I was wondering when they would do this.  Actually, I thought they should bring the price down to $100.

It shot up on their best selling list.

Do these sales count as HDDVD player sales? 

It depends on who's doing the counting.

A link would've been nice:
http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-HD-DVD-Player/dp/B000JHO4L0/ref=pd_ts_vg_5?ie=UTF8&s=videogames

I read on highdefdigest.com that the blu ray association was supposed to make an announcement in the near future, any confirmation on that?

Well, I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but there is a conference being hosted today by Home Media Magazine.  It's being held to discuss the format war in general, and there are journalists and bloggers from various websites that will be in attendance, including a guy from highdefdigest.com.

Executives from all the major players in the format were supposed to be in attendance, but for some reaons Toshiba, Microsoft, Universal, and Paramount have all declined their invitations, making the conference very tilted towards Blu-Ray.  Representatives from Fox and Disney are supposed to be giving some big speeches, if I recall correctly.

I'm guessing that the guy on High Def Digest is assuming that the Blu side will make a couple of announcements much like they did at the Blu-Ray festival a couple of months ago.

Awesome, would probably make a good christmas gift for some of my friends with 360s and HD TVs.