Sony’s Playstation 2 game console has practically been a staple with gaming retailers for years, and is likely found in homes of most gamers throughout the country. After nearly 13 years of production, despite newer Playstation generations, it looks like Sony is calling an end to the production of the PS2 game console, according to Famitsu.

Even though the PS3 launched in in late 2006, Sony continued to keep the PS2 alive with a major design update and a few game launches here and there, not to mention the large library of existing titles. This announcement is announcing the end of production for the PS2 console in Japan with a plan to sell of the remaining production stock, and a stop to production in the US and other countries is …

I have all three game consoles in my house and my son and his friends spend lots of time playing games around here most weeks. When it comes time to play games they all typically want to play the PS3 the most. The Wii is the second choice and they rarely play the Xbox 360.

Despite the preferences of a bunch of 7-year-olds, the Xbox 360 has taken the top spot for sales in February according to NPD. NPD’s numbers show that Microsoft sold 422,000 Xbox 360 consoles; the Wii was second with 397,900 units sold.

French-based Bonitor has released a pair of new mini projectors for the mass market. The MP201 shown above and the MP301. Both projectors feature a native resolution of 640 x 480 4:3 pixels along with 15 lumens of brightness, a 1.57/1.62 throw ratio and a rechargeable battery.

The MP201 is specially designed for game consoles, DVD/Blu-ray disc players, mobile phone and portable media players and only has a Composite Video input. The MP301 on the other hand geared toward desktop computers, laptop, netbook and UMPC, and features USB and VGA connectors.

Microsoft has now confirmed rumors about upgrading the internal memory for its Xbox 360 Arcade game console to have 256MB of internal storage. The upgrade will allow more games and media to be stored inside without the need for an external memory card.

In the current 360 Arcade models, users were required to use an external 256MB card to store information. This worked well for the most part but left the memory open to being removed at the wrong time giving the system adverse effects, and to just plain losing the memory card.

September games sales actually showed the first decline since March of 2006 according to the NPD Group, however things are still not looking too tough for the gaming industry. September of 2007 saw a huge hike in sales due to the release of Halo 3 which is contrasted by slightly lower sales this last September of 2008.

The drop is sales was not the only change of events for September, either. Due to the price cut of the Xbox 360 models, Microsoft saw a significantly noticeable boost in sales for its console from 195k units sold in August, to 347k units sold in September of this year, bringing it ahead of Sony’s PS3. Microsoft dropped the price to $50 less than the Wii and half of what the PS3 costs, making it the least expensive current-generation game console on the market.

According to the Sony Playstation blog, the company has released firmware version 2.41 for the Playstation 3 which is expected to be a smoother update than the 2.40 version they released last week and had to pull shortly after. Apparently some folks who installed the 2.40 version experienced problems getting to the XMB when booting up and were stuck with a bricked console, at least temporarily.

We had heard that Sony would get a fix for the 2.40 firmware out sometime this week and their blog entry late last night said it would be available shortly. According to a number of reports the 2.41 version is available now with much, much fewer problems.

Both the 2.40 and the 2.41 firmware updates for the Playstation 3 game console bring some new features including in-game access to the XMB and a new Trophy system …

According to the latest NPD Group report for game sales in May, this is the fourth month in a row that Nintendo has come out on top for the number 1 AND number two spot for console sales. The Nintendo Wii and the handheld Nintendo DS were the two top-selling hardware units for May, 2008.

Nintendo sold over 675,000 Wii consoles in May and almost 453,000 Nintendo DS’s, which would probably explain all the new colors and designs they have been coming out with lately for the DS. Sony’s Playstation 3 followed with a little under 209,000 units sold and Microsoft sold 186,600 Xbox 360 units during the same period.

Microsoft is touting some new statistics trying to gain some additional momentum for the Xbox 360 game console, stating that in the U.S. they have sold 10 million units. There is no refuting that this is quite an accomplishment, but Microsoft is trying to add some more significance to the 10 million unit mark.

“History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry, ” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft.

Shortly after the fall of the HD DVD format Microsoft officially announced that they were ending production of the HD DVD player for the Xbox 360 and we, along with a number of others, figured they would be jumping on board with Blu-ray in short order.

According to Microsoft exec Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for the Xbox 360, the company appears to have no plans to move in the direction of a Blu-ray player, or any high-def player for that matter, for their game console. “Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience,” Greenberg said. He followed up that comment with “We’re the only console offering digital distribution of entertainment content,” which leads us to believe that Microsoft may have taken this opportunity to rid the console of physical disc media all together.

Not only is Nintendo’s sales of the Wii game console staying ahead of the competition, but they are continuing to rise and pull further away from rival Sony’s PlayStation 3.

Last month we reported that the Wii was outselling the PS3 in Japan at a ratio of 5 to 1 in May with 251,794 units. Reuters is now reporting that these numbers have risen and Nintendo sold 270,974 Wii game console units in the first 24 days of June in Japan. This, compared to the 41,628 units of the PS3 that Sony sold ups the ratio to that of 6 to 1 Wii’s to PS3′s sold. Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which is also a major competitor in the current generation gaming consoles, sold 17,616 consoles during the same period.

This trend of dominate consoles sales from Nintendo …

Not only has the Nintendo Wii been consistently leading sales for the current generation game consoles in the U.S., Reuters is reporting that the Wii outsold its rival Sony PS3 in console units by a whopping ratio of 5 to 1 in Japan last month.

In May Nintendo reportedly sold 251,794 Wii game consoles compared to 45,321 PS3′s from Sony. The trend appears to be a growing one as well, as the ratio was 4 to 1 in favor of the Wii the previous month.

The Wii game console has led sales of the current generation game consoles in the US for four months in a row including April, and is expected to have led sales again in May. For the first three of the four-month run, Sony actually …

Now that the Simpsons have a new feature film heading for the big screen Fox has teamed up with Microsoft to make a shiny yellow Simpsons-themed Xbox 360 to help promote the movie. The 360 case and controller have been given a glossy coat of Simpsons-yellow paint along with a big picture of the top half of Homer’s head on the side.

For those of you that are Simpsons collectors or Xbox Collectors, actually getting your hands on one of these Simpson’s Xbox’s might prove to be difficult as Microsoft is only making 100 of them. The units that they do make will be used to be given out and different events and promotions for the Simpsons movie.

According to Engadget the Simpsons game will actually not be coming with the unit as you might think, and Microsoft has skimped a little bit on the …

Today Nintendo announced that a free trial version of the Opera web browser will be available for the Nintendo Wii game console on Friday, December 22nd.

If you have a high speed internet connection, you can download the Opera web browser to activate the Internet Channel on your Wii game console and start surfing the internet on your TV through your Wii. This trial download will be available until the end of March when the final version of the Opera web browser for the Wii will be available for download. The final version will also be a free download, but only until June. After June the Opera web browser will cost 500 Wii points to download, so you’ll want to be sure to get it before then.

The Wii motion sensing controller can be used to navigate the browser using …