The success of Nintendo's two newest consoles, the Wii and the Nintendo DS, has led to Nintendo reporting record profits for the year ending 31st March. The Japanese based company managed revenue of 966.6 billion Yen (about $8 billion US) and operating profits of 266 billion Yen (about $1.9 billion). These figures show a 90% rise in revenue and 150% rise in profits compared to the same period a year ago. Nintendo sold 23 million Nintendo DS units with 123 million DS games during the year (that makes 40 million units since they started selling the handheld), whilst the Wii managed to sell 5.84 million consoles and 29 million games in the five months after its launch. Read on for Nintendo's press release.

People getting tired of seeing "No Wii" signs in front of their favorite video game store while waiting for the Nintendo Wii might be seeing some relief soon. Nintendo has been somehow managing to make 1 million Wii's a month, which simply isn't enough to meet all of the demand. Nintendo hopes that adding a new plant or two into the production team will let Nintendo make 14 million units within this fiscal year.

Nintendo once again claimed the top two spots among the best-selling new video game systems in America in March, according to independent sales data gathered by the NPD Group. Despite widespread shortages for both systems, more than half a million buyers snapped up the portable Nintendo DS, and Wii which is now once again the top-selling new home video game console. Wii remains the fastest-selling new console in more than a decade, based on NPD sell-through information over the first five months of availability.

After successfully releasing version 9.20 of its popular browser yesterday, Opera Software has now released the final version of the internet browser for Nintendo's Wii console. The new 'Internet Channel', as it is known, boasts a faster start-up speed, better text clarity, improved navigation, the ability to hide the toolbar, improved security options and a built in search feature with a choice of Google or Yahoo!, as well as other minor improvements. To update to this new browser, Wii owners first need to download the latest firmware update and then visit the Shopping Channel to download/update the browser. It will be free to all Wii owners until the end of June, and anyone who has not downloaded it by them will need to purchase it using 500 Wii points - Wii owners that have already downloaded it will be able to continue using it free of charge.

Nintendo expected to make 900 billion yen in Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 (March 31, 2006 to March 31, 2007). Fortunately for Nintendo, they exceeded their own expectations. FY2006 earned Nintendo a whopping 966 billion yen (roughly $8.1 billion USD) in raw profit. This is thanks to the smashing success of the Nintendo Wii, and the Nintendo DS' strange way of being a "giant money pot". And so, in response to these incredible profits, Nintendo has increased their expected profits by a considerable margin. We should see this, along with a more detailed report of Nintendo's FY2006 performance, later.

Most of you have probably heard by now the story of Mrs. Jennifer Strange. She participated in a radio contest in an attempt to win a Nintendo Wii for her children. The contest determined a winner based on who could drink the most water. Unfortunately, a few hours after Mrs.Strange participated, she died of water intoxication.

Anyways, there was almost a court case to file criminal charges against the radio station. The would-be prosecution determined that the whole event was one tragic accident, and that there was no way the radio station could have prevented the death of Jennifer Strange. This is because Mrs.Strange did not show any signs of water intoxication at the event. The radio station has fired 10 employees since the tragic incident. A wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Strange family against the radio station remains in court.

The Nintendo Wii, which was once seen as the weakest console of them all (before anyone had even heard off the Wiimote and Nunchuck controller), is now leading the sales of all three next generation consoles. In fact, it's leading the sales by such a wide margin that Nintendo simply can't keep up with demand. Nintendo senior VP of marketing and corporate communication, George Harrison, has this to say about Wii production, and getting all the Wii's to the various markets.

We have worldwide territories that are all competing over the available production. The Japan and European markets are doing extremely well with the Wii. People in Japan at NCL [Nintendo Co. Ltd.] are making the best decisions that they can about which products get shipped to which market and when.

In short, the Nintendo Wii is doing extraordinarily in sales all over the world, and Nintendo can't keep up with demand.

Nintendo has altered the circuit layout of its Wii games console in order to block the increasing use of modification chips (modchips). The new Wiis, which are part of new shipments of the console, have an altered circuit layout that makes modification more difficult than in earlier versions. Users attempting to mod the new consoles using current modchips are very likely to damage the system, the sources pointed out. However, new-generation modchips capable of working with the revised Wii consoles may become available in less than a month, according to DigiTimes.

The Nintendo Wii is apparently on a winning streak, as it were. Passing both Sony's PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 in sales, the Nintendo Wii has taken the lead. Last month, Nintendo sold 335,000 Wii's, compared to Microsoft's 228,000 Xbox360 sales, and 127,000 Sony PS3 sales. While February isn't exactly the best indicator of retail success, it sure is nice for Nintendo to know that they are selling what currently is the hottest console in the market.

Nintendo's online gaming service for the Wii will be provided by Fox Interactive Media's GameSpy, a name already familiar to most online PC gamers. Nintendo WiFi, the online service for the Nintendo DS, already uses GameSpy, and this move shows that Nintendo doesn't want to fall behind to Sony and Microsoft in online gameplay. Although there are not yet any online games for the Wii, Pokémon Battle Revolution will change this when it is released on June 25th. "This partnership will expand our wireless community of players on Nintendo WiFi Connection," said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "Millions of Nintendo DS users have already logged on using GameSpy's technology, and now Wii owners will be able to do the same in a fun and easy-to-use environment."

Activision published Guitar Hero a few years ago for the PS2, which allowed people to pretend they could play real guitar. They did this by plugging in a fancy guitar controller modeled after the Gibson SG, and programming the "notes" for a bunch of songs that the player has to hit to play the note. Ubisoft is doing something very similar, with an entirely different style of guitar, and for the Nintendo DS. Gamers, by pressing the right button on the D pad and strumming with the stylus, can play a set of unannounced songs. Free play mode allows gamers to invent their own songs, which can be used to propose to the girl of your dreams in the nerdiest way possible.

While Sony has seemed to have market dominance in the console wars ever since the PS1, times have certainly changed. Analysts at a company called "IDC" predicted exactly how the market would come out. They claimed that Sony would have the least sales of the three companies in the console market, Microsoft would ride high sales from the start, and Nintendo would have the best thing, due to innovation instead of going head-to-head with the hardware specs. IDC then goes on to predict that Nintendo will maintain those high sales well into 2008. After that, the future is uncertain, and Microsoft may become the winner of this generation of console wars.

Or, that's what the The Porn Talk is calling their latest anti-pornography campaign. The Porn Talk appears to be a parent activist group aimed at helping parents talk to their kids about porn. They seem to have taken the ability of the Wii to access the internet a wee bit too far. Their latest campaign's goal is to teach parents how to protect their children from the pornography that can be accessed using the Nintendo Wii. While the Nintendo Wii already has plenty of safety features put in place programmed to do just that, The Porn Talk claims that it simply isn't enough.

The solution lies in parents getting the facts and then talking to their children about expectations for online activity... The Wii is an amazing console and tons of fun but parents need good info on how to keep kids safe.

The new Nintendo console - the Wii - has been a huge sucess. A big selling point has been the fact that it can play Gamecube games. A Nintendo spokesperson has now mentioned that the Gamecube is no longer produced and that there are no more games in developement for the console. This also explains the diminishing selection of games and hardware at retailers. The remaining consoles will be sold to first time buyers until they are all gone.

UPDATE: Seems like Eurogamer has gotten confirmation from Nintendo UK that Gamecube support has not been axed. Catch up on all the details here at Eurogamer.

Preliminary figures for North America suggest that the Nintendo Wii is comfortably outselling its two major rivals, the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. The Wii managed to sell 436,000 units during January, with the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 selling 294,000 and 244,000 consoles respectively. The Wii is also the cheapest of the three, whilst the Xbox 360 is next cheapest and the Playstation 3 comes in as the most expensive (and arguably most feature-packed, albeit somewhat unwanted) next generation console. Figures for the Playstation 2 have not been released, although it has been the major seller in the previous months.

Anyone who's played Zelda: Twilight Princess knows that it is an extraordinarily long game, filled with a lot of events that contribute to the plot. It also has a ton of dialog, which would be a real pain to memorize, let alone write down. Yet strangely, a man has somehow find the passion and the disturbing amount of spare time to do just that. This man, who prefers to remain anonymous, claims he can "probably recite every line of dialog front and back while burping, and can espouse all the crazy timeline theories that abound and what it all means in the grand scheme of things". In the event that someone may not want to listen to all this/have time to do so, he wrote the script down as a very long text file, which can be grabbed off of Neoseeker.

Bethesda studios announced that as much as they'd love to see Elder Scrolls IV- Oblivion, it will never find itself there. The Nintendo Wii simply doesn't have enough power to run the very demanding game. Of course, this doesn't explain how they managed to stick Oblivion on the PSP, which is essentially a much smaller version of the PS2.

Neversoft, a software firm that has recently undertook a lot of major games, is announcing that they will make some of their games compatible with Nintendo platforms. In the past, Neversoft, which has helped make games such as Spider-man, was focused on making games purely for Microsoft and Sony platforms. Now, they have decided to add support for the Wii and DS. They will do this by porting games that they own, including Spider-man, Shrek, Transformers, and Guitar Hero (Guitar Hero is no longer a Harmonix title, they sold it to Neversoft).

Once again, it's that time of year. The post-holiday lull in market activity where everyone is either waiting for the "next big thing" or watching for the market's next move. According to The New York Times, the gaming market is very easy to see. Xbox360 is in the lead, Wii's are selling like hotcakes, and PS3 sales are steady but slow. Sony had a very interesting comment in regards to the current console war. The senior director of corporate communication in Sony Corporate Entertainment America:

Wii could be considered an impulse buy more than anything else.

It should be noted that Sony's President of Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison said something very similar about the Nintendo DS...18 months ago.

With the release of the Wii towards the end of last year, coupled with the success of the Nintendo DS, Nintendo saw a nice boost in profits between April and December last year. Profits over that period hit the equivalent of $1.09bn, up 43% from the figures a year earlier. This success has led Nintendo to predict a further 28% rise in profits for the year up to 31st March. The manufacturer has revealed that it reached its target of shipping four million Wii consoles by the end of the year, with the PS3, one of the major competitors, suffering production issues.

Nintendo has posted a revision of their yearly financial forecast, with a projected net income of 1.0072184 billion USD.