Sony Japan has announced this week that PlayStation 3 owners will receive the first 3D-enabled games for their console starting on June 10th.

The first games, which will require both a 3D-capable HDTV and special glasses, are Wipeout HD, Super Stardust HD and Pain.

While Wipeout and Stardust will be free upgrades to 3D, Pain will require ¥300 (about $3.25) for the upgrade.

June 10th is the release date for Japan, but Sony says more details on the North Americas and EU launches are upcoming at the E3 event which starts on the 14th.

Any console owner with the 3.30 firmware update will be able to playback the games.

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Nintendo Japan has announced an across-the-board price cut on their DS handhelds, including the new over sized DSi LL.

Beginning on June 19th, the DS Lite will drop from ¥16,800 to "open pricing," which allows retailers to name their own price on the device.

The popular DSi will drop from ¥18,900 to ¥15,000.

Dropping from ¥20,000 to ¥18,000 is the new DSi LL, which has 93 percent bigger screens than the DSi.

Additionally, Nintendo is releasing new colorways of the DSi LL; Blue, Yellow and Green. The console currently sells in Wine Red, Dark Brown and Natural White colorways.

Nintendo has sold over 30 million DS units (in all iterations) in Japan, and over 125 million worldwide.

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Sonic Solutions has announced today that it will acquire digital media company DivX, merging the operations of the company into its own.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sonic will pay about $326 million in cash and stock, with DivX stock holders receiving 0.514 shares of Sonic and $3.75 cash per share. DivX closed the day trading at $8.79, after closing at $6.95 on Tuesday.

Sonic says the deal should close in September, and says the deal will possibly double its EPS (earnings per share) for the fiscal year that starts in April 2011.

For over 20 years, Sonic has provided the software used to press and distribute most DVDs, but the company recently began an expensive endeavor into downloadable content, teaming up with Best Buy for the CinemaNow online movie service.

With DivX, the company should be able to expand its market, as DivX tech is already embedded in over 300 million devices worldwide, ranging from smartphones to Blu-ray players and HDTVs.

"Our studio, storefront, and consumer electronics partners agree: they want a clear and efficient path to deliver premium content to their customers," says Dave Habiger, president and CEO of Sonic Solutions. "The combination of Sonic and DivX promises to be the foremost provider of platforms, tools, and technologies for the efficient delivery of premium video entertainment to virtually any type of consumer electronics device. We expect DivX's deep technology and broad deployment in the CE and mobile areas to give us significant leverage as we expand and enhance our RoxioNow premium entertainment platform."

"Sonic and DivX are both market leaders in digital media and share similar visions about a better media future for consumers," adds Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX. "We also share similar cultures and both recognize the tremendous market opportunity that lies ahead for Internet video services. By combining our products, technologies, partnerships, and talented employees, we immediately create a complete end-to-end delivery platform for digital media, with expanded reach and capacity, at a perfect time to capitalize on the market's rapid development. With the acquisition of DivX, Sonic should be extremely well positioned to serve existing customers, attract new partners, and increase our market presence and potential."

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GearLive, citing a source close to Microsoft that is "never wrong," has reported today that the Microsoft Xbox 360 will be the first console to get native Hulu support, with the announcement coming at the E3 event later this month.

Microsoft will show off a subscription-based Hulu, says the source, at E3, which begins on June 14th.

The rest is speculation, but the site says Hulu will be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard, just like Netflix and other Xbox Live services are currently.

The subscription fee is still unknown, but it seems improbable the monthly fee will cost over $9.99.

As speculated in the past, a subscription-based Hulu would include full access to all seasons of TV episodes. Users using the free ad-based Hulu normally only getting the last 5 trailing episodes of any given season.

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AT&T has announced new data plans for their smartphone line, including the iPhone and iPad tablet, which will be less expensive for customers, but will also limit data use.

The cheapest new plan is $15 per month, but will only include 200MB of data. If customers go over the limit, they will be charged $15 extra for every 200MB of data, a very expensive proposition.

A more reasonable plan is $25 per month which gives smartphone, tablet users 2GB of data for the month. For every 1GB over the cap they go, they will be charged $10.

AT&T charges $30 per month for unlimited data plans.

The company says 65 percent of smartphone owners use less than 200MB of data per month, and 98 percent use less than 2GB. For the most part, the only people who need unlimited are iPhone users.

Says Ralph de la Vega, president of AT&T's mobile unit: "We're breaking free from the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' pricing model and making the mobile Internet more affordable to a greater number of people."

The new pricing plans start June 7th.

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When Google first introduced their upcoming Chrome OS last November, the company was very quiet on a timetable for the OS' release.

Today, a top exec at the company has tentatively named the "late fall" as the release window for the highly-anticipated operating system.

The OS will initially be designed to work on laptops and netbooks, says Sundar Pichai, Google's head of the Chrome project: "We will be selective on how we come to market because we want to deliver a great user experience. We're thinking on both the hardware and software levels."

Google is looking to take on Microsoft who controls 90 percent of the PC market with their Windows operating systems. After the announcement, Microsoft struck back saying Google's open-source operating system would fail as software developers would have to create different versions of their applications for all the different brands of Chrome OS.

Pichai says that it simply not true: "Chrome OS is one of the few future operating systems for which there are already millions of applications that work. You don't need to redesign Gmail for it to work on Chrome. Facebook does not need to write a new app for Chrome."

Most, if not all software run in the Chrome OS will be in the cloud.

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Qualcomm has announced it has begun shipping the world's first dual-CPU Snapdragon chips, built for high-end smartphones.

The company says the Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets will run cores up to 1.2GHz.

1 GHz single-core Snapdragon chips can be found in current high-end smartphones such as the Motorola Droid and HTC EVO 4G among others.

"Qualcomm's first-generation Snapdragon chipsets set a new standard for advanced smartphones and smartbook devices, and our second-generation solutions are already shipping in volume," says Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (via Press Release). "We are very excited by the innovation our customers are already showing as they begin designing products based on our dual-core MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets."

The MSM8260 will work on HSPA+ devices and the MSM8660 for "multi-mode HSPA+/CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. B."

Additionally, the chips will include 2D/3D acceleration engines for "Open GLES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1 accelration, 1080p video encode/decode, dedicated low power audio engine, integrated low power GPS, and support for 24-bit WXGA 1280 x 800 resolution displays."

Although not shipping, the company also announced the QSD8672 dual-CPU chip which will have cores running at up to 1.5 GHz.

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