Amidst all the technology hype going on at CES in Las Vegas this week, Warner Bros. Entertainment somewhat quietly made an announcement with potentially significant implications on the high-def DVD war between Toshiba’s HD DVD and Sony’s Blu-ray disc formats. Warner made an announcement on January 4 that it would release its movies in only the Blu-ray high-definition format, and no longer would offer any of the rival HD DVD formatted discs.

According to Reuters, in talking to Warner Bros Entertainment Group President Kevin Tsujihara the company chose to go the Blu-ray route due to falling DVD says and a “deteriorating U.S. economy”. Tsujihara said the plan was made with the intention of ending the format war and hence ending confusion and split purchases by consumers between the two formats. This move to Blu-ray exclusively is so significant due to the fact that Warner has the industries largest offering of movies and continues to produce big titles, making 5 of the 7 major studios on board with Blu-ray.

The marketing research firm NPD has turned in their analysis of what the top video game titles and consoles were last month and the news is very good for the industry as a whole. Leading the top in sales of new software was Activision’s “Call of Duty 4″ for the Microsoft Xbox 360 which sold an impressive 1.57 million copies. Nintendo’s “Super Mario Galaxy” came in second place and if you combine the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sales for “Assassin’s Creed” it would actually take the silver medal. Not coincidentally Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” has emerged as the best-selling new IP for games in recent years.

Nintendo’s handheld DS gaming device sold an amazing 1.53 million units in November which was enough to give it the top of the chart for hardware sales. In second place was Nintendo’s Wii gaming console with 981,000 Wiis sold followed by Microsoft’s Xbox 360 in third spot with 770,000 units finding homes. Sony moved 577,000 PlayStation Portable to give it fourth place and the price drop in the PS3 convinced 466,000 consumers to go out and buy one of the consoles last month.

Black Friday seems to have had a positive benefit for sluggish sales of not just Sony’s PlayStation 3 but for Nintendo’s Wii system. Over 350,000 Wiis were sold last week, 50,000 more than what was sold the week before that. The Thanksgiving week represents the second-best sales plateau for Nintendo’s latest game console, beaten only by the launch week of the Wii in 2006.

Meanwhile the sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 increased in November 298% over the sales in October. Part of that dramatic spike in PS3s finding their forever homes must be from Sony’s price drop of the $399 40GB unit. The price drop even had its effect in Japan where the Wii has been the dominant next gen gaming console for consumers: for the first time since the PS3’s launch more of the Sony consoles were sold to gamers than Wiis.

Is “Halo 3″ not worthy of play on the Microsoft Xbox 360? According to one California resident, you better bet your Covenant plasma pistol.

A class action suit has been dropped on Bungie, the makers of “Halo 3″ and Microsoft alleging that their hit video game “does not function with the Xbox 360, and to the contrary, attempted use of Halo 3 consistently causes the Xbox 360 to ‘crash,’ ‘freeze,’ or ‘lock up’ while the game is being played.” The suit also states that neither one of the two firms have done enough to fix the problems caused by the bad loads. “Many consumers have reported that the ‘Halo 3′ video game has caused their Xbox video game consoles to crash and remain totally inoperable after playing the ‘Halo 3′ video game,” reads a portion of the document.

Black Friday is fast approaching and although the Nintendo Wii has held strong as the leader in U.S. game console sales for the past year it may not be the case for long. When we first heard Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime talk about Wii console production shortages we suspected it was part of a marketing plan to create a greater demand for the consoles. After all, creating a sense of urgency is one of the most common sales tactics around.

Now that we are into Thanksgiving week and one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year is within site, where are all the Wii’s at? I’m starting to think that this is not part of a marketing scheme and that Nintendo really doesn’t have enough, although it is still surprising to me. The company has had a clear lead in console sales all year long and have been under demand the whole time. We’ve been reporting about the lack of availability as far back as January and Nintendo has had almost a year to catch up.

The Limited Edition Playstation two bundled with SingStar Pop that we told you about a couple of months ago is hitting some stores this weekend and Sony is advising customers to “get ‘em while they’re hot”. The SingStar PS2 pack comes in ceramic white which was previously only available in Japan (maybe we’ll get the white PS3 someday too?) and is the only way you can get your hands on a ceramic white model. It comes packed with the SingStar Pop game and two microphones, retailing for the exptected $149.99. The Playstation blog says that “some” stores will have it this weekend and will reach “everywhere” on November 4.

Microsoft is working hard to be competitive with its rivals Sony and Nintendo in Japan’s market which has proven so far to be fairly difficult for them. Despite a stellar month in September for US Xbox 360 sales, the company has not faired as well with the Japanese market over the past year in keeping up with the home town’s PS3 and Wii game consoles. As the holidays are nearing the company is keeping pace and making moves with its console trying to spur some additional sales with an announced price drop for the Xbox 360 core system and the 20GB bundle.

Starting on November 1 in Japan, the Xbox 360 20GB bundle will start retailing for ¥34,800 ($306) which is a $44 cut from its previous price. The 360 core system will start going for ¥27,800 ($245) which gives it an $18 cut. Microsoft is also putting out a limited Value Pack for the console for ¥34,800 ($306) which comes with Viva Pinata and Forza Motorsport 2 titles but no HDMI cable.

After almost a year of trailing in console sales, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has finally pulled ahead of the widely popular Nintendo Wii marking the first time since the Wii’s launch last November that it hasn’t been number one. As anticipated by many, Microsoft pulled this off with a little help from the launch of Halo 3 which earned $170 million on its first day and $300 million its first week and ended up spurring a number of Xbox 360 sales along with it.

Those sales totaled 527,000 units of the console in the month of September which was a significant jump from the 276,700 sold the previous month. Nintendo was no slump for September either marking 501,000 Wii units and 495,800 handheld DS consoles. Both figures were also significantly more than in August.

It comes as no surprise to anyone that “Halo 3″ would be the best-selling game for the month of September. We also know that the game sold $170 million dollars worth of product on its launch day, but how well did it do in the days that followed? Today we learn the answer to that question thanks to the sales figures released by NPD Group which calculate that a whopping 3.3 million copies of “Halo 3″ were sold in the game’s first twelve days of release. That’s correct, the 3.3 million figure is not even for two solid full weeks let alone a whole month. To give you an idea of how staggering that figure is consider that the number two best-selling game on NPD’s list is Nintendo’s Wii Play with Wii Remote which sold 282,000 units, or roughly 3 million less than “Halo 3″ did.

Microsoft was also able to translate the “Halo 3″ hype into moving more of its Xbox 360 game units off of store shelves. The console leapt to the top of the sales charts with 528,000 360s sold in September, well over the Wii (with 501,000) and the PlayStation 3 (119,000). However Nintendo posted its best month ever selling Wiis for September and usually the company is in first place for console sales, so enjoy your one month of being at the top of the heap, Master Chief.

Normally information that a company is doing nothing with their products price is hardly newsworthy, but when the company is game console giant Nintendo and it’s two major competitors are slashing prices for the upcoming holidays it something to take note of. At least that’s what Nintendo would like as the companies U.S. marketing head George Harrison continues to add onto CEO Reggie Fils-Amie’s talk of Wii game console shortages through the holidays.

According to Harrison, the company is currently making decisions in the nick of time on how many consoles Nintendo is going to make available for the U.S. market. With 10 days of shipping involved and the holiday season right around the corner the company still feels they won’t have enough to meet demand. Nintendo has consistently been the current-generation game console to beat leading sales against rivals Microsoft with the Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3.

According to a new report the Nintendo Wii is expected to be the dominant force for shoppers as well as developers this upcoming holiday season. As it stands right now 86 Wii games are scheduled for release between now and the end of the fourth quarter compared with 47 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and 38 for the Sony PlayStation 3. At the rate that Wii games are being released there will be more titles available for Nintendo’s next gen system than for the Xbox 360 sometime in early 2008. Nintendo is rapidly approaching sales of 10 million Wii consoles since its launch one year ago.

Today Sony announced they will be launching a 40GB PS3 in Japan on November 11th, a year to the day after the console was initially launched in Japan. The new 40GB PS3 will have a few changes changes from the units currently available including no memory card reader or backwards compatibility and will be short two of the four USB ports, which sounds just like the model recently announced for the UK.

Sony today released an announcement confirming rumors and FCC leaks of a less-expensive 40GB PS3 launching before the holidays. According the the announcement this model is currently only going to be available for Europe but it wouldn’t make sense for Sony to only release it in one area where PS3 sales are suffering. Hopefully it will be making its way to the US soon.

The new 40GB model will retail for €399 in the UK and aside from the drive size the new PS3’s will also lack 2 of the four USB ports and will have no memory card reader in order to cut some costs. It will also not be backwards compatible for PS2 games which isn’t too big of a deal for Europe models since software manages the backwards compatibility but for the U.S. it kinda’ stinks. We’ll have to watch this holiday season to see if this helps Sony take a bigger bite out of latest-generation game console sales and we’ll keep our eyes peeled for a U.S. targeted 40-giger.

Remember when we told you last week that “Halo 3″ made a stunning $170 million dollars worth of sales on its release day? Microsoft is back to blow its trumpet again: the first week of “Halo 3″ sales made the company $300 million dollars. Keep in mind that this game is only available for a single video game console, the Xbox 360. That could be why sales of the 360 have more than doubled in the past week as people open their wallets and purses to jump on the Master Chief bandwagon.

Since its launch last November the Nintendo Wii has consistently been the leader in the latest-generation game console sales and has been simultaneously behind the curve in having enough consoles to meet consumer demands.

In a recent interview with the San Jose Mercury News the Nintendo of America CEO Reggie Fils-Amie admitted that the company is not likely going to meet demands through this holiday season, either.