It's now official, Toshiba has thrown in the towel. This AP story via Yahoo reports that Toshiba has finally and officially admitted defeat in the high-def disk wars, stating it will no longer make any more HD-DVD players. At a press conference in Tokyo earlier today, Toshiba execs admitted that Warner Bros.' decision to go exclusive with HD-DVD's rival tech Blu-Ray was the main reason for Toshiba's decision, saying ""If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win." It's currently unknown what the two HD-DVD exclusive movie studios, Universal and Paramount (which also includes Dreamworks Animation) will do now that Toshiba has bowed out of the HD-DVD business.

So, it's not a surprise that Universal Studios (one of only two movie studios that were HD-DVD exclusive) has officially announced that it will abandon its support for the now dead high-def format now that Toshiba has ended its support. Universal will now release movies in the Blu-Ray format. There's no word on when the first Blu-Ray Universal movies will be released nor if owners of the HD-DVD versions will get any kind of discount to move to Blu-Ray.