So, the much anticipated, awaited and already hacked Nintendo Dsi has been released in Japan this Saturday. Nintendo, being a wary company (even in the Motherland) has only thrown on the market a number of 200.000 units, just to see how it goes.

Well, it went extremely well, it seems, all the handhelds have been sold in a heartbeat. Just like a pantsu sale in Akihabara would go, actually. According to various websites that reviewed the product, both the image editing software and the browsing are a bit meh (which, eventually, will be fixed through updates, we hope), but both these features have great potential when it comes to future video games. How, we shall wait and see.


To fully make us wet in the pants, Nintendo also announced that it will launch a set of downloadable WarioWare games to fully demonstrate the console's capabilities in the near future. Sadly, both the American and European customers will have to wait for a regional release, since, you know, Japan is the only thing that matters.

I will be eagerly awaiting my pink Nintendo Dsi next summer, so I can chase little girls with it in the bus station. Thanks, Slashdot

A very interesting move from Nintendo – the fellows of Kotaku just received a press release wich states that the Japanese company will be kindly skipping Leipzig’s Game Convention this year. The reasons are plenty – and not that, God forbid, GC would somehow totally suck ass, but because, well, “the country where the sun shines” (to quote an illiterate and extremely retarded ex-colleague of mine, who, sadly, is not dead yet) already hosts too many similar events that Nintendo has attended so far. And will probably do so even more, as the time casually passes by.

And the results, being the positive results they are, convinced Nintendo to skip this year’s most awesome European gaming gathering. So, after E3, they will stick their heads back in their asses and return to Japan and their daily routine, because:
1. Japanese girls are the best.
2. Japanese girls look the youngest.
3. Local legislation is many times tolerant regarding doing various things to Japanese girls.
4. Akihabara.

This decision should only last one year though.

Sure enough, Nintendo was among those who tried to leave their mark on this week's GDC 2008 event in San Francisco. That's not to say they actually succeeded, but at least they announced / confirmed a new round of release dates for some of their upcoming products - namely WiiWare, Wii Fit and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

First come, first served is Super Smash Bros. Brawl, set to kick into retail action on March 9. I don't think this Wii fighting game needs any more introduction, but just in case I'm wrong, these few trailers should enlighten you in no time.

Next, on May 12, comes WiiWare - the new game download service that got us (or at least myself) marginally excited. One of the early games developed for WiiWare we already mentioned in our previous news about LostWinds; another notable one will be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King by Square Enix; and a new episodic game series from Telltale is also on its way.

Finally, Wii Fit will be released on May 19, complete with a "weight-and-motion-sensing Wii Balance Board" which may or may not prove useful for other kinds of games. Like... skiing? Just a thought.


Wii jokes just ain't what they used to be...

"Enough is enough", says Nintendo, while drenching its sorrows into a delightful bottle of first-class alcohol. After summing up some numbers, the guys from the American subsidiary managed to come up with financial losses that nets the piracy phenomenon no less than 975 million USD. This also involves the publishers and developers working alongside Nintendo for the good of mankind.

Piracy is no stranger to the PC gaming community, with torrents of every game and its mother flooding the Internet - but it seems our console comrades are also enjoying the... not so legal art of fucking up the system. Of course, China is still number one when it comes to manufacturing illegal DS and Wii games, while Korea is the big bad ass regarding online console game files distribution. The same lists gathers even more names, with South-American countries like Brazil or Mexico spitting pirated Nintendo software out of every asshole available.

And of course, all Nintendo wants is a set of new laws. More aggressive measures, more retards in jail, and so on and so forth. Personally, I am all in favor of the "get your butt to the store and buy the damn game", but developers and publishers alike must also "fit" their prices for the different types of markets out there. In Romania, for example, a DS game may sometimes cost a quarter of your average paycheck, which is a lot.

First checkpoint reached, yay! Every now and then (hopefully every day), we'll use a checkpoint like this to quick-save the stories that we wanted to write about in more detail, but could not do so due to various perturbing factors - booze, WoW and/or animes come to mind. We'll probably drop the intro, though, and skip straight to the one-liners.

- LucasArts president Ward steps down. Darth Vader lols. Yoda is not amused.

- Nintendo announces a new Cobalt/Black DS Lite. Needs more desu.

- Mercenaries 2: World in Flames delayed. Battlefield: Bad Company also delayed. And so is my Zul'Aman raid tonight. Needs more healers.

- Turok released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Dinosaurs are still having difficulty procreating, this time due to stressful gunfire and castrating explosions.

- EA expects PS3 to outsell 360 in 2008. I expect the sun will rise again tomorrow.

- American McGee reveals a new "[Unreal Engine 3] based, big publisher, multi-platform, twisted tale project". Grimm half-way done. Alice is still insane. So is McGee.