Nintendo set to recall "dangerous" Wii strapsNintendo claims that this isn't a recall because their straps are safe, but it certainly seems the best word to describe this. In an announcement earlier today, the company offered to replace 3.2 million Wii remote straps after a number of incidents leading to injuries and damage to property. It looks like you need to go here to fill in a form and then Nintendo will send you a replacement. Nintendo also announced this morning that it will be recalling 200,000 AC adaptors for the Japanese DS and DS Lite.

When the Nintendo Wii was released, there were over 50,000 sales in the first 12 hours, and there have been over 105,000 sales total in the UK. This smashes the previous record of most consoles sold the fastest, which was 70,000 held by the Xbox360.

California based Interlink Electronics is suing Nintendo for some parts of the Wii Remote that Interlink claims they have already patented. In patent #6,850,221, which was granted in February 2005, Interlink patented a "trigger-operated electronic device", which is only one aspect of the Wii Remote. Interlink is also claiming that the Wii's pointer functionality is infringing copyrights. Interlink wants a trial by jury, and if it wins, they want damage compensation and a ban on the allegedly infringing products.

It doesn't really come as much of a surprise, but the Nintendo Wii has sold out in the UK in less than 12 hours. It's estimated that Nintendo shipped 50,000 consoles for the launch day and many stores have been unable to supply the consoles that were pre-ordered, never mind selling them to the casual shopper walking in. Apparently a number of shops were anticipating more consoles to be allocated to them, leading to this shortage. The HMV store on Oxford Street in London opened its doors at midnight to sell the consoles (it hadn't taken pre-orders) and within minutes all 200 they had in stock had been snapped up.

When the Nintendo Wii first went on sale on Amazon.co.uk, they sold out of pre-orders in less than 10 minutes. On the official day of release, Amazon.co.uk sold all their stock in roughly seven minutes. An official letter from the Amazon.co.uk team that was delivered to people interested in the Wii confirms that Amazon got a lot more Nintendo Wiis.

Dear Nintendo fan,

Great news! We've managed to get our hands on some more Wii consoles and will be putting them on sale between 3pm and 4pm today (Friday, December 8).
Last time we sold out in 7 minutes and we expect this batch to go even more quickly.
Nintendo sold 600,000 consoles in just 8 days in the US, so you can bet that the Nintendo Wii is THE must-have item of 2006.
The wait is almost over!
See the launch line-up
Sincerely,
Amazon.co.uk Video Games Team

While Amazon.co.uk can't confirm how many it has or how long it will have them, they do know that the Wii is currently in stock.

The FCC certainly had fun when they gave the new controller an ID code. The latest Wiimote has the FCC code POO-WC45.

At exactly 12:00AM December 8th, stores will open their doors to customers seeking the Nintendo Wii. The Wii has been massively successful so far, selling out very quickly in Japan. Nintendo hopes to sell four million consoles before the year ends.

After the horror stories of Wii owners destroying their expensive 60" televisions, Nintendo seems to have gotten the message that the lawyers are going to come knocking at their door soon so they've released a new strap for the Wii controller. The photo seems to show clearly enough that one of the straps is noticeably thicker - most likely to make it stronger. Hopefully the Wii will now cause less destruction, after all Nintendo wouldn't want to steal Sony's crown for the most dangerous products.

The Nintendo Wii was launched in Japan on 2nd December, (now two days ago by Japanese time) and the consoles have all sold out. According to Nintendo there were 400,000 consoles available at launch, meaning there are now four times as many Wii owners as PS3 owners in Japan.

Since November 19th, North Americans have bought over 600,000 units of the Nintendo Wii. This translates to roughly $190 million (£98.2/€144.8 million) in sales according to Nintendo. "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" is the most popular Wii game, tallying 454,000 sales (enough for 3/4 Wii owners to have a copy). The Wii goes on sale in Japan this coming Saturday, and it will arrive in Europe on December 8th.

IGN reports that running the initial WiiConnect 24 update on the Wii could potentially destroy your gaming console. After installation, you are most likely to obtain an error code which effectively prevents you from doing anything with your system. Several error codes have been reported so far, but the most prevalent of them are 110213 and 32002.

IGN contacted Nintendo, which offered 2 solutions. If you have no data saved on your Wii that is important to keep, you can contact Nintendo, which will ship a new console out to you within 3-4 business days. The problem becomes more complicated if you have data that you want to keep - most importantly, Virtual console data (while virtual console games can be re-downloaded, the data saved on your console regarding which games you have downloaded is tied to your system). If this applies to you, then you will have to follow a different procedure. Again, you should contact Nintendo, which will send you a shipping label (takes 4-10 business days), which you then use to send the console back to the factory. Repairs will take 8-10 business days, once the unit is fully functional it will be sent back to you.

At the moment, Nintendo is intensively working on a fix for this problem.

AMD has officially congratulated Nintendo on completing what it calls the "revolutionary Wii video gaming console". AMD also said that they are happy it's Hollywood GPU is what is running the Wii. AMD Vice President Dave Orton has this to say about the Wii.

(The Wii) is a great achievement for Nintendo and a win for gamers everywhere. Having powered the graphics in the Nintendo GameCube, AMD is delighted to strengthen its relationship with Nintendo as it drives the next revolution in video games with the Wii.

The Nintendo Wii was released in America on November 19th.

Popular Science Blog has managed to get their hands on a Nintendo Wii, which they took apart without hesitation. Pictures below:

MILPITAS, CA, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 - SanDisk Corporation today announced that it is shipping special edition SanDisk SD memory cards to major retailers in conjunction with the release of Nintendo's new Wii game console, which is compatible with removable flash memory to store game saves, download games and view digital photos.

The white cards, bearing the label "SanDisk For Wii", will be available in three capacities - 512 megabytes (MB), 1 gigabyte (GB) and 2GB* -- at gaming and major consumer electronics stores. Suggested retail prices range from $34.99 to $89.99."We believe that the Nintendo Wii, with its physically interactive format and compelling games, will be a big hit this holiday season, and these co-branded flash cards will make it easy for gamers to purchase memory that allows for the portability of game saves between Wii consoles," said Christina Day, SanDisk senior product marketing manager.

Sony had planned in September to ship 400,000 PlayStation3s on release day in the USA. Unfortunately, Sony may not even ship half that amount. They are now planning ship no more then 200,000 PS3s. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) co-chairman Jack Tretton admitted the launch allocations were more a "target" than a precise logistical statistic. Fortunately, Sony will ship far more as time goes on, and should have shipped 750,000 consoles by the end of 2006. This is a long way from the 2 million Sony had initially planned to sell. In comparison, the Nintendo Wii will ship with the exact amount of units it said it would have, 1.2 million at launch and 4 million by the end of 2006.

Nolan Bushnell, creator of Pong and founder Atari, was interviewed by Red Herring about the state of the video game industry today. When asked about which areas he still follows of his former industry, Bushnell said, "I'm very curious and interested in the Nintendo Wii. I think it may expand the market beyond the hardcore [18- to 24-year old]". He also expressed fondness for Microsoft's online strategy, saying, "Xbox Live is interesting because it potentially becomes the platform for the living room". But when he was asked about the PlayStation 3 console, he said, "I think Sony shot themselves in the foot… there is a high probability [they] will fail. The price point is probably unsustainable. For years and years Sony has been a very difficult company to deal with from a developer standpoint. They could get away with their arrogance and capriciousness because they had an installed base,". He also added, "They have also historically had horrible software tools. You compare that to the Xbox 360 with really great authoring tools [and] additional revenue streams from Xbox live… a first party developer would be an idiot to develop for Sony first and not the 360. People don't buy hardware, they buy software". You can read the full interview with Nolan Bushnell here.

Nintendo has reported a very high amount of retailer and customer pre-orders, and is planning accordingly. They have decided to ship over 4 million consoles, with most of them headed for the United States. Nintendo will also have factories working around the clock to keep a steady supply of the Nintendo Wii. Reggie Fils-Aime, head of Nintendo of America is telling consumers to keep buying. "Because of demand, we're urging shoppers not to get complacent. The level of demand we're seeing goes beyond the ordinary." The console is going to be released on November 19th in the United States for $250.

For the first time, sunlight is a direct obstacle to gaming, and not just because of screen glare. During a Nintendo Wii demo at a store, the sun shone into the store, and none of the Wii's worked at all. No matter what the game, the Wii's simply didn't receive any signals from the wireless controllers. Once the sun was not shining into any store windows, the Nintendo Wii worked flawlessly. Nintendo suspects that bright lights cause the optical receivers for the controllers. to malfunction. Nintendo also knows that bright halogen lights can make a Wii malfunction.

So if you are one of the people, who did not get to pre-order a PlayStation 3 - here is your next chance to get your hands on a next generation console. GameStop will be accepting pre-orders on the Nintendo Wii. All you need is a bit of luck and $50 Dollars. Nintendo Wii will sell for $250 and will come with one wireless Wii Remote controller, one Nunchuk controller, and five different Wii sports games on one disc. Schedule release is November 19th.

An anonymous person sent Engadget five photos of the Wii developer kit.

Check out the pictures.

Details for Nintendo Wii Euro release are out!

Release date: December 8th 2006.

Price: EUR 249 / GBP 179

Bundle includes: white console, one Wii remote, one Nunchuck and Wii Sports. Between 49 and 59 Euros for software. Which is 34 to 39 pounds.

So it now seems that the new Nintendo console will launch in the United States on November the 19th, and that the machine will cost $250. The console which was once named the "console for the masses" due to its cheap price, was first rumored to cost $149, then $179, followed by $229 Dollars.

Details for Japan are as follows (taken from TheINQ):

Seems like a british magazine let a possible launch date & price slip. According the MCV, the next generation Nintendo console is suppose to hit the market on November 24th with a price tag of 219€. If this is true, expect the US price to be just that in the local currency. The Nintendo UK boss - David Yarnton did mention that the information is very close to the actual facts, but not correct. So the Wii will either be a tad bit over the 200€ mark, or just a bit under it. We will all know more next friday, when Nintendo will annouce the actual numbers.

IBM has officially confirmed shipping the "Broadway" chips that are going into the Nintendo Wii. The Broadway chips will give Nintendo 20% more efficiency then the previous generation "Gekko" of the Gamecube. The Broadway chip is speculated to have 2MB of L2 Cache, up to 2 physical cores, a 90nm chip, and the ability to process between two and four threads.

Specifications of Nintendos new Wi console have been leaked by MaxConsole.

TheINQCPU (Broadway)

-Superscalar microprocessor with six execution units (floating-point unit, branching unit, system register unit, load/store unit, two integer units)
- Operating speed of 729 MHz
- Bus to main memory: 243 MHz, 64 bits (maximum bandwidth: 1.9 gigabytes/sec)
- 32-kilobyte 8-way set-associative L1 data cache (can set up 16-kilobyte data scratch pad)
- Onboard 256-kilobyte 2-way set-associative L2 integrated cache
- Supports three L2 cache fetch modes: 32, 64, and 128-Byte
- DMA unit (15-entry DMA request queue) used by 16-kilobyte data scratch pad
- Write-gather buffer for writing graphics command lists to the graphics chip

Read full story