So here’s how it went down. Some time in February, Janco Partners’ Mike Hickey predicted, among other things that did not come true, that Sony would move to release a Blu-ray-less PS3 in order to cut cost. Those of us who have come to own and extensively use PS3′s already knew that Sony would never do anything of the sort.

“That would pretty much destroy the PS3′s backbone, our games were built on Blu-ray,” Kim Nguyen, Sony marketing manager said. “Quote that: Blu-ray will always be part of PS3.”

Case closed.

Unless it wasn’t a PS3.

While it’s highly unlikely that Sony was playing with its words in this fashion, they have always referred to the Playstation Network (PSN) as their fourth platform, in addition to the PS2, PSP, and PS3. What if by platform, they meant console? Would an actual, physical console designed specifically to play the current and future offerings on PSN be such a bad idea?

Here’s the other one. It’s pretty interesting the type of videos that have come out of games over the past several years, from Leroy Jenkins to Mario speed runs and now these type of performance deals.

I consider myself a performance gamer as well, if there is such a thing. For example, when I had people watching me play Bioshock, I would play differently. More deliberately moving, and generally trying to play in a way that would be most exciting for the people sitting around me, without giving them all motion sickness. Kind of like a camera man for a movie. Anyone else do this? Is gaming, perhaps, a new medium for performance art as well?

Dang coupons…

In the later years of E3 proper, I used to make these 40+ game lists of games I was hyped for in the upcoming holiday season. Not wanting to appear too flippant in the face of economic hardships, I didn’t do that this year, but there’s still a lot of games I am really looking forward to playing in the next couple months.

LittleBigPlanet, if you’ve been following the blog, is a must-buy. Resistance 2 with its 60 player competitive and 8 player co-op also has my interest, and I’ve mentioned the good deal I got on the new official PS3 headset coming with SOCOM Confrontation. So that’s three, and pretty much what I had settled upon, despite my burning desire to play Fable II, Gears of War 2, Saint’s Row 2, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, Call of Duty: World at War, De Blob, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Rise of the Argonauts, Dead Space, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Mirror’s Edge, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Left 4 Dead, Sonic Unleashed (maybe), and Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Sad… So many games, so little funding.

But the Motorstorm coupon I received in the mail reminded me of some things that I seem to forget every year about buying holiday release games. So here’s some tips on getting the most out of your gaming budget. Click on!