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.

In my home, we have a Wii, Xbox, and PS3 so most of my son’s friends end up over here playing video games after school. The one console that all of them were hoping for last Christmas was the Wii. It seems they weren’t alone in their dreams of a Wii.

Nintendo is talking up the numbers just released by the NPD Group that talk about the gaming market in 2008. According to NPD, the Nintendo Wii and DS game systems were the most popular systems, by a long way, during 2008.

This is hardly shocking news, but according to the Wall Street Journal, both Nintendo’s Wii and the Xbox 360 clobbered the PS3 in holiday sales. U.S. sales fell nine percent from this month last year. During the same period, sales doubled for the Wii and were up eight percent for the Xbox 360.

That’s what happens when you fail to cut prices on your system, and the lack of exclusive game titles didn’t help either. Not to mention a bunch of inexpensive Blu-ray players. The end result is that the PS3 was the least attractive option for buyers. Apparently, it’s not even fit to roast a decent weiner.

My son is one of the proudest kids in the neighborhood when it comes to video games since we have a Wii, PS3, and an Xbox (all for work naturally). The thing most of the kids want to play is the Wii and many of his friends are asking Santa for a Wii this Christmas.

The catch is that the Wii is still notoriously hard to find, despite the fact that Nintendo is making more of the consoles this holiday season than it did last year. Nintendo has announced that it has set US sales records with its Wii and DS game systems.

The Nintendo Wii continues to dominate the sales charts and sell so well that most people who want one can’t find it. Odds are the Wii is at the top of many holiday wish lists this Christmas season. If you have been lucky enough to get your hands on a Wii, you will need some accessories to go with it. One such accessory is a charge station for the remotes.

Nyko has announced a new accessory called the Charge Station Quad for Nintendo Wii that will retail for $49.99. The device has spots for four Wii Remotes and includes new rechargeable batteries and battery doors to allow the Wii Remotes to be recharged.

September games sales actually showed the first decline since March of 2006 according to the NPD Group, however things are still not looking too tough for the gaming industry. September of 2007 saw a huge hike in sales due to the release of Halo 3 which is contrasted by slightly lower sales this last September of 2008.

The drop is sales was not the only change of events for September, either. Due to the price cut of the Xbox 360 models, Microsoft saw a significantly noticeable boost in sales for its console from 195k units sold in August, to 347k units sold in September of this year, bringing it ahead of Sony’s PS3. Microsoft dropped the price to $50 less than the Wii and half of what the PS3 costs, making it the least expensive current-generation game console on the market.

Nintendo’s Wii has now surpassed the Xbox 360 as the leading console in U.S. homes among the latest generation of video-game players. As of June, U.S. consumers bought nearly 10.9 million Wii consoles since it’s introduction, which makes Nintendo top console dog. In fact, the Wii has been the top-selling console in all but one month in the U.S. since it launched, according to research firm NPD Group Inc.

Nintendo is projecting that worldwide, the Wii’s annual sales will surpass the number of consoles that Sony sells for the first time this fiscal year. The formula seems pretty straightforward. Get people actually in the game with motion control and Miis, appeal to all ages and keep the price somewhat reasonable.

According to the latest NPD Group report for game sales in May, this is the fourth month in a row that Nintendo has come out on top for the number 1 AND number two spot for console sales. The Nintendo Wii and the handheld Nintendo DS were the two top-selling hardware units for May, 2008.

Nintendo sold over 675,000 Wii consoles in May and almost 453,000 Nintendo DS’s, which would probably explain all the new colors and designs they have been coming out with lately for the DS. Sony’s Playstation 3 followed with a little under 209,000 units sold and Microsoft sold 186,600 Xbox 360 units during the same period.

Microsoft is touting some new statistics trying to gain some additional momentum for the Xbox 360 game console, stating that in the U.S. they have sold 10 million units. There is no refuting that this is quite an accomplishment, but Microsoft is trying to add some more significance to the 10 million unit mark.

“History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry, ” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft.

NPD has released the year-end sales numbers for non-PC video games in 2007 showing record figures for the industry. The year 2007 brought an impressive 43 percent increase in sales compared to 2006 with a total of $17.94 billion.

Game Consoles
The highlights of the year come as no surprise if you’ve been reading our coverage of game console sales with the Nintendo Wii topping the list of most console units sold at 6.29 million. The Wii spent the year at a lower price-point than rival consoles and caught the attention of a wide range of gamers. Behind the Wii in console sales was the Xbox 360 with 4.62 million units sold in 2007, which was helped out a little bit by the wildly popular Halo 3. Next in line was not Sony’s new Playstation 3 but it’s older brother, the Playstation 2. Sony moved 3.97 million PS2 units in 2007 and 2.56 million PS3s.

Since its release on December 1st in Japan, Wii Fit has become a phenomenon in that country, selling over a million units and virtually completely selling out, much like the Wii itself. Sales of the game have done well, but a general upswing in Wii sales has also resulted, with other titles suddenly flying off the shelves. But will it be a hit here in Lard-Ass North America?

Originally the game was supposed to be released in the first quarter of this year, but Nintendo was not even able to meet the supply in Japan. But now, with a May 20th release, we of the North American continent will hopefully soon be shedding some pounds and getting fitter.