There’s good news and there’s bad news for the big N. Nintendo’s net sales of $12.4 billion for the period ending on March 31st 2011 was 29 percent less than during the previous year. Also its $825 million of net profit was 66 percent lower than it earned last year. Things are not so great in the Mushroom Kingdom.

However, there is some good news. The 3DS has reached 3.61 million sales worldwide, but at the same time the Wii is down to 15 million global sales, a 25 percent drop from its 2009 total of 20 million. Looks like the timing is perfect for the new console.

According to an Engadget source, a price cut for the Wii is coming. It will cost just $150 starting May 15th. Normally we would dismiss this, but the timing makes sense, since Nintendo’s profits have been going down due to declining hardware sales. Plus, there’s also the rumors of a new console from Nintendo coming soon.

Also, last month Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime did hint that the Wii’s price might change in the near future. Still, we don’t have anything more official than that right now, so we will just have to wait and see, but it seems likely.

While the Xbox 360 is still outselling the PS3 in the US, new data from Strategy Analytics shows that globally, Sony’s console reached 43.4 million at the end of 2010, compared to 42.9 million for Microsoft’s system. Take that Xbox.

In comparison, the Wii’s worldwide installed base was 75.5 million at the end of last year. If you have been paying attention, global demand for Sony’s PS3 has exceeded that of the Xbox 360 for the past two years, and there’s no reason to think it will stop this year. Microsoft needs to keep innovating and build on the success of the Kinect to compete.

You know that slider on the side of the 3DS? It adjusts the 3D aspect to the user’s preference. And although the 3DS’ screen doesn’t force you to wear glasses, it does have to be held at just the right angle to get the most out of the 3D effect. And there are many of us who would just want to use it for plain old 2D gaming. So it’s good to know that Nintendo now says that no game should require 3D as part of its gameplay mechanics. And frankly that’s just a good rule of thumb for making a good game if you ask us.

Hideki Konno, one of Nintendo’s producers says that the company wants all of its 3DS games to be playable in 2D, reducing the 3D aspect to an aesthetic enhancement. Some might feel ripped off, but what did you expect? Nintendo wants to please the mass market, otherwise people will soon tire of the 3DS, like they did with the Wii. Novelties wear off quickly.

After selling 500,000 units of the Nintendo 3DS handheld on day 1 in Japan, Nintendo has hit another milestone. Amazon UK has announced that they have received more pre-orders for the 3DS than any other gaming console they’ve previously sold.

The Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii all come in second to Nintendo’s portable glasses-free 3D gaming sensation. They didn’t reveal the exact numbers, but 3DS pre-orders were 20% higher than the PS3, 56% higher than the Wii and 255% higher than the DSi. Looks like the big N has a huge hit on it’s hands.

The Nintendo 3DS launches next week and now there are rumors that the company may focus on a replacement for the Wii. Frank Gibeau, label head at EA Games, said in a chat with IndustryGamers that he was aware of a follow-up coming. The device is unknown and wasn’t confirmed, but it is a fair bet that it will have have HD support, rivaling competitors from Microsoft and Sony.

Nintendo has been one of the most conservative console makers especially during this generation of console. The Wii was mostly built using faster but nearly identical processors as the GameCube. The company has often refused to discuss the possibility of a next-gen console as long as sales continued to dominate, but sales are not what they once were and it would seem that the time is right.

Despite a poor economy leading to poorer sales than the company was used too, Nintendo has announced that it still ended up with the best selling gaming systems of 2010 according to numbers from the NPD Group. The Wii was the best selling game console for the year with 7 million units sold in2010. Not bad at all.

Likewise, the DS was the best selling portable with 8.5 million sold in 2010. Nintendo had great sales during the holiday season, with some impressive sales numbers in December to help it along.

The Xbox 360 outsold the Nintendo Wii in November with sales of 1.37 million Xbox 360s sold against 1.27 million Wiis. sadly for Sony, the PS3 was third with 530,000 consoles sold. However, when Nintendo’s DS hand-held is added to the equation, Nintendo sold a total of 2.7 million consoles in November.

Compared with sales this time last year, the Xbox 360 is up 67 percent while Nintendo held steady, recording 10,000 more sales this year. Sony sold 25 percent fewer PS3 consoles this November when compared to its November 2009 performance, when Sony sold nearly 200,000 more consoles.

Nintendo must be pretty happy with the news that the Wii video game console has now sold 30 million units in the US alone. That figure was achieved in just 45 months, making it the fastest-selling console in the history of the industry. Wow.

It also hit the milestone 15 months faster than the next best-selling console. Obviously this is due to the Wii’s innovative gaming experience, even if some consoles do end up collecting dust after a few months when the novelty wears off.

People like their consoles like they like their supermodels, thin and puking. Well, thin anyway. With two nice round buttons in front. But nevermind that. The newly launched Xbox 360 has sold 15,000 units in Japan in the first four days. The strong sales were in addition to 2,370 of the previous generation version of the games console. The week before the release saw only 2,060 Xbox units of any kind moved.

Sales were helped by the launch of Capcom’s top-selling game, Monster Hunter Frontier Online. In Japan the new slim console costs $339 while the previous Elite version dropped to $282.

When the Nintendo Wii was released, people called it gimmicky with it’s motion controller, but in spite of that, the console has done really well. But the fact that it’s aging and doesn’t have many grown-up games may be shortening it’s life as a console.

According to Nintendo’s fiscal report, the company sold 20.53 million Wii consoles last year, which is a 21 percent drop from the 25.95 million from the previous year. However this is still Nintendo’s third-best year ever. Will sales of the Wii pick up? I’m not seeing it.

I have all three game consoles in my house and my son and his friends spend lots of time playing games around here most weeks. When it comes time to play games they all typically want to play the PS3 the most. The Wii is the second choice and they rarely play the Xbox 360.

Despite the preferences of a bunch of 7-year-olds, the Xbox 360 has taken the top spot for sales in February according to NPD. NPD’s numbers show that Microsoft sold 422,000 Xbox 360 consoles; the Wii was second with 397,900 units sold.

We’re not talking the same kind of Wii shortages that happened when the Wii was popular, but Sony is now cautioning PlayStation 3 buyers that supplies will be tight. Sony’s senior director of corporate communications, Patrick Seybold, says that they are working hard, but “demand is tremendously high for the PS3 and we expect tight inventory in the coming months.”

Console sales in general slowed down in January, but are expected to pick up. Let us know if you have any trouble finding a PS3. We haven’t heard of any problems yet.

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).

Pretty much everyone has heard by now that the Nintendo Wii is getting a price cut to $199. The cut has been reported as confirmed; but that confirmation was from a third party, not directly from Nintendo.

Nintendo has now gone officially official with the new price cut, which is set to go into effect on Sunday September 27. That is the day that we were expecting the price cut to hit on. I wonder if Nintendo rushed the official announcement out because so many leaks of the new price had been made.