying such goodies for a short time is not really an option for most gamers as they will certainly buy the special set of batteries recently released by Sony, which are meant to double the battery uptime so that the user can enjoy extented gaming times. The battery set comes with one battery pack and two covers.

 

Alienware has presented its products at Consumer Electronics Show. Among them there was this huge and extremely wide screen, especially designed for gamers who wish to have a seriously wider gaming experience. The technical specs go as follows: the resolution is 2880x900, it is a curved monitor backlit by LEDs and boasts a .02ms response time. The product will be released in the second half of this year. The price will obviously be very high and restrictive - only users with very deep pockets will be able to buy one of these. You can see a detailed video here.

According to the online news magazine The People, Prince William received a Wii game-console for Christmas from his girlfriend, Kate Middleton. As soon as the gaming unit was installed and ready for use, the Queen wanted to have a go at the games, like bowling. The People magazine has quite a high reputation for its credibility and thus they confirmed that the Queen loves the gadgets: she owns a Blackberry phone with email and an iPod with about 100.000 songs (I wonder what songs are those). This also proves that the British are not as conservative as other people might think of them.

Sony confirmed at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that the Portable Play Station will be turned into a phone by using Skype technology. "Call friends, talk trash to fellow gamers or catch up with acquaintances via Skype for PSP", or at least that's what the add says. Sony Europe has parnered with British Telecom in order to create communication tools for the handheld device. Go!Messenger, a video chat and IM tool is what they came up with - it will be available later on this month for PSP owners. The users will be prompted to choose, however, the Go!Messenger will be available only for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's territories. Hopefully, Skype will not be limited only to US users.