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).

Sales figures for both Sony and Nintendo hardware this Thanksgiving weekend have been released. Most of the revenue generated were from Black Friday sales as you might expect. Looks like both have something to be thankful for.

Nintendo managed to come out on top with 550,000 Wiis sold in North America. The Nintendo DS doubled that amount with a million units sold in North America. Sony’s Playstation 3 came close to the big N with 440,000 units sold during the corresponding period. Microsoft says that their sales were the best yet, but did not reveal any solid figures.

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.

I think most gamers knew that when the PS3 Slim was unveiled at the $299 price point that the other console makers would have to cut prices to compete. Microsoft shortly after matched the $299 price and Nintendo has now gone official with a new $199 price of the Wii.

If you have any doubts that the new price would mean robust sales for the PS3 Slim, let them go now. Sony announced that since the price cut went into effect three weeks ago the PS3 Slim has now sold 1 million units worldwide.

The PS3 could face shortages during this holiday season if the current sales rate continues, according to SCEA chief Jack Tretton. He brags that PS3 sales have tripled since the price drop to $300 and the new slim redesign and says that it’s “conceivable” that these sustained sales could lead to some stores running out as demand outpaces supply.

The price drop alone has led to the PS3 outselling the Xbox 360 and the Wii. We’ll see what happens. Microsoft’s matching price drop for the Xbox 360 Elite might offset the discount, as well as the impending Wii price cut.

Looks like the rumors were true. Nintendo’s Wii is about to get its first price drop after great sales for three years straight. The console has been sold for $249.99, but on September 27th the Wii will be priced at just $199.99.

Apparently an official announcement is expected this Friday, with retail stores beginning to sell at the new price on Sunday. Great time to get a Wii if you haven’t already taken the plunge.

If you’ve been putting off that pre-order for the new PS3 Slim, you might want to get moving on it. Amazon US has warned of shortages for the new slim PlayStation 3 when the system launches next month. It’s limiting Slim sales to just one per person per household.

It’s five-Slims-per-person in the UK, which doesn’t seem fair to us. Sony in Europe isn’t worried, since it has “trucks and trailers” of the new console already on the road . Are they taking a page from the Wii playbook and spiking demand? We’re not sure. All we know is that you best get your order in.

Typically, the games that consoles come with aren’t things that most of us find interesting. When I bought my Wii, I didn’t think much about Wii Sports being a cool game. As it turns out, I spend more time playing Wii Sports with family and friends than I do with any other game I own for the Wii.

The follow-up to Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, is now shipping and Nintendo has announced that the game is selling very well indeed. Nintendo says that between July 26 and August 3 it sold 500,000 copies of Sports Resort in the U.S. alone.

Nintendo has been rolling in the Wii dough for awhile now, but it looks like their cash printing machine may be slowing. According to an earnings report filed today, the Big N posted a 66 percent drop in quarterly operating profit due to “slowing demand for its Wii console and a stronger yen.”

What’s surprising is how fast demand has fallen. Nintendo maintained that it would sell 26 million Wii consoles before the year was out alongside 30 million DS handhelds, so we will see what happens. DS sales have also slowed due to “increased competition in the handheld business from Apple’s iPhone.”

The MotionPlus may have taken a full year to arrive on the scene, but now that it’s here it’s doing pretty well. Overall video game sales dropped in June for the first time since 2000, but Nintendo can’t complain. 361,700 Wii consoles and 766,500 DS units shipped in June, but the big surprise is that the company also managed to sell 169,000 Wii MotionPlus units.

That’s not including the bundled ones like the one packaged with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (that sold 272,400 units). Plus you have to take into account that Wii Sports Resort has yet to be released.

People really really love the Mushroom Kingdom. In the first week alone in the US, the big N managed to sell a whooping 435,00 DSi handhelds. Here’s something more amazing. In the month of March Nintendo systems accounted for just under 60 percent of all video game hardware sold in America.

This during a 17 percent drop in Wii sales during the same month. The news definitely gives Mario and Yoshi something to get excited about.

Looks like Nintendo is being a bit of a grinch, by saying that there are no plans to cut the price on Wii systems. This comes straight from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, in response to recent speculation that a Wii price cut could be in the works. It seemed likely since manufacturing costs for the console have supposedly dropped quite a bit recently.

According to Iwata, they won’t be driving up sales numbers with a price cut. Instead Nintendo will put “more energy and time into making better entertainment so that our products are going to remain in the top position in our customer’s wish lists”.

The unthinkable has happened. For the first time in 16 months, sales of the PS3 in Japan jumped 80% in the last five weeks of March compared to a year ago. At the same time, demand for the Wii went down by almost 63% to 99,335.

You can chalk up at least part of this to the release of a few new popular games like Resident Evil 5. Which helped up the PS3’s sales figures beyond the Wii’s for the first time since November a few years ago. It should also be noted that nearly everyone in Japan seems to already own a Wii.

We love video games around here. Whether we’re playing the Xbox 360, the PS3 or even an old Atari 2600. We thought we would take a look at the history of gaming consoles from 1972 to the present. You grew up with the vintage consoles, you play the new ones, so take a walk down memory lane and revisit all your favorites from the massive list below.

An analyst with Janco, Mike Hickey, says that a major price cut for the PS3 could be on the way in the next few days. According to Hickey (Who I’m assuming has no marks on his neck) the price drop needs to be at least $100 to get retail sales moving again.

If it doesn’t happen, Sony console sales are expected to continue to decline. This wouldn’t be a huge surprise, but we’ll have to see what happens.