When the Nintendo Wii was first released, several people took Wii Sports too seriously. The wrist straps to the controllers snapped, and Wiimotes went flying into a plethora of very fragile things. When Nintendo replaced the straps with much stronger ones, it seems that some people went crazy. Now, several reports are coming in that Wii gamers are facing a new problem: tendinitis, due to moving too much. Since gamers get much more physically into the game than they normally would, they try to mimic the actual movement the activity on screen would require. This stresses muscles a lot more than you'd think, especially after a long period of time. Most problems are surfacing in 30-40 year olds, who really don't play too many video games, and suddenly became very involved in Wii gaming. Strangely, it's actually children that warn adults not to get too into gaming.

To help spice up and/or improve physical therapy programs, hospitals are adding Nintendo Wii consoles to the proper offices. The reasons behind putting consoles in a hospital are simple. For one thing, the Nintendo Wii simply makes physical therapy more fun. Renowned doctors throughout America have found that there are other reasons. When a game requires users to make repetitive movements that might otherwise cause them pain, the game distracts from the pain, allowing the patient to do necessary exercises. To help confirm what these doctors already know, and have put into hospitals such as the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital west of Chicago and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the University of Minnesota is performing a study on the effects of the Nintendo Wii to physical therapy. If all goes well, the results will confirm that playing the Nintendo Wii is beneficial to things such as endurance, strength, flexibility, balance, and cardio.

While not nearly as epic as Halo 3, sales-wise, the sequel to one of the most popular Nintendo-based multiplayer games has hit it big. Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, where gamers throw famous characters from classic games at each other, sold 800 thousand copies in the first week of sales. This puts the game at the top of all current game charts, outselling Sony's Devil May Cry 4 by several hundred thousand units. Other than those two games, here are the top five games in Japan right now:

• Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) - 819,647 units
• Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) - 205,390 units
• Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (PS2) - 116,928 units
• Suzumiya Haruhi no Tomadoi (PS2) - 114,335 units
• Wii Fit (Wii) - 73,325 units

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. A branch of Nintendo in Europe went on a limb and patented a lot of uses for the Nintendo Wiimote. The most outstanding, be that a good or bad thing, are posted below.

Nintendo today confirmed earlier rumors by announcing a Cobalt/Black version of the DS Lite, which the comapny describes as "like a black T-shirt with a splash of color." The dark blue color marks the seventh shade the system has received since its inception, and stands as the next logical step on the color wheel following Polar White, Coral Pink, Onyx, Crimson/Black, and the limited-edition Gold and Metallic Rose. The newly painted systems will hit stores on February 10th.

The games industry managed record sales of $17.9bn in 2007, up 43% from $12.5bn in 2006. The Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 all saw their most successful sales figures in December, shifting a total of 1.4m, 1.3m and 800,000 units respectively, meaning that the Xbox 360 has now sold 8.5m units since its launch, the Wii 6.3m and the PS3 2.8m. However, the best selling console over Christmas was actually the Nintendo DS, which achieved sales figures of 2.5m in December. Meanwhile, the most successful game last year was Halo 3, which sold 4.82m copies, with Wii Play in second place on 4.12m and Call of Duty 4 in third on 3.04m.

In a press release published yesterday, Nintendo has announced its Wii and DS software line-up for the first half of 2008. Some of the innovative Wii games in the list include Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Ninja Reflex from Electronic Arts, No More Heroes from Ubisoft, DeBlob from THQ, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed from LucasArts and Okami from Capcom, in addition to compelling Nintendo DS games like FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Rings of Fate from Square Enix, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword from Tecmo and Quick Yoga Training from Ubisoft.

N64 fans will remember GoldEye as being an instant classic, and many gamers have been calling for Nintendo or Microsoft to release it on the Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade respectively, which had always seemed unlikely. However, Rare has recently revealed that the game was within two months of being released on Xbox Live. According to the game's original developer, the port had been in development for several months, and would be identical to the original other than that it would feature an online multiplayer mode and several characters would have to be removed due to licensing issues. Unfortunately, just as it was nearing completion, Microsoft and Nintendo couldn't agree on the financial side of things - apparently whether Nintendo would receive a one-off payment or a cut of the revenues.

A Pennsylvanian company called Copper Innovations Group has filed a lawsuit against Sony and Nintendo for the wireless technology used in their PS3 and Wii consoles respectively. The firm is arguing that the controllers infringe on a "Hand Held Computer Input Apparatus and Method" patent filed in 1996, which covers a method for connecting devices to a system and sorting their inputs by means of hardware identification numbers tied to each transmission. The devices in question are the Wii Remote, the Wii Nunchuk, the Sixaxis controller and the Blu-ray Remote. Copper Innovations is seeking damages plus interest, legal fees and an injunction prohibiting Sony and Nintendo from infringing on the patent.

WiiWare, Nintendo's upcoming downloadable games service, will launch in March, according to Engine Software. The company is preparing Project Bang, a casual game aiming to take advantage of the Wii remote, for one and two players. "Nintendo's WiiWare service is a new downloadable game content service that is scheduled to be launched in March 2008," stated Engine Software.
Engine is currently working on DS projects Dragon Quest for PlayLogic and GoPets: Vacation Island for Konami. "We are very excited about our first game for the WiiWare service," commented Ruud van de Moosdyk, VP of development at Engine. WiiWare (Wii Software in Europe) was unveiled by Nintendo in June last year, and intends to offer developers a chance to produce small budget titles for digital download, much like Sony's PSN service and Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade.

This isn't an amazing new hardware release at CES I'm afraid, just an interesting story about the Wii. According to a "royal insider," the Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, has discovered the Wii to be quite an entertaining console. Apparently Prince William received the console from his girlfriend for Christmas, and when the Queen saw her grandson playing on it she decided it might be fun to have a go herself. The anonymous royal insider said the following:

When she saw William playing a game after lunch at Sandringham she thought the Nintendo looked tremendous fun and begged to join in. His only difficulty now is prising it away from the Queen's clutches. She showed all the signs of becoming a Nintendo addict.

Nintendo's marketing strategy of trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible certainly seems to be working!

Though Nintendo will eventually allow Wii owners to download DS demos and transfer them to the portable system, those plans do not include whole games, as was indicated earlier this week. "In the future, the Nintendo DS will be able to receive demo versions of some DS games from Wii, but not the entire game," a Nintendo of America has told Gamasutra. "The demo will be erased once the Nintendo DS is turned off," the company continued, allaying any hopes of a potential storage device to store and execute multiple demos.

Nintendo DS owners will eventually be able to download both demos and whole games from the Wii, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime informed The New York Times. The games and demos will presumably be downloaded through the online Wii Shop Channel and then transferred to the portable via the wireless capabilities of both systems. At present, the Nintendo DS can only hold one demo at a time in its internal memory. Once downloaded, users cannot power off the system or run any other software without losing the demo.

For some New Year's Eve gaming action, the Wii Shop Channel offers three new classic game additions. BUBBLE BOBBLE (NES, 1-2 players) for 500 Wii points ($5), Light Crusader (Genesis, 1 player) for 800 Wii points ($8) and TOP HUNTER (NEOGEO, 1-2 players) for 900 Wii points ($9) will go live at 9 a.m. Pacific time on the Wii Shop Channel. Full game descriptions, are available here.

The thousands of people who were lucky enough to unwrap a new Nintendo Wii this holiday season as well as all previous owners will be happy to learn that their Wii can now wirelessly stream music from personal online collections stored at MP3Tunes. All you have to do is have a working Wii console of course and follow the steps writen here. After a few minutes and 500 Wii points ($5) spent you'll have an online music locker with unlimited space, ready to play music from your Wii console. Music stored in MP3tunes Music Lockers can also be played on the Sony PlayStation 3, Windows Mobile devices, a variety of Internet radios and more, thanks to the MP3tunes open API (Application Programming Interface). "The Wii is the latest popular gaming device that, with MP3tunes' technology, actually becomes a home stereo system," commented Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3tunes.

Nintendo is proud to claim the crown of fastest-selling consoles this November, and they can't seem to keep a good stock in stores, creating a huge demand for the tiny white consoles. However, new research may stop that trend cold. Some pest control professionals discovered something uncanny regarding the Wii: it attracts cockroaches "better than a four-week old pizza." Of course, this sounds absolutely preposterous, considering that the cockroaches do not have the most attuned hearing glands. However, the Wii is known to put out "air and ground vibrations", which in turn suck the cockroaches out of hiding just like that aforementioned four-week old pizza. This research has yet to be confirmed by anyone other than the independent laboratory that came to this conclusion.

With the shortage of Wii consoles this Christmas, many people are struggling to find Nintendo's latest console in any stores, so GameStop and Nintendo have decided to offer a consolation to buyers in the form of a rain check program. The rain checks will be available for the console's normal price of $249.99 on December 20th and 21st and will entitle buyers to get a Wii before 29th January, which could act as a belated Christmas present. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said that the company expects this to be "a great way for consumers who desperately want a Wii to have something to put under the tree," adding that "many tens of thousands of rain checks" will be available. Nintendo is also working with other retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy to push out its inventory from the supply chain to shelves as quickly as possible before Christmas.

According to MDB Capital Group's senior analyst James Lin, the shortage of Wii consoles could be costing Nintendo as much as $1.3bn in lost sales, saying that the volume of unsatisfied demand is "staggering" and that "Nintendo is leaving $1.3bn on the table" by failing to produce enough units. He also claimed that the company could "easily sell double what they're selling".

However, Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, has responded to criticism that the company is artifially limiting supply by saying that "Anyone who suggests that a shortage is good for business really doesn't understand business." Nintendo has already had to pull some Wii adverts after struggling to cope with the Christmas demand for its console, and Reg Hardware reckons that the best place for Europeans to get hold of a Wii at the moment is France, where the console sells for €210 (£150 or $300).

This fun piece of trivia does more than make you the life of the party when playing "trivial pursuit". It indicates just how popular the Nintendo DS really is. Nintendo claims that they have sold over six million Nintendo DS units in America this year, citing internal estimates. There also seems to be no slowdown of sales in sight. The Nintendo DS is extremely popular to both the casual and hardcore gamer, and Nintendo fully intends to propel that momentum into 2008.

To further increase your trivial pursuit scores, these recent sales figures indicate that the sale of a Nintendo DS happens more than...

• A bad car accident (those happen once every 14 seconds)
• A man making a sexual advance on a woman (that happens once every seven seconds)
• Two or more script kiddies having a "flame war" on internet message boards over the previously mentioned console (which happens once every six seconds).

Nintendo has decided to pull some of its adverts for the Wii after finding that the Christmas demand for the console is already too high for the company to cope with. In the UK, Nintendo has decided to replace the planned advertising campaign for the Wii with more Nintendo DS adverts, saying:

We have been running the campaign all year round, but we want to take a responsible stance this Christmas and not fuel demand.

This news comes following numerous shortages of the console despite the fact that Nintendo has increased its production to 1.8 million units per month. Nintendo also commented that the adverts it was planning for the Christmas build-up are not seasonally themed, so it should be able to use them during the start of 2008 instead.

Developed by Dai Nippon Printing and AM3, the product called DSvision will appear much like any normal Nintendo DS game, except that on its side is a slot to accept a MicroSD card. Users of the product will be able to utilize a download service to load TV shows, comics and books for viewing on the Nintendo DS. The DSvision will come packed with the Nintendo DS cartridge, 512MB MicroSD and a MicroSD-to-USB adapter for 3,980 yen ($36). Users will use the adapter to load media on using a PC when the program launches in March 2008, though details on pricing for the download service are not clear. The DSvision is fully legal and exclusively licensed by Nintendo.

The Nintendo DS Lite has officially earned a place among the United Kingdom's greatest consoles: in one week, it sold more units than any other console in the past. An incredible 191,000 units were sold last week, beating the previous champion, the Sony PlayStation Portable, by 3,000 units (188,000). Mario Party DS may have contributed to the record-breaking sales.

The latest edition of Greenpeace's quarterly Guide to Greener Electronics published yesterday, revealed that Nintendo, Microsoft and Philips completely fail to show any environmental credentials when it comes to e-waste. The Guide ranks companies according to their policies and practices on toxic chemicals and takeback. Along with mobile phone and personal computer companies, the latest report adds the biggest makers of TVs and games consoles. Old TVs are a large part of e-waste and the games console market is one of the fastest growing in consumer electronics according to Greenpeace.

Nintendo has the dubious honour of being the first company to score 0/10 in the guide. Microsoft did little better, scoring only 2.7. Philips is the lowest TV-maker scoring only 2.

Nintendo has launched a new Wii channel called Minna no Nintendo (translated, Everybody's Nintendo), which allows gamers to check out videos and interviews of Nintendo games for various systems as well as send game demos to Nintendo DS systems via local Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, it's only available in Japan so far. Also available is a feedback service allowing gamers to rate games they own in various categories. Areas of judgment include whether each game is well suited to single- or multiplayer play, its appropriateness for casual or hardcore audiences, its relative difficulty level, and overall quality.

Despite some PlayStation3 success in Japan, the Nintendo Wii is selling extraordinarily strong all around the world. While Nintendo hasn't been able to keep up with Wii demand since the console was released, they continue to make insane amounts of profit. After selling 200,000 units in Australia in just 50 weeks, analysts in the country declared that the Wii is the fastest selling console to ever hit Australia. Even the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, which both were met with extreme fanfare, took at least 55 weeks to reach the 200,000 mark in Australia. Sony refuses to let Nintendo take this title without a fight, as their PlayStation2 continues trucking along to its seventh birthday. Sony announced that they will continue to sell the PS2 throughout all of 2008, and possibly 2009. It is priced competitively, at $199AUD, for Christmas. Microsoft also is working hard to compete with Wii sales, by pricing the Xbox360 at the same price as the Wii ($399AUD). Time will tell if the Wii really is just a fad/gimmick, or if it really has something going for it.