According to Gameinformer.com, Microsoft has stated that there will not be a new Xbox going out their doors anytime soon. As stated by David Hufford, senior director of Xbox product management, ”the Xbox was designed for a long life, and I don’t even know if we’re at the midpoint yet.” He continues on stating,”I think it’s important to say that the Xbox 360 is the console of the long future for us. There is no need to launch a new console, because we’re able to give this console new life either with software upgrades or hardware upgrades like Project Natal.”

With Project Natal coming out this holiday season, and many more great games being released in the 2010 year, it helps to know that there is no planned system coming out soon. Gamers can shop for games without worrying of them quickly being outdated.

Hufford also stated that as far as the price for the Xbox 360 goes, they are happy where it is at.

With no new system being released, it is safe to say that you can shop for a 360 without any worries of not having the latest and greatest thing.

Microsoft Office General Manager, Rachel Bondi, has officially announced the official Office 2010 pricing.

Here are the prices:

• Professional - $499 boxed, $349 for product key
• Professional Academic - $99 boxed only
• Home and Student - $149 boxed, $119 for product key
• Home and Business - $279 boxed, $199 for product key

Office Home and Student will also be available in a 3 license Family Pack, though the price is not listed. The Professional version will include Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, Publisher 2010, Access 2010, and premium technical support. The Home and Student version will contain Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, and OneNote 2010. The Home and Business edition will just add Outlook on top of the Home and Student offering, and will be licensed for business use. The Professional Academic version will only be available from campus bookstores and authorized academic resellers. All editions will also come with the Office Web Apps that users have been eagerly awaiting.

Below are the editions in more detail:

TechCrunch reports that Google has begun testing a new Android device with their employees. The new device is said not to be just another Android-based phone, but the official Google Phone that has been rumored for some time. From TechCrunch:

Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

This new phone is said to be a no-compromises version of an Android phone and has been reported to include these details/features:

- Sold as an unlocked GSM phone, so in the U.S. T-Mobile and possibly AT&T
- Android 2.1
- Uses Snapdragon chip and is “really, really fast”
- High resolution OLED screen
- Thinner than iPhone
- Two mics, one on the back to reduce background noise
- “Weirdly” large camera
- Touchscreen keyboard
- Voice to text for dictation

The Google Phone is said to be due for release in January 2010. The Snapdragon chip appears to be based on the same generation of ARM processor as the iPhone 3GS, though could be running at a higher clock speed. Apple, of course, is rumored to be working on their next generation iPhone, though it is not expected for release until mid-year.

A new report from OTR Global indicates that Apple is planning on manufacturing new hybrid iPhones that will support both Verizon’s CDMA2000 network as well as the UMTS 3G network. Only the UMTS network is supported by the current version of the iPhone and is used by AT&T and much of the rest of the world.

Qualcomm’s new hybrid CDMA/WCDMA chip offers the potential for a single, global iPhone that users can take to any major carrier, solving the network fractionalization problem. It also solves other issues that had served as roadblocks, including the issue of user confusion that would result from Apple selling separate CDMA and GSM/UMTS versions of the iPhone.

The reason behind building in such support would seem primarily to extend the iPhone’s compatibility with Verizon in the U.S. The move is expected to take place by the 3rd quarter of 2010. Conveniently, AT&T’s exclusivity contract with Apple is believed to expire in mid 2010.