After touring Japan for some time, Nintendo has brought its Wii Classic Controller Pro to the US. This one sports dual shoulder buttons and some DualShock-style grips. The controller will be arriving in April as a bundle with Monster Hunter Tri.

The game is compatible with the Wii Remote + Nunchuck combo and of course the Classic Controller. Separately the controller is available in black or white for $20. The bundled game and controller will retail for $60.

Here’s some good news for Nintendo and Sony. After the video game console market shrunk by a fifth in October, NPD now has a new report that shows that December was the video game industry’s “biggest sales month ever.”

Console sales jumped 4% compared to last December, with the Nintendo Wii in the lead(It is the cheapest console out there, so not really a surprise) with 3.81 million units moved (up from 2.15 million were moved the previous year).

We often find ourselves wondering just what Nintendo is thinking with things like a lack of Wii colors, a lack of HD on the Wii itself, a lack of good games… What’s the deal Nintendo? Now Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo of America fame now claims that his customers do not want a feature that has become a standard.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 can stream full HD movies from Netflix at no extra cost and Reggie has stated his belief that “there really is no loss for the Wii consumer” because “the vast majority” of Netflix streaming content isn’t HD anyway. Reggie has also claimed that the 26 million Wii console owners out there have voted with their wallets and will be quite happy to continue with standard def. Say what?

The Wii has more peripherals than you can shake a wiimote at. Well, here’s another concept for the Wii. The WiiThink. Not well thought out. In fact it makes no sense.

The WiiThink is supposed to be an EEG sensor that monitors brain waves. The idea is to get the elderly to think really hard and concentrate so their brains exercise and they hopefully won’t get Alzheimer’s. Sounds like a fun little scam. But there is no evidence that concentrating prevents Alzheimer’s.

The B.O.S.S. controller from Performance Designed Products, is not really a controller, but a shell made to look like an SNES controller. It slides over your Wiimote and turns it into a huge controller fit for giants. We can’t imagine that it’s actually usable due to the size though.

Still for the big handed among you, it’s only $10 and hey, the name is done up in Mario colors, so it can’t be all bad right?

You can cover any gadget in swarovski crystals, diamonds and even gold. But underneath, it’s still what it is. In this case we have a Wii covered in gold and diamonds. Yep, beneath all that glitter it’s still a Wii.

A Wii that will cost you £299,995 or about $483,000. It’s called the Nintendo Wii Supreme and it’s covered in 2,500 grams of solid 22ct gold. But that wasn’t enough so the front buttons are 78 x 0.25 ct Flawless diamonds which total 19.5 ct.

According to a new study by Scott Owens out of the University of Mississippi, the Wii Fit has very little effect on family fitness levels. A Wii Fit was loaned to eight families and their usage and fitness impact were tracked over time (three months before they got the Wii, and three months after).

The final verdict seems to be that there are “No significant changes” in family fitness from the Wii. Over the period of three months Wii Fit usage went down by an amazing 82 percent, from 22 minutes a day for the first half of the time, all the way down to an average of four minutes a day in the last six weeks. The children did display some “significant” increases in the area of aerobic fitness. Basically it seems that people got bored, otherwise they may have done better.

If you like to skate on fake plastic skateboards and pretend you are skateboarding or snowboarding, the Friiboard should bring more realistic movement to the Wii Balance Board. What it does is give the balance board less balance and more “wobbability”.

The device just adds a convex surface to the bottom of the Balance Board. We don’t think it’s worth $45, but you might feel differently if you need to skateboard in front of the TV.

If choosy moms choose Jif, than choosy female gamers apparently choose the Wii. Nintendo recently did some info checking and it turns out that the Wii is outperforming its rivals when it comes to female gamers. According to its estimates, 80 percent of the female console gaming crowd prefers Wii over the alternatives.

There are an estimated 11.7 million female console gamers in the Americas, but keep in mind that this data doesn’t take into account DS owners or PC users. However this figure adds up to roughly nine million ladies. In related news, men are now encouraged to approach women only in 480p mode, displaying cartoony graphics, with no good titles to your name. This apparently woos the ladies.

We Americans are still waiting for the TV Guide Channel that Japanese Wii users have been using for nearly two years and now Variety is reporting that Nintendo has teamed up with several corporate partners for a Japanese pay-per-view service for the console.

Last Saturday, Wii no Ma (Wii’s Room) premiered. It currently has 120 titles, including such blockbusters as episodes of Sesame Street and Pocket Monsters, available from ¥30 – ¥500 ($.35 – $5.63). Titles can also be viewed on your Nintendo DSi handheld.

Man, playing games on the Wii can be hard. You are expected to do stuff like move your arms, hold them up, push buttons… All while holding the Wiimote. Add an exercise game to that, like Wii-Fit and it can be brutal. What, do they think we are superhuman?

Well, Talismoon’s Wiitality accessory can help. What we have here is little more than a neoprene band that holds your Wiimote in place, securing the controller on your arm with Velcro straps. At least they aren’t trying to charge a ton of money for it. The Wiitality will cost you $3 at Amazon.

The Wii has had it’s time in the sun, but lately it seems to have lost some traction and given way to it’s higher resolution competitors. Lately I’ve been seeing all kinds of Wii deals. Even businesses giving them away as promotions.

Well, Amazon has a great deal if you haven’t bought a Wii yet. When you buy the Nintendo Wii console along with a Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board you get a free $50 Gift Card. Normally the Wii sells for $199.99 and the Wii Fit Plus with Balance board sells for only $89.99. The overall cost is $289.98. But subtract the $50 gift card value and you get this Wii bundle for $239.98 on Amazon.

Sanyo’s Eneloop Wiimote charger hit last year. It was the first to be officially approved by Nintendo and it allowed charging while your thick rubber covers were still in place, which is cool, but it quickly became obsolete by the Motion Plus.

Sanyo now has a solution. That solution is to buy a brand new charger. This new one does exactly the same thing, it just has some extra room at the bottom for the motion-plus. The device is USB-powered and charges using induction, so no contact is required. And this one will hold a pair of Wiimotes instead of just one.

We had been hoping for a Wii HD in 2010 or 2011 and it looked like it was a possibility. But sadly Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime says that this is not the case. There will be no Wii HD with Blu-ray player and 1080p.

Wait. If they don’t want to compete, does this mean they are getting out of the gaming business? My Wii has been collecting dust for about a year. They need to do something with the 360’s Natal and the PS3’s motion-wand on the way very soon.

Thrustmaster’s latest accessory is for all of you Wii owners who aren’t down with Tony Hawk and his official skateboard accessories. The T-Freestyle NW was specially designed to play nice with all skate and snowboard games on the Wii.

It’s crafted from genuine maple, and features a “skull” design on the top. It looks…Um…cheap and we sense many broken ankles, despite a set of safety stoppers that are included.