Sony

As deserted malls and department stores struggle to court cash-short consumers with steep discounts this holiday season, a similar and even more ferocious price war is being waged online.

Internet retailers, trying to navigate what is shaping up to be the first truly dreary holiday shopping season on the Web, are engaging in price-cutting and discounting so aggressive it threatens their profit margins and, in some cases, their survival.

Microsoft launched its New Xbox Experience on Wednesday, expanding the existing service to compete with Sony in turning the video-game console into an entertainment hub.

Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, said the New Xbox Experience is the future for home entertainment. "It's on-demand, it's high-definition, it's always social, it's all in one place," he said.

A 'Personal Game Room'

The economy may be slowing, but the video-game industry seems to be wearing its bulletproof vest -- with the notable exception of Sony.

According to the NPD Group, sales of U.S. video games and hardware rose 18 percent from the year-ago period. Specifically, hardware sales were up five percent to $494.7 million.

"In the U.S., third-quarter total industry unit sales grew eight percent versus 2007, even as the economy showed accelerating signs of recession," said Anita Frazier, an NPD analyst.

Microsoft is breathing new life into its Xbox Live online video game network.

When the network's 14 million members log in on Nov. 19, they'll automatically get a new, more user-friendly, 3-D version of the Xbox Live software.

They'll find customizable animated avatars, similar to the Mii characters on the Nintendo Wii; an iPod-type display style that lets you flip through pages of content as you would sort through album covers; and instant viewing of movie rental downloads from Netflix.

I didn't expect much from games on the iPhone. I had visions of casual games, perhaps a fancy take on solitaire or a version of poker that takes advantage of the handset's touchscreen. Surely not a true mobile gaming experience.

The latest flurry of turnaround plans for Motorola is being met with about as much enthusiasm as previous attempts to revive the company's foundering mobile-phone business: not much.

Sony and three major PC makers are recalling 100,000 laptop batteries in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Lithium-Ion batteries used in about 35,000 Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Dell notebook computers -- as well as an additional 65,000 units sold worldwide -- are defective. Specifically, these Lithium-Ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers.

Toshiba, Japan's largest chip maker, reported a quarterly loss on Wednesday after the global economic slowdown aggravated a glut in the market for chips used to store data in consumer electronics.

The net loss was yen26.8 billion, or about $275 million, in the three months that ended Sept. 30, compared with a yen25 billion profit a year earlier, the company said. Sales fell 7 percent to yen1.88 trillion.

Toshiba joins Samsung Electronics and Sony among electronics makers reporting lower earnings this month.

A month after irking part of the independent recording community by launching its online music service mostly with major labels, MySpace Music has made a deal to almost double the amount of indie tunes available through the service.

In an agreement announced Thursday, the San Francisco-based Independent Online Distribution Alliance -- a digital distributor of tunes for several thousand labels -- will make its library of more than 1 million tracks available through MySpace Music.