Walmart and Kmart are enticing consumers to get a jump on their holiday shopping by holding a series of "Black Friday-style" sales well before the Friday after Thanksgiving. The price cuts go into effect tomorrow, Saturday, November 8th. Walmart is offering up a 15.4-inch Compaq CQ-139WM laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive for only $298. They are also selling a PlayStation 2 bundled with a $30 Walmart gift card for $129 and a PlayStation 3 bundled with a $100 gift card for $399.

Over at Kmart, they are offering up a 32-inch Sylvania LCD HDTV for $439.99 and starting on Sunday, Wii Fit will be available for just $89.99, balance board included. Get shopping!

An independent research study has issued their results regarding the attachment rates for each video game console. An attachment rate is taken to be the amount of games sold per console per person. After 23 months on the market, the PS3 and Wii are virtually tied, with 5.3 and 5.5 games sold per system, respectively. During that same time, the Xbox 360 was hanging high at 6.6 games sold per system.

The Xbox 360 does have the benefit of being the first kid on the block, being released a good year before the other two. However, they’ve always had an excellent attachment rate. Whereas, a good portion of Nintendo Wii owners may have never bought anything besides the pack-in Wii Sports, which would bring down their number considerably.

Sony Computer Entertainment America recently filed for a patent detailing a break-apart DualShock 3 controller that recognizes 3D inputs. Rumors had been swirling since June that the company was working on something of this kind, to combat the success of the Wii and their infrared-enabled remote control. The patent dictates that the gamepad would consist of two connectable pieces that would each utilize an "ultrasonic tracking system." The controllers would link up to a game console or peripheral of some kind that has yet to be patented. The tech at play here also seems to differ significantly from the Wii so a lawsuit should not be a problem. Obviously, no word on a release date or even exactly what it is yet.

Sony’s UK boss has announced that their $399.99 80GB PlayStation 3 will avoid a price cut unti late 2009. Ray Maguire spoke at the Gamer 3.0 conference this week in London and denounced rumors of a price drop, saying that he "has a business to run" and shareholders to please. Maguire noted that the console would not be receiving a price drop this holiday season, stating that next year would be a safe bet for the reduction. Analysts indicate that this could be due to this being the first holiday season with Blu-Ray at the forefront of DVD technology.

Sony boasts that after the firmware 2.5 update, the PlayStation 3 internet browser blows away Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. They admit that they are still slower than Google’s Chrome, but the claim is definitely impressive, or sad depending on how you look at it.

The update also bring Flash and Javascript to the console’s browser.