Although Sony's overall operating profit increased this year, the company's gaming division saw a huge operating loss of JP¥ 132 billion. Still, it's an incredible improvement from last year's loss. Full story after the "read more" link below.

The first HD DVD and Blu-ray format discs were released back in 2006. Since then it's been a long and grueling war. Both sides have dished out and taken hits, and for a while there, some thought the format war would end in a stalemate. However, the HD DVD camp started losing backers in the last few months, a movement that probably started when Warner Bros. decided to go Blu-ray exclusive. Now, HD DVD has lost one of its biggest supporters, Toshiba, signaling what may be the end of the war. Read the full article to recap some of the biggest events that led to this point in the format war.

Originally posted on February 20, 2008 at 1:34 p.m.

The industry's been expecting it for some time now, but to actually hear that the format war is over is still a little surreal: according to Reuters, a source from Toshiba has revealed that the company is giving up the format, possibly sealing the final nail on the coffin. More in the full article.

Sales data from Home Media Research has Blu-ray outselling rival format HD-DVD by almost 2 to 1 in the first nine months of the year. This according to reports from Reuters.

Blu-ray reportedly posted total U.S. sales of 2.6 million units from January 1 until September 30. HD-DVD, on the other hand, had a total of 1.4 million discs sold. Earlier this month, we reported that Blu-ray also posted a 4 to 1 lead over HD-DVD in Europe.

Analysts expect a different scenario in the fourth quarter, however. In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold believes that newly-released HD-DVD titles with new Web-enabled features such as Paramount's Transformers will revitalize the HD-DVD camp in the fourth quarter.

Adams Media Research president Tom Adams also pointed towards Paramount and DreamWorks' 18-month HD-DVD exclusivity as a factor that "very much strengthens HD-DVD's hand in the fourth quarter". Adams, however, believes that Blu-ray will still take the lead for the year overall.

Reuters reports that British Home Secretary John Reid is planning to approach Apple and Sony to join a summit that will focus on fighting crime in Britain. Reid wants mobile phone and mp3 player manufacturers to focus as much on security features for their devices as on other design features.

"New technology, lifestyle changes, new commodities and new gadgets mean that the criminals continually move on," Reid told the BBC's Sunday AM program. "So when we defeat them on mobile phones, they move on to Sat-Navs and then on to iPods." Reuters noted that crime figures released last week showed an 8% increase in the number of street robberies in Britain.

"We already have a close working relationship with mobile phone manufacturers," a Home Office spokesman said on Sunday. "John Reid is likely to approach Apple and Sony in the coming weeks to join this summit." The spokesman also added that during the coming week, they will be drawing up a list of other manufacturers to include for the summit.

    

NTT DoCoMo is one of Japan's biggest wireless operators. So it is only logical that consumers would expect the bigger innovations to come from them. The company delivered indeed last Monday after announcing five new 3G FOMA 904i models capable of motion-sensing gameplay.

Accordingly, the motion-sensing capability has been made possible because of Chokkan Game support. After downloading the games from online sites, consumers can play these mobile titles by using intuitive motions such as tracing a finger and tilting or waiving the handset. Of course, the type of motion is dependent on the game's content.

The new phones sport pre-existing features common to DoCoMo units. But aside from the above mentioned, they will also have the following:

• 2in1 support: This service provides the capabilities of two separate handsets in one single unit. Under a single FOMA card, users are provided with two phone numbers and two i-mode mail addresses, and these are accessed independently by means of a Mode Switching function. Switching between modes changes the phone number, i-mode mail address, address book, mail boxes and call history. When using A Mode, the customer cannot view B Mode, and vice-versa.
• Uta-hodai support: Users can download full music tracks from i-mode sites supporting Uta-hodai for a flat monthly subscription fee. When downloading, users will accrue an i-mode information fee and packet communication charges. DoCoMo suggests that users planning to download a significant volume of data every month consider subscribing to flat-rate data communication billing plans "pake-hodai" or "pake-hodai full."

The D904i, F904i, N904i and SH904i could begin arriving in stores as early as May; at the latest they will be available in June. The P904i will go on sale in June.

A lot of things aren't used for their original purpose: PSP's aren't used to play UMD's, crappy games are used as coasters, consoles are used as crash test dummies, and dominoes just aren't used to play...dominoes.

Not that we mind, especially after we took a look at this vid posted over at Reuters, which showed the current record holder for most dominoes toppled in one sitting.

This grand event took place in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands, with 90 people from 13 different countries coming together to build this elaborate set, which involved very diverse themes ranging from falling buildings, record players, to even a jukebox.

Eighties pop star Kim Wilde started the whole thing falling, as she dropped the first domino that started the whole chain reaction, and despite some minor problems in the execution (not all of them fell), this attempt toppled a total of 4,002,146 dominoes - making it the current world record. This attempt beats out the previous record set in 1988, with 1,382,101 toppled. Next up: SmashmyWii part 2: console dominoes!

Feel free to click the source link to see the vid.

This morning, the BBC reported that Toshiba has confirmed the launch date for its first HD-DVD player in Europe. The £400 HD-DVD player will launch on November 15, two days before the Blu-ray enabled PS3. So far, Toshiba has sold 50,000 units in the US and Japan, and they're aiming to sell 200,000 worldwide by year's end.

One of the main points of contention in the HD-DVD/Blu-ray battle is the amount of storage each of the discs offers. HD-DVD discs can contain up to 30GB of data, while Blu-ray discs can hold up to 50. Regarding the storage issue, Toshiba's digital consumer chief Yoshihide Fujii told Reuters this: "The question is: who needs this[50GB]."

If you're interested in the whole HD-DVD/Blu-ray drama, check out this earlier QJ article about a comparison of HD/DVD and Blu-ray movies.