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Tuesday 19 February 2008

It's Official! The Death Of HD-DVD

It is finally over, the fat lady is singing!

The inevitable has finally happened. Toshiba have cancelled their HD-DVD format and put an end to the Hi-Def war with its rival Sonys Blu-Ray... thank god! After two years of spatting, boring us consumers to death and just being annoying in general, Toshiba have finally raised the white flag and conceded that the fat lady is in fact singing.

Toshiba have now officially pulled the HD-DVD plug and will cease production of all its HD-DVD players, discs and accesories by March 2008. This is a blow for the early adopters of the HD-DVD format and i suppose i do sort of feel sorry for them but in all honesty you should really know by now not to jump the gun when these type of spats between rival companies are ongoing, unless you buy both!

If you are one of those who has been sitting on the fence and waiting for a winner to be announced, it is now time for you to go out and treat yourself to a Blu-Ray player. Hopefully now that Blu-Ray is the sole provider of Hi-Def material, the prices will come down. That was definitely one advantage HD-DVD had over its nemesis, prices!

The only thing that has really got me thinking from the death of HD-DVD is the little matter of the Xbox 360. Will we being seeing an Xbox 360 with a built-in Blu-Ray drive or will they be throwing another bloody add-on drive at us and if so, how long is it going to be before we see one? Why don't you give us your thoughts on the HD-DVD slaying and your Xbox ideas by leaving us a comment, we love to hear what you think.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

N-Gage Gaming Platform Goes Live At Last

They've certainly taken their time with their latest version of the gaming platform but Nokia are finally ready to unleash the new-G Nage upon the public.

The latest version of N-Gage was supposed to be ready to rock by the end of December last year but somewhow it has managed to take until February 08 to get it Live but who cares! it's here now! The N-Gage gaming platform will still only be available to users with a N81 handset so if you were like me and thinking the delay releasing N-Gage was down to prepping it for other Nokia handsets then welcome to the Deeply wrong and way off the mark gang.

N-Gage is available for download over at N-Gage First Access and there are currently three titles available to play, Space Impact: Kappa Base, System Rush: Evolution and Hooked On: Creatures of the deep. N81 users get over there now and get your N-Gage on!