In an GameDaily interview earlier this week with Perrin Kaplan, Nintendo of American VP of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, she stated with some rhetoric that the end for the GameCube productions had come: “Are we producing any more GameCubes? No. But do we have the inventory there for people to still purchase? Yes.”

That made sense to many since other game consoles from that generation had been put to rest, except for the Playstation 2 of course, who’s sales have surpassed game consoles beyond its own generation. Still for many this was unwelcome news and gained some publicity, but considering the source it was fact nonetheless.

Today from across the pond we here quite the opposite, that the sorrow spent for the lost purple game console was all for not since production of the GameCube is still alive and well. “I can …

According to market research done by NPD, the Nintendo Wii outsold competitors for the month of January in the game console wars, rounding out the month with 436,000 game consoles sold.

The game console battle continues to be a heated one between the Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii all attempting to sway gamers to their newly released consoles with additional features and incentives. While the Wii console came out ahead in sales last month, Playstation 2 sales were actually the runner up for the best selling game console of January, and incidentally was also the best selling console of 2006. In January the Playstation 2 sold 299,000 units with the Xbox 360 close behind at 294,000 and then the PS3 with 244,000 units sold.

Sales were down a little bit for all three console makers from …

A Wii Phone from Nintendo? C’mon; this seems a little far fetched, or is it? Recently we’ve seen the iPhone, rumors of a Zune Phone and now this.

According to T3 there is a distinct possibility that Nintendo may be coming out with some type of phone combined with the console remote. There had been some rumors last year about adding a microphone to the controller, and Nintendo has been taking advantage of internet based services with the Wii console, lately. This combination could possibly lend itself nicely to some type of VoIP service.

T3 found this information via the patent office showing plans of a Wii remote looking device with gaming keys and what looks like a dialing keypad. I wonder what kind of damage someone could do with this? We’ll keep watching…

Image Source: T3

Southwest Airlines finds a number of ways to cut costs and provide discount airfare to its customers, and they know how to reward their most frequent customers. The airline has partnered with Nintendo to give some Rapid Rewards members a free Nintendo DS Lite game system along with a copy of Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day.

“We are helping our Members welcome the New Year with low fares, frequent flights and, of course, exercise … exercise for their mind while they travel,” said Blair McGrain, Director of Marketing Planning and Customer Loyalty in a press release. “We are thrilled to partner with Nintendo to give our Members some FUN in the New Year.”

Southwest has already mailed the free Nintendo DS and Brain Age game to 50 of the most long term and high mile …

Nintendo is adding a new News Channel to their game console that will show up for users in the Wii Menu Saturday.

The Associated Press has contracted with Nintendo for two years to provide news and photos for the News Channel on the Wii, which will be accessed through a map-based graphical interface. Users can navigate the map to locations around the globe and zoom in on areas of the world to get more regional news, zooming out will get news pertaining to a broader geographical area. Subcategories will be available for the regions, such as Business, Sports, Art, and Technology.

“What Wii has done for video gaming, we hope it will also accomplish for news,” says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. “Just by pointing at your TV screen, you become your own interactive editor, instantly …

Nintendo has announced the release of over a dozen of new and classic games for the Wii. These games will be available in the first quarter of 2007 and help maintain Wii’s promise to make gaming accessible to all gamers - young and old, veteran and new alike.

The first three months of the year will see the release of much-anticipated games like Wii Play, SSX Blur, The Godfather Blackhand Edition, and a new Prince of Persia Rival Swords. Beyond the current library of 34 new Wii titles, the schedule for upcoming Wii releases includes:

Feb. 14 - Wii Play with Wii Remote
March 27 - Disney’s Meet the Robinsons
March - Bust-A-Move Bash!
March - Prince of Persia Rival Swords
March - TMNT
March - Bionicle Heroes
March - Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII
Q1 - Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07
Q1 - SSX Blur
Q1 …

I’ve been getting a little tired of walking into my local Fry’s store lately and seeing a stack of PS3’s, and then looking across the isle and finding lots of Wii accessories and paraphernalia but no Wii consoles. At first I thought I was just not cool enough to know where they are but this last trip I went against my internal instincts and asked an employee. It appears there were no Wii’s in stock. At first I thought it may be just the Portland metro area, but after a very small investigation I found I’m not alone in my search for the Wii game console.

This is frustrating for those of us who would rather avoid the lines and wait until things settle down so we can just stroll into a store and pick up a game console …

The PlayStation 2 and the Xbox 360 had a pretty good year with game sales. This news comes on the heals of PlayStation 2’s surprising sales showing.

Of course Madden topped the charts as usual. Of some surprise is the number of Super Mario Bros. games sold for the Nintendo DS. The Super Mario franchise continues to shine and Mario apparently ages very well. Another interesting sales figure is for the Brain Age title. Not a game so much as a series of brain teasers and mental exercises developed by Japanese neuro-scientist Ryuta Kawashima, the title’s strong showing gives us evidence that video games do make you smarter!

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The gaming industry did well in 2006, however the real king of the consoles may surprise you. You know that the Wii beat the PlayStation 3. You also know that the Xbox 360 beat the Wii. But who beat the Xbox 360? The PlayStation 2.

Yes, the best selling console of 2006 appears to be the six year old PlayStation 2. Why did a ancient (in gaming terms) console outsell all the brand new rigs? It’s probably the availability of excellent games and the often overlooked economics aspect.

Sony has an incredible lead in game sales. Four of the top 10 games sold in December were for the PlayStation 2, including the number two game, Guitar Hero, which sold over 800,000 copies. The PlayStation 2 also had the number one …

Fenner Investments is suing Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft over the design of their game console controllers. Fenner, located in Texas, is claiming they hold the patent entitled “Low-Voltage Joystick Port Interface.” The suit claims that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are causing damage to Fenner by their infringement of the patent in their respective controllers.

It appears that Fenner is claiming to own the patent on joysticks or ports that connect joysticks to another device. If this is the case it may have a far reaching affect on game hardware manufacturers.

It should be noted that Fenner recently also tried to sue wireless makers such as Nokia and Cisco over another patent entitled “a method and apparatus for managing a communications network for mobile users.” That suit was dismissed.

Sony and Microsoft were also recently …

According to Japanese gamer magazine publisher Enterbrain, Nintendo’s Wii has outsold the PlayStation 3 in Japan. Some think that this could be an indication of the success or failure of each platform in the US. SlipperyBrick previously reported that Sony claimed it had shipped one million units in North America.

Wii’s stronger sales happened in spite of the fact that the unit went on sale three weeks after the rival PlayStation 3. Enterbrain says that the Wii sold 1.14 million units versus the paltry 311,000 units sold by Sony.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 is relatively expensive and the cheap model sells for 49,980 yen (about $425) while the Wii sells for 25,000 yen (about $210). The speculation is that the price of the Wii, couple with its unique motion-sensing …

DarwiinRemote is an open source software application and framework that allows you to use the Wiimote to control the applications on your Mac by using it as a mouse or mapping the Wiimote buttons. The Wiimote is one of the revolutionary controllers for the new Nintendo Wii game console.

DarwiinRemote works by syncing with the Wiimote using the Bluetooth connection on your Mac. DarwiinRemote reads data to and from Wiimote and captures the various events raised by the controller. With the DarwiinRemote Framework you can monitor acceleration, buttons, sensor bar, LEDs, and the Rumble feature.

The DarwiinRemote interface displays a graph of all three acceleration forces acting on the Wiimote. When you move the Wiimote, the graph shows the intensity of force. In addition, a log records the history of the commands sent out by the Wiimote.

DarwiinRemote was first released on December 6th, …

True to Nintendo’s announcement earlier this week, a trial version of the Opera web browser for the Wii is available for download today with the new Nintendo game console.

Wii owners who have activated the Wii Shop Channel can download the browser and activate their new Internet Channel to start surfing the internet on their television through their Wii game console. The Wii controller can be used to motion and point in order to navigate the browser, and an on-screen keyboard can be used by pointing at keys to type.

In Tuesday’s press release from Nintendo they announced the immediate availability of the Forecast Channel along with the Internet Channel announcement. The forecast channel allows users to check the weather around the world with a 3D interactive globe.

Nintendo Wii owners will be available to download and use this trial version …

We all saw it coming, it was only a matter of time after all of the reports of damages caused by the Wii remotes. Green Welling LLP filed a class action lawsuit against Nintendo of America for the defective nature of the Wii wrist straps for the new game console controller.

The lawsuit states, “Owners of the Nintendo Wii reported that when they used the Nintendo remote and wrist strap, as instructed by the material that accompanied the Wii console, the wrist strap broke and caused the remote to leave the user’s hand“.

We here at Slippery Brick are no lawyers, but we all concur that there is a hole in their case with that statement since the remote had to most likely leave their hand first, and then it would break the strap, not vise versa …

Today Nintendo announced that a free trial version of the Opera web browser will be available for the Nintendo Wii game console on Friday, December 22nd.

If you have a high speed internet connection, you can download the Opera web browser to activate the Internet Channel on your Wii game console and start surfing the internet on your TV through your Wii. This trial download will be available until the end of March when the final version of the Opera web browser for the Wii will be available for download. The final version will also be a free download, but only until June. After June the Opera web browser will cost 500 Wii points to download, so you’ll want to be sure to get it before then.

The Wii motion sensing controller can be used to navigate the browser using …