Obviously realizing that there is some trouble afoot, Microsoft on Thursday announced price cuts on its most expensive versions of Vista and said those discounts will range from 20 percent to 48 percent. Ironically, those discounts are designed to coincide with the release of Vista Service Pack 1, which according to Microsoft, will usher in a slew of security fixes and improvements that should make the Vista experience much better. I’m still skeptical that Vista will ever truly get off the ground, and it looks like Microsoft is starting to wake up and smell the rotten eggs.

In other news, Activision has said that there may be a massively multiplayer online Call of Duty headed our way. In order to compete with WoW however, Bobby Kotick has said they may have to invest nearly a billion dollars. Activision bought Blizzard a little while ago so we can see why this might be a good move. They say that it was the obvious next progression in the series but, personally, I think that they are starting to run out of ideas, seeing as how saturated the war-based FPS market is. It looks like they are looking at being ad-supported, which I really hope will cancel out the monthly fee, as that is the only reason I haven’t bought World of Warcraft. There are plans for in-game ads and sponsored tournaments, and if this does ever get out of the planning stages, I’m sure we can expect a great game.

Rumors, and let me emphasize rumors, have said that we can expect a 3G iPhone around June. That is also the rumored time of Apple’s big press event, WWDC, and when iPhone firmware 2.0 should be shipping. If Apple could get their act together and actually do this, I think they would absolutely dominate the market with the now confirmed third-party apps.

The rumors have been going for a while now since HD-DVD kicked the bucket, but some amount of credibility has now reared its head. According to Stan Glasgow, the president of Sony Electronics US, Sony is “in talks with console rival Microsoft about offering a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360.” Sony is also considering licensing it’s HD format to Apple, who has so far managed to stay out of the format war. No release dates or even press conferences were mentioned, but you can expect some amount of news in the future.