Premiere gaming peripheral maker Razer has apparently decided that these crazy new Mac computers aren't just a fad. Yesterday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Razer announced that all upcoming Razer products will include Mac driver support. This includes the upcoming Razer StarCraft II peripheral suite,

"I'm very proud to say that at Razer, we are committed to supporting both Mac and PC gamers," said Robert "Razerguy" Krakoff, president of Razer USA. "We are constantly working to increase driver support for Mac with our existing Razer products and have plans to release all of our new products with dedicated Mac and PC drivers."

There have been Mac-compatible Razer peripherals before, of course, including the DeathAdder mouse (above) and Naga mouse. The Razer Orochi, Mamba, and Imperator all have basic Mac support. Now all Mac owners need are some games to play with these mice.

• In the ongoing battle for content, Sony said Tuesday that it had locked in the five top studios to supply HD content to the PlayStation Network.

At launch, the content will be available in the U.S. only, with plans to launch soon in the U.K., France, Germany, and Spain, Sony said.

Sony claimed that "all" of the top studios now offer HD content via the PSN. The five studios announced Tuesday are: 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros.

"Securing high definition content from these studios is another significant milestone further validating PlayStation Network as a complete entertainment network in the home. PlayStation Network is the first and only service to deliver high definition home entertainment from all six major studios, directly to consumers for download," said Peter Dille, senior vice president, marketing and PlayStation Network of Sony Computer Entertainment, in a statement.

The new titles include:

• 20th Century Fox: "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian", "Jennifer's Body" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (on March 23)
• Walt Disney Pictures: Disney Pixar's "Up", Jerry Bruckheimer's "G-Force" and Disney's "Earth"
• Paramount Pictures: "Star Trek", "Paranormal Activity" and "Zoolander"
• Sony Pictures: "This Is It", "2012", "District 9" and "Zombieland"
• Universal: "Inglourious Basterds", "Couples Retreat" and "Public Enemies"
• Warner Bros. Digital Distribution: "The Hangover", "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" and "The Wizard of Oz"

Sony's PlayStation 3 may have gotten off to a rocky start in the most recent round of console wars, but according to a new report by analyst group, Strategy Analytics, the PS3 will beat out both the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 in the long run.

The report suggests that Wii sales have peeked and will decline after next year. Both the Xbox and PS3 will continue to grow, according to the report, with the PS3 moving 127 million units by 2013, compared to the Wii's 103 million.

"Uncertainties clearly surround each of the major platforms," the report adds, "particularly relating to the new services and upgrades planned by Sony and Microsoft. Natal on the Xbox could be more beneficial to 360 sales than expected, and Sony's own motion controller, together with its plans to upgrade all PS3s to 3D capabilitiy [sic], also represent potential for upside to our core forecasts."

Last Sunday, a three-year-old girl in Nashville picked up a loaded .380 caliber pistol and shot herself in the stomach. According to police investigators, her mother was in the room with the girl when the incident occurred. The girl's step father was reportedly in the other room.

The mother told the police the girl may have shot herself after mistaking the weapon for a Nintendo Wii controller. The girl eventually died after being rushed to a hospital.

The gun, according to police, was purchased by the sleeping stepfather after hearing a prowler. He stored the weapon on the living room end table.

Microsoft on Friday announced that an update to its Xbox code of conduct will now allow gamers to identify their race, nationality, religion, and sexual orientation in gamertags.

"Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs," Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox Live, wrote in a note on the Xbox Web site. "However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox Live community."

The update also "comes hand-in-hand with increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms," Whitten said.

The code of conduct is available online. It says that users can identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, or straight, but "other terms regarding relationship orientation are not allowed."

"As [Xbox Live] evolves and our customers provide us with feedback, these rules evolve to incorporate new features or changes in how people wish to interact," Whitten wrote.

On Thursday, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer spoke at the University of Washington supposedly on the topic of cloud computing. But the conversation also wandered into other topics, one that might include the future of the Xbox.

Like fellow reporter Chloe Albanesius, I listened to the speech, but Microsoft also provided a handy transcript a day later, on Friday.

In a question-and-answer session following the speech, Ballmer was asked about the collaboration the company takes with regard to hardware partners, and made the point that some hardware vendors don't offer any diversity, and others do. In the case of the television, Ballmer argued, Microsoft uses both approaches, providing fixed hardware (the Xbox) as well as variety (software). Here's the interesting quote:

"In the case of the TV we've got both strategies. We actually have a TV implementation in some senses built into Windows," Ballmer said. "It works really well for small screen TVs that you might call a PC, but for that big screen device here's a piece of hardware that we build, there's no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it's going to [be] important." (Emphasis mine).

To me, that certainly sounds like Microsoft may be considering new implementations of its Xbox technology, although it's difficult to say whether that might additional hardware revisions, or simply closer integration of Xbox services with other devices, like the Zune, or with the partnership with the UK's Sky TV that Microsoft also showed off this week.

Competitive gamers: SteelSeries has three new products debuting today at CeBIT that you're going to want to know about. All are available for pre-order on Amazon.

The SteelSeries 7H headset is a luxurious over-ear model that travels well and offers two ear-cup choices, hear-through cloth, and noise dampening leather. The 50mm drivers in the ear-cups deliver a clean soundscape of high, low, and mid tones for everything from mood-setting sounds in MMO games to 3D positional alerts in FPS games. They're available for pre-sale now at Amazon for $119.99.

If you prefer, you can pick up a USB version of the 7H headset, which offers 7.1 virtual surround sound and ensures the exact same sound and settings, no matter what computer you're using. It's available at Amazon for $149.99.

Finally, PC gamers will love the SteelSeries 6Gv2 keyboard (shown), which offers 18-karat gold-plated mechanical switches. Use it to get quicker reaction times and advanced key combinations for more actions per minute. Amazon has this one for $99.99.

At CES earlier this year, Turtle Beach was quiet about new products might be coming down the pike and didn't show off much in the way of new audio hardware. But the company has a long and storied history of superior audio quality, especially among gamers and audiophiles, both for its sound cards and its gaming headsets. Today, Turtle Beach announced it would build on the popularity of its X1 gaming headset for the Xbox 360 with the Ear Force X11 headset for the Xbox 360 and PC.

The X11 adopts the design and some of the popular features of Turtle Beach's X31 and X41 headsets, such as an extra-long audio cable that allows you to game on the couch without worrying about pulling your XBox out of your entertainment center, and large ear cups that fit all the way around your ears for maximum comfort during long gaming sessions.
 

How many hours did your parents spend telling you that you were wasting your life sitting in front of Nintendo games for hours on end? All right, so you never became a professional gamer--but if you're among 200 or so lucky gamers, you may have a payday coming after all.

Take, for example, the story of Dave, who discovered an NES game called Stadium Events among a collection of nearly 200 titles in his basement. The game, which carried an original retail price of $29.99 (that tag was still adhered to the shrinkwrap), snagged $41,300 on eBay.

According to Dave, Stadium Events was destined for the Goodwill pile. Then he spotted a story online in which a North Carolina resident got $13,000 for the game on the auction site. Dave had never bothered to open it, because he didn't have the obligatory Power Pad peripheral to play it on.

\Nintendo has just released details on the forthcoming update to its popular handheld gaming platform: The Nintendo DSi XL will go on sale in the U.S. on March 28 and have a list price of $189.99. The DSi XL's screens are 93% larger than those of its predecessor, the DSi, and it offers a wider viewing angle. It'll come with two styli: the typical small stylus that slots into the device but also a larger "pen" stylus, which is easier to grip.

The DSi will be sold preloaded with several titles, including Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters,  Brain Age Express: Math, and Photo Clock. It comes in either Burgundy or Bronze. Upcoming titles for the device are America's Test Kitchen: Let's Get Cooking and WarioWare: D.I.Y, among others; those two will launch on March 28 as well.

Look for a hands-on report, complete with slideshow, with the new DSi XL at midnight EST tonight on PCMag.com.

Update: According to Bloomberg News, the DSi XL will also include a book reader when it ships:

The player, which has a larger screen than the company's current model, will double as an electronic reader when Nintendo introduces "100 Classic Books" in June, Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for North America, said today at an event in San Francisco.

Microsoft has decided to stop supporting first-generation Xbox games and consoles on its Xbox Live service, Microsoft disclosed on Friday.

Microsoft "did not make this decision lightly," the company's Major Nelson blog said, but it's apparently final: gamers who used the Xbox Live matchmaking service for games of "Halo," for example, will have to find another way to connect with their friends. The prohibition also applies to Xbox games played on Xbox 360 consoles.

Why did Microsoft make the change? According to Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten, the company plans upgrades to the Live service that are simply incompatible with the older games and consoles.

Whitten did not reveal the proposed upgrades, but mentioned Microsoft's Project Natal, scheduled to be rolled out by the holiday season of 2010. I believe we'll look back on 2010 as a landmark year in gaming and home entertainment, and I couldn't be more excited about what we have in store with "Project Natal" and LIVE," Whitten wrote in a blog post.

 "We will contact the Xbox LIVE members directly impacted by this change and if this includes you, I encourage you to check your LIVE messages and associated e-mail account over the coming weeks for more details and opportunities," Whitten wrote. "We view you as a partner in this process."

This one's for the PC gamers, especially those who have trouble with multi-button key presses. With some keyboards, pressing multiple keys at one time (to execute a special move, perhaps) causes a problem where not all the key presses are recorded. The unreported key presses are called "ghosts," since the computer doesn't see them. The just-announced Microsoft SideWinder X4 is built differently, so that gamers can press up to 26 keys at once and the computer will recognize each key. Now that's a move I'd like to see.

Besides anti-ghosting, this SideWinder lets players manually toggle from standard mode into one of two gaming modes, automatically switch profiles, program macro keys (up to 18 per profile), and record macros during a game. It also offers backlit keys and quick-access media keys.

The SideWinder X4 works with Windows 7, Vista, and XP (excluding XP 64-bit) systems. Look for it in March with a list price of $59.95.

Premier gaming peripheral-maker Razer has done it again. From deep inside the Razer research lab has come the discovery that a mouse pad has two sides, so why not put both to work? Introducing the Razer Vespula, a gaming pad made with one slick side (shown), for speed, and a coarsely textured one for precision. Different games call for different movements, so why limit yourself to one pad? Shoot in big sweeping arcs or use tools with exact control.

Besides the mousing surface, the Vespula includes a memory gel-filled wrist rest. It's available for $34.99 from Razer's site. For the next few days, Razer is offering free shipping with no minimum, so jump on it, gamers.