Commander Shepard has never looked this good

HyperChild just recently showcased the final sculpt for their upcoming Mass Effect Commander Shepard statue which not only comes with an $89 price tag, but comes chalk full of Mass Effect gaming cred. The statue (seen in the gallery below) is around eight inches tall, is limited to 2,500 pieces and will be available the second quarter of 2008 exclusively through online retailer HighDome. And with all this action figure talk lately, we must say this Commander Shepard statue is one of the best sculpts we've seen yet. But we guess that's why it carries an $89 commitment.

Wal-Mart goes Blu-Ray Exclusive

We could literally copy and paste the same news we've been reporting all week and just change the company names and this news story would make perfect sense. In a move that shocked no one, Wal-Mart has announced that they are exclusively backing Blu-Ray in the next generation optical disc war according to Reuters. Following nearly every major studio, Netflix, and Blockbuster retail locations, Wal-Mart is one of the last companies to choose a side and it's possible that their weight in the market may officially call this war off. When contacted, a Wal-Mart representative also told Joystiq that the company would "exclusively carry blu-ray players," leaving us to wonder about the fate of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on. While Joystiq's Alexander Sliwinski said no confirmation has been made, cold calls made to 10 different Wal-Mart locations yielded zero no luck finding the HD add-on to our favorite machine.

Ziff-Davis survey hints at MS handheld

Ziff-Davis media, the company behind the 1UP Network website and it's related print publications, recently distributed a survey to subscribers of their various brands (1UP, EGM and Games for Windows Magazine). Question 8 of the survey asked whether or not the subscriber was interested in an Xbox handheld gaming device, asking them to rate it from Very Likely to Not at All and Don't Know for the indecisive bunch.

WRUP: pre-GDC jitters edition

This is it folks, the final edition of WRUP before GDC 08. We've spent the last several weeks making appointments, scheduling booth visits, and getting our nails done in preparation (we here John Schappert is a sucker for pretty nails). We'll be on hand to cover the latest and greatest happenings in San Francisco this year, so keep your eye on X3F and Joystiq for all the coverage you can stomach. In the meantime, we ask you that one sacred question: what will you be playing this weekend?