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Sony announced that it has sold 80 million PlayStation 3 consoles since it launched almost exactly seven years ago.

The 80 million figure is a sell-in figure, meaning its the number of consoles Sony has shipped to retailers. It is also the same figure as was revealed by Microsoft for life-time sales of the Xbox 360 console, which has been on the market a year longer than the PS3.

The PS3 system continues to gain strong support from 3rd party developers and publishers worldwide with the cumulative number of software titles released for the PS3 system reaching 4,332 worldwide, as of September 30, 2013.

As it heads into the holiday season for the seventh time, the PS3 will witness the release of Gran Turismo 6, from the popular series that has sold 70 million copies worldwide.

The launch of the PS3 also saw the launch of the PlayStation Network (PSN), which not claims more than 150 million cumulative registered accounts. The PlayStation Store offers a global catalogue of more than 222,000 digital content options, including 72,000 game content.

Sony's next generation console, the PlayStation 4, launches in North America next Friday.

Dish Network has announced that all Blockbuster retail stores are to close by January 2014, and the Blockbuster By Mail service is being axed too.

After rescuing Blockbuster in 2011 by buying it for $320 million, Dish has found itself closing store after store and laying off employees. At this point, there are only around 300 Blockbuster stores left in the United States, but they too will close down by January.

"This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment," said Joseph P. Clayton, DISH president and chief executive officer.

"Despite our closing of the physical distribution elements of the business, we continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand, and we expect to leverage that brand as we continue to expand our digital offerings."

Additionally, the Blockbuster By Mail service that originally was setup to challenge Netflix' DVD mail service will cease operations mid-December.

The Blockbuster brand will live on however with Dish retaining its licensing rights. The Blockbuster @Home service will continue to be offered to Dish subscribers.

Warner Bros. has started the next Humble Bundle pack, offering a few notable games including Batman for whatever you feel like donating.

If you donate over $1, you get access to Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and F.E.A.R. 3 and Lord of the Rings: War in the North.

Paying over $4.63 gets you Scribblenauts Unlimited and the sequel to Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City Game of the Year Edition.

As with all Humble Bundles, you get to choose how your donation goes, split between Humble Bundle, the creator of the games and a charity, in this case 'We Can Be Heroes.'

Check the bundle here.

Samsung completed their annual analyst day in South Korea today, and there was certainly some interesting news to be had.

The company confirmed that it is now working on its own application processor. Rather than licensing from ARM and then moving those cores into their own chips, the Exynos line, the company will now design their own. Qualcomm, with its Krait cores (Snapdragon chips) and Apple do the same.

In addition, Samsung seems to be really stepping up their display features. In 2014, the company will have AMOLED panels with a massive 560 ppi. By 2015, the displays will have 3840 x 2160 UltraHD resolutions.

Samsung made it clear that they are trying to innovate in the areas of display, memory and processing, as the high-end smartphone market has likely peaked for the time being.

Some reviewers of the PS4 version of Call of Duty: Ghosts have noted framerate issues at certain points in the game.

Infinity Ward revealed last week that the Xbox One version of Call of Duty: Ghosts would render at 720p, and be upscaled to 1080p for video output by the console. The developer later explained that the problem arose when trying to keep a consistent 60fps framerate. The perception was that the Xbox One, for whatever reason, was incapable of rendering the game at 1080p when its nemesis - the PS4 - was.

However, numerous reviewers are noting problems with the framerate on the PS4 too. "The PlayStation 4 version... has noticeable technical issues, sometimes slowing to a crawl, particularly during set-piece moments with multiple effects," reports Joystiq in a review.

"Frame rate hitches happen throughout the campaign on PlayStation 4 and, in a series known for its Hollywood-inspired bombast, it detracted from the experience."

Now Gamer also reported issues with the multiplayer mode. "It's not something we've seen in any Call of Duty multiplayer before, so it stood out as particularly odd and unfortunate, given the frame-rate stutter is significant enough to let targets escape to safety or see you killed during the general mayhem."

Ouya has announced today that the console's games store now has over 500 games available.

The Android-powered system now has 507 games, according to an internal ticker on the website.

All Ouya games are free to download and try, and the milestone was hit four months after the company's hardware launch in June.

A few of the major games include Sonic the Hedgehog, AVP: Evolution, Final Fantasy III and soon, the blockbuster hit 'The Walking Dead' episodic series.

Ouya has never disclosed hardware sales.

The Silk Road appears to be back online and being run by some of those involved in running it before it was shut down by the FBI last month.

The administrator of the revived Silk Road is using the handle Dread Pirate Roberts, which is the handle the Feds allege was used by 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht who has been charged with running the service. Ulbricht is denying the charges.

There were some suggestions that the new Silk Road could be a scam, but Ken Westin, a researcher with security firm TripWire, said the site looks genuine. "It appears to be run by the same folks that were running it before," he said.

"They are not going to be able to kill it. It is going to be a game of cat and mouse with the FBI."

We checked to see if the site was online and were greeted with an edited law enforcement seizure notice that crossed out "been seized" and also added a stamp that reads "This site has risen again." A login prompt appears over the image when you place the pointer on it.

According to a new Reuters report, Microsoft has narrowed down its list of candidates for their CEO position being vacated by longtime exec Steve Ballmer.

Besides external candidates, there are a few internal candidates, as well, including Microsoft's business development boss Tony Bates (former CEO of Skype) and Satya Nadella, the head of cloud and enterprise.

The list had started at about 40 names and has been pruned, say the sources, but the process will still take a few more months. Ballmer announced his retirement in August, giving a twelve months or less timeframe.

A few of the most speculated about names are Ford's Alan Mulally and Computer Sciences' Mike Lawrie, both of which are known as "turnaround experts" and have certainly done so for their respective companies. Ford called the report speculation.

Stephen Elop, who left Microsoft to run Nokia into the ground before returning after Microsoft acquired the company, is also up for the position.

Microsoft is warning users of some of its Microsoft Office software that a zero-day flaw is being exploited in the wild by attackers.

The flaw affects Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2007 on all Windows platforms, and Microsoft Office 2010 on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

Microsoft was made aware of attacks using a zero-day flaw in its software mostly in the Middle East and South Asia regions. It involves a specially-crafted Word document that, when opened, would exploit the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on the system.

"An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights," Microsoft said in a security advisory, issued yesterday.

Microsoft has issued a temporary work around in the form of a "Fix It" download that you can get at support.microsoft.com.

Activision Blizzard has revealed that Call of Duty: Ghosts has surpassed $1 billion in sales to retailers already.

That's not to be confused with direct sales at retail to customers, which haven't been announced yet. Instead, "sell-in" sales are the number of copies shipped by the publisher to retailers. Call of Duty: Ghosts has launched for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (PS3), Wii U and on PC already. It is available to buy for the PS4 already but the console won't go on sale until November 15, and it's also an Xbox One launch title.

Its predecessor in the mega-pupular series, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, hit $500 million in retail sales on the first day, and proceeded to surpass $1 billion in 15 days. It held that record until September 2013, when Grand Theft Auto V generated $800 million in sales by the end of its first day on the market, and crossed $1 billion in three days.

How "Ghosts" will fare in sales through retail channels remains to be seen, but Infinity Ward was expecting sales to be slower initially as some gamers will wait until they buy an Xbox One or a PlayStation 4 before they pick up a copy.

Apple has given details about the number of information requests it has received from law enforcement agencies in the United States for the first six months of 2013.

Similar figures were already published by Yahoo and Facebook. They give an idea of the amount of requests a web giant receives for information on accounts/users from authorities, but they are short on specific numbers due to government-enforced restrictions.

Apple claims it received between 1000 and 2000 information requests from U.S agencies between January and June of this year (they can only reveal figures in ranges of 1000). Those requests affected between 2000 and 3000 accounts. The amount of times Apple complied with requests ranged from 0-1000 (yes, vague).

More specific numbers were given for device information requests though. In the 6 month period, Apple received device info requests 3,542 times, affecting 8,605 devices. Apple complied with 3,110 of the requests. Most of these requests involve lost or stolen devices.

Here is Apple's report (PDF): 131105reportongovernmentinforequests2.pdf

According to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the upcoming launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will be good for the struggling gaming giant.

The new launch will generate buzz for the entire industry, which could overlap to the Wii U.

"I think the launch of other video game systems is also good for us because they energize the video game industry as a whole," Iwata added. "Though there are some who take the view that intensified competition means overseas competition will be tough for Nintendo, no matter how Nintendo does domestically, I do not necessarily see it that way. This year, what Nintendo is promoting is, conversely, to stand out in the game industry for individuality. I believe we have become a unique value."

In order to boost interest in the Wii U, Nintendo will also introduce a whole slate of new family-friendly games. "We have an offering of software for the end of this calendar year that encourages family fun at home," Iwata added, such as Super Mario 3D World, Wii Party U, Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, Wii Sports Club, and Wii Fit U.

T-Mobile, which recently moved away from contracts and began innovating in the industry that has been stagnant for years, has added over 1 million new customers in the last quarter, beating out larger rivals Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

The carrier ended the period with 45 million customers, as growth has been accelerating. "Our momentum is great and we have confidence that we can continue to deliver sustainable and profitable growth," CEO John Legere said in a statement.

Revenue jumped 37 percent to $6.69 billion, above estimates. The turnaround is thanks to T-Mobile's "Uncarrier" initiative, which included a move to no contracts, free international roaming, unlimited data (with some throttling after certain points), cheaper service and an industry-first early upgrade program for new devices.

In the same quarter, Sprint lost 313,000 customers, AT&T admitted all of its feature phone customers were jumping ship and Verizon's growth slowed.

T-Mobile says now it expects to see 1.8 million new customers for the year, up from their original projection of 1.2 million.

According to a teardown by research firm IHS, Apple has managed to build its new iPad Air with even less cost than previous models.

The base model device costs $274 to build, and Apple sells the tablet for $499.

As expected, the Retina display is the most costly component, clocking in at $90. The multitouch adds another $43, for a total of $133 for the display.

Overall, despite getting thinner and lighter and more powerful, the device is $42 cheaper to produce than the third-generation iPad base model.

Surprisingly, the new 64-bit A7 processor cost only $18, a full $5 cheaper than last years A-series processor.

HTC has announced it will begin selling low-cost smartphones and slash costs significantly in order to try to save the company.

The company also warned that it expects revenue to be 15 percent lower than last quarter, well below analyst expectations.

In the Q3, the company had its first ever quarterly loss, but the company expects to eke out a tiny profit for the Q4. After racing to 11 percent global market share in 2011, the company now controls about 2.5 percent share.

To help remain profitable, the company says it will slash expenses by 24 percent quarter-over-quarter. Additionally, the company is looking into selling lower-cost handsets: "We're looking at broader products in this quarter...we aim for higher volume into 2014 that will give better profitability."

HTC had previously tried to break into the high-end smartphone market, specifically in China, to little success.