"Mario is truly a one-of-a-kind character; clearly fans can't get enough of him and his friends," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "We're giving Wii users brilliant new ways to enjoy him while expanding our series of active-play games."

In the same spirit as other sports-themed Mario games on Wii like Mario Strikers Charged and Mario Kart Wii, Mario Super Sluggers blends richly interactive baseball action with eccentric characters and elements from across the popular Mario universe. Players can swing the wireless Wii Remote just like a real bat or wave it toward the plate to deliver a masterful pitch, enjoying the same intuitive, easy-to-learn controls that helped make Wii Sports a living room hit. With Mario and his unpredictable pals filling out the roster, imagination and active-play innovation are sure to dominate the diamond in this lively title, scheduled for release later this year.

The videogames business, after hitting a new sales high last year, this week plans to showcase new technologies to help spur further growth -- including a new product from Nintendo Co. to get users to exercise using their Wii game consoles.

Nintendo announced today that it will ship a new exercise product on May 19 in the U.S. called Wii Fit that comes with a weight-and-motion sensing device called the Wii Balance Board.

It will have more than 300 levels, "a cast of over thirty wacky characters" and seems to be built around letting players take on "Blox-laying chickens or...baseball-throwing monkeys" or cartoonlike grim reapers in tiki, medieval, frontier, or haunted themed settings.

EA has never said a lot about the Spielberg partnership beyond the fact that the director would be spending occasional time at the company's Los Angeles studio. It's also never been entirely clear exactly how involved Spielberg has been in the creation of the games, or how much involvement he'll have going forward. EA has said there would be at least three games under the terms of a deal first made public in 2005.

Last summer, Newsweek published a story describing the game that is now known as Boom Blox as blending "the creativity of the building-blocks game 'Jenga' with the charm of a Saturday-morning cartoon."

Wii is unlike other video game consoles out there. A standard videogame only requires players to move their thumbs and index fingers, whereas the Wii actually requires players to move their hand or occasionally their entire arm to interact with the game. The Wii console has done much to get couch potatoes off their duff and playing video games - but apparently not enough.

For the British Medical Journal study boys and girls between the ages of 13-15 were selected to play both an Xbox 360 game (Project Gotham Racing 3) and Wii games (Wii Sports). Later the Journal would compare calories burned by the kids while playing each of the games.

The results were unsurprising. The Wii used on average 51 percent more energy than playing a sedentary Xbox 360 game. The Wii Sport game Tennis demanded the most energy from study participants with an energy expenditure of 750 kilo joule (a kilo joule is an international system unit for measuring energy). Wii Boxing expended 730kj and Wii Bowling at 700kj. By comparison, playing Xbox 360 games had a mean energy expenditure of 450kj - a measurement just slightly higher than resting (300kj).

"You'll be able to see who's gaining traction and losing traction," said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. However, Pachter predicted that the 2008 holidays will be even more competitive if the Wii is in better supply and if prices of all three consoles drop further.

The Wii, which sells for $250 and features a motion-sensitive controller, sold 13.2 million units worldwide as of September, Nintendo said. Microsoft reported that the Xbox 360 -- in models priced from $280 to $450 -- had sold 13.4 million units at the time. Then, in October, U.S. sales of the Wii exceeded Xbox 360 sales, according to the NPD Group. Combined with the Nintendo console's strength in the Japanese market, that effectively would bring the two into a dead heat in cumulative sales.

The PlayStation 3, which sells for $400 and $500, has sold 5.6 million units worldwide, a company spokesman said. Sony's PlayStation 2 dominated the previous console generation.

The active-play phenomenon started by Wii Sports now spreads to your whole body thanks to the pressure-sensitive Wii Balance Board (name not final), which comes packed with Wii Fit. The board is used for an extensive array of fun and dynamic activities, including aerobics, yoga, muscle stretches and games. Many of these activities focus towards providing a "core" workout, a popular exercise method that emphasizes slower, controlled motions. Family members will have fun staying active and talking about and comparing their results and progress on a new channel on the Wii Menu.

The Wii has pummeled its rivals in a head-to-head battle in next-generation video game consoles involving Sony's PlayStation 3, which has been plagued with production problems, and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Iwata refused to disclose the monthly production capacity for the Wii, and said it was too early to say by how much the production was being raised.

But he said efforts were underway to increase production, and more machines will get delivered to stores around the world.

"We will do our best to offer the machine for those who are waiting," he said at a Tokyo hall.

The Wii's motion-sensitive remote control wand has made it hit even with people unaccustomed to playing video games. It faced some minor problems early on with its wand, which flew out of the hands of some overzealous players, snapping the strap and at times crashing into TVs. But that hasn't dented profits, and the console is still flying off store shelves.

Wii systems are currently on NCL's newest ship - Norwegian Pearl - and all NCL America ships. Wii will be rolled out on the rest of the NCL fleet by next month. The systems are equipped with Wii Sports, offering five distinct sports experiences: tennis, golf, baseball, boxing and bowling. Other games available on the ships include Wii Play, WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Excite Truck.

"With its active, engaging and inviting game experiences appealing to every age from kids to parents to grandparents, the Wii from Nintendo is a natural fit for Freestyle Cruising," said Colin Veitch, NCL's president and CEO. "With the addition of Wii to our on-board activities, we can now offer bowling, boxing, golf, tennis and baseball across the entire fleet. Cheering, yelling and high-fives will be highly encouraged."

"Millions of people around the world continue to discover the fun of playing Wii with their friends and families," says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. "Norwegian Cruise Line is a great partner, as they offer us direct access to non-traditional gamers. Our partnership reinforces how Wii's social phenomenon continues to grow, from the centerpiece of gaming parties, to a workout supplement, to a fun facet of vacation cruises."

On each ship, Wii systems/setups will be located in the atrium and other public rooms allowing guests to gather and play against each other while viewing the game on large video screens. Each ship's Kid's Crew facility will also feature two Wii kiosks providing kids-only fun. The ships will also host tournaments and other activities around the games.

Published by SEGA across Europe and North America, and published by Nintendo in the Japanese market, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games will be available for Holiday 2007 and is licensed through a worldwide partnership with International Sports Multimedia (ISM), the exclusive interactive entertainment software licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

In Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, players will compete in events that take place in environments based on the official venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Using a supporting cast of characters from the amazing worlds of both Mario and Sonic, gamers will be able to compete as or against a range of lovable personalities including Mario, Sonic, Luigi, Knuckles, Yoshi, Tails and more. Innovative usage of the Wii and DS control systems to maneuver a favorite character will allow players to race the likes of Mario and Sonic down the 100m track, engage in exhilarating rallies in table tennis and churn water in a swimming heat, all while competing for the much sought after gold medal.

"We are thrilled to partner with Nintendo and ISM on this groundbreaking title," said Hisao Oguchi, President and Chief Operating Officer, SEGA Corporation. "For the first time, two of the world's greatest games' characters come together to compete in the world's greatest sporting event and we couldn't be more excited."

"Mario and Sonic have been respectful rivals since the early days of video games," says Shigeru Miyamoto, Senior Managing Director and General Manager, Entertainment Analysis and Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd.. "In fact, for a long time they have been discussing the possibility of one day competing against each other. Now that they have been given the perfect opportunity to meet at the Olympic Games, we may finally learn who is actually faster, Mario or Sonic?"

We've finally gotten a good look at EA's mysterious MySims, the blockbuster series' offbeat Wii rendition. Our first glimpses of the game suggested something along the lines of Animal Crossing, with surprisingly cute characters and a bright, colorful world -- and now that we've played a little of an extremely early build of the game, it seems those first impressions were partly correct.

But only partly. There's much more to MySims than a simple Animal Crossing rip-off. On the contrary, it seems to embrace the entirety of the "life simulator" genre, with nods to Harvest Moon (players are tasked with bringing new vigor to a run-down town) and even its own heritage -- running errands to build relationships with NPCs (a la The Urbz) and rebuilding the town (kind of like that one game, SimCity). By all appearances, it's a new perspective on a long-running series that promises at once to be refreshing and faithful.

In recent weeks, the Web has been full of reports of excited gamers losing their grip on the Wii's controller or smacking their arms into nearby objects.

After issuing a general ``calm down'' to its customers a week ago, Nintendo Co. responded by quietly beefing up the controller's fabric wrist strap, spokeswoman Beth Llewelyn said.

The recall was announced after Llewelyn made her comment.

The stories of damage and injury certainly haven't hurt sales. The market research company NPD Group estimates that U.S. consumers bought 476,000 Wiis in the two weeks following its Nov. 17 launch. That beat Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 console, which sold just under 200,000 units in roughly the same period amid widespread shortages.

It is learnt that the strap is connected to a motion sensitive controller that is used to control the on-screen action, and is used to mimic the motions of a tennis racket, golf club or sword, depending on the game. Besides, the Wii strap is an important safety feature of the controller, which is waved around vigorously in a typical game. And all the games for the Wii come with regular safety messages that remind players to keep the wrist strap on.

In a statement, Yasuhiro Minagawa, Company Spokesman, said that Nintendo will offer customers to exchange the old straps, which have a 0.6 millimeter (0.024 inch) diameter, for a beefed up strap that has a diameter of 1 millimeter (0.04 inch.)

Assuming that Reggie wasn't referring to the second quarter of fiscal year 2007 -- which ended, like, a few days ago -- when he made the commitment on SpikeTV's Game Head show, it sounds like the first, unnamed online titles will begin trickling out in the March/April time frame. As you're probably aware, Japan's already had a taste of networked Wii gaming in the form of launch title Pokemon Battle Revolution, but Reggie kept the details about future multiplayer games close to his chest -- those titles will be revealed early next year, he said. Reggie also let slip the fact that new Wii channels are in the works, though once again, he omitted any real concrete information concerning either their content or scheduled rollout. So there you have it: if all goes according to plan, we should be able to hold a Gears of Peace-style event for the Wii in early spring; still, we can't promise that pwning us in Mario Kart will be quite as rewarding as draining our Crimson Omen with a hail of machine gun fire.

The new console has been wildly successful, selling out at stores and winning high marks from critics and game buffs. But as players spend more time with the Wii, some are noticing that hours waving the game's controller around can add up to fairly intense exertion -- resulting in aches and pains common in more familiar forms of exercise. They're reporting aching backs, sore shoulders -- even something some have dubbed "Wii elbow."

"It's harder than playing basketball," says Kaitlin Franke, a 12-year-old from Louisville, Ky. She has been camped out in front of her family's TV, fine-tuning her bowling motion and practicing boxing footwork in two of the Wii's games. Almost immediately, she says, her right arm started to feel numb.

In Rochester, Minn., Jeremy Scherer and his wife spent three hours playing tennis and bowling, two of the games included with the Wii. Mr. Scherer says he managed to improve his scores -- at the cost of shoulders and back that were still aching the next day. "I was using muscles I hadn't used in a while," says Mr. Scherer, a computer programmer who describes himself as "not very active." Mr. Scherer is vowing nightly "Wii workouts" to get in better shape.

Another hazard: collisions. All those flailing arms can sometimes inadvertently smack into lamps, furniture and even competing players. IGN.com, a popular site that reviews videogames, said one player testing the Wii lost her grip and sent the controller flying into a wall. Blaine Stuart of Rochester, N.Y., mistakenly whacked his fiancée, Shelly Haefele, while playing tennis and also accidentally hit his dog while bowling.

But a big test of the company’s strategy will come this fall with the release of its new video game console, the Wii (pronounced WEE), which will be introduced Nov. 19 in North America and in December in the rest of the world. If the device does not sell better than the GameCube, it would consign Nintendo to a more distant third place in the console business. While the new Microsoft and Sony consoles will have faster chips and more extravagant features, Nintendo is steering clear of that technology in favor of a controller for Wii that senses motion in real space.

In the Wii game Red Steel, for example, the gamer jabs the controller as if it were a sword.

"Most of the game business is going down a similar path toward hyperrealistic graphics which recreate sports or movies," said Shigeru Miyamoto, a senior managing director at Nintendo and the designer of Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, and scores of the medium's biggest hits.

"We want to put a little more art into it and do it in a way that casual consumers can enjoy the games," Mr. Miyamoto said in an interview through a translator.

The Wii, which is about the size of a large paperback book, is both cheaper and smaller than Sony Corp.'s much-awaited PlayStation 3, which launches just two days earlier with $500 and $600 models.

The Wii (pronounced "wee") is the successor to Nintendo's GameCube, the third-best selling console of its generation after the PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox. Nintendo's Game Boy and DS are dominant in the market for portable game machines, but the company hasn't been a market leader in consoles since the early 1990s.

The company had promised to launch the Wii sometime in the last quarter of this year. By bringing it out on time, it's avoiding Sony's embarrassing PlayStation 3 delays.

The Wii breaks the mold of console controllers: It's a slim wand that communicates the user's movements wirelessly to the main machine. Nintendo demonstrated a bowling game in which the player swings the wand like he's throwing a ball down the lane. The wand relies in part on a sensor bar that needs to be installed, with tape or other means, on the front of the TV set, adding somewhat to the complexity of the setup.

While Nintendo has not made any formal announcements about the launch date for the Wii, most of the industry has expected the machine to hit retail at approximately the same time as Sony's PlayStation 3 (which is set for November 17). Now, industry observers - and insiders - say they expect the system to be available in October, with late September a dark horse candidate.

Indeed, the company appears to be already manufacturing final retail units of the Wii, according to a June 21st analyst's note from P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research. That would give it a significant head start over Sony (Charts), which has yet to begin final manufacturing of the PlayStation 3. Microsoft's first Xbox 360 did not roll off the assembly line last year until 69 days before the on sale date of Nov. 22. (That late start in production is the root cause behind last holiday's shortages.)

Nintendo UK has denied a report in British tabloid the Daily Star that Nintendo Wii will launch "at the end of November, priced around £170".

"It's pure speculation on the part of the newspaper - we have made no announcements regarding Wii price or software," a spokesperson told our sister site Eurogamer this morning.

The Daily Star report was based on a recent press event for Nintendo Wii hosted in London, where Nintendo showed off a number of the games featured at E3 to lifestyle and newspaper press.

"Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak," the company said in its flash presentation of the name. "No confusion. No need to abbreviate."

The unusual spelling is meant to symbolize both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.

As it prepares to enter the next generation, Nintendo has taken a different stance than many of its competitors. Rather than focusing on visual and technical upgrades, the company has revamped how players control games, in an effort to reach beyond the traditional gaming audience.

The move has been fairly successful so far. The Nintendo DS, a handheld system that was the first step in the plan, has sold well - as has non-traditional games like "Nintendogs" and "Brain Age". The Wii will use a remote control-like device to control games. The wireless unit, using internal sensors, will translate wrist and hand movements into onscreen actions.

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo of Japan, told me last week that while the company has no control over what its partners ask for their games, "I cannot imagine any first party title could be priced for more than $50."

Development costs in the next generation have been one of the talking points for Nintendo for several months. The company has repeatedly said flashier graphics on the same games will only drive up costs, not increase the industry's appeal. Third party publishers are hoping otherwise, as games for the Xbox 360 (and, if pricing goes as expected, for the PlayStation 3) regularly hover in the $60 range.

"In the US, we're going to see the next generation cost an awful lot," said Iwata. "I really don't think that there's going to be a lot of acceptance by current customers of the $60 price tag. They may allow that for a limited number of premium titles, but not all."

Microsoft (Research) and Sony (Research) hope to supplement their income with digital distribution, selling games and more via their online services. Xbox 360 owners are able to download new, small games onto their hard drive for a small fee (typically no more than $10). The model will likely be the same with the PS3.

n an interview featured in today's edition of Japanese newspaper Sankei Shinbun, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata stated, "We can't disclose the Revolution's release period yet, but we have no plans to miss out on the year-end sales battle. As for North America, we need to release it by Thanksgiving, or otherwise we won't receive support from the retail industry. So the Revolution will be released prior to that period."

Iwata avoided any specific comments about how much the Revolution would cost. However, he reiterated that the console will be reasonably priced. "The amount of money that people are willing to spend on videogames is getting less every year," he said. "Even if it's a superb machine, it's not going to sell if it's 50,000 yen ($434). We plan to make [the Revolution] an affordable price."

Quoted in Interactive Investor today, Evan Wilson of Pacific Crest Securities, said that PS3 will "most likely" be released in November with 1 million units, followed by a European launch in March 2007. He said the Japanese launch would also be backed by about a million units this summer.

Nintendo will announce its next-generation games console, Revolution, next May, the company has revealed.

The full disclosure will take place just ahead of the E3 games industry bash in Los Angeles, where Nintendo this year gave a glimpse of Revolution's design but provided few hard details.

In September, Nintendo unveiled the movement-tracking controller the console will ship with.

With the Xbox 360 now on sale in the US, and coming to Europe this coming Friday - the Japanese debut will take place later this month - attention is turning to rival products from Sony and Nintendo.

Nintendo breaks with more than 20 years of video game history by abandoning the traditional controller held with two hands and introducing an all-new freehand-style unit held with one hand.

The intuitive, pioneering interface allows players to run, jump, spin, slide, shoot, steer, accelerate, bank, dive, kick, throw and score in a way never experienced in the history of gaming.

"The feeling is so natural and real, as soon as players use the controller, their minds will spin with the possibilities of how this will change gaming as we know it today," explains Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president. "This is an extremely exciting innovation -- one that will thrill current players and entice new ones."

When picked up and pointed at the screen, the controller gives a lightning-quick element of interaction, sensing motion, depth, positioning and targeting dictated by movement of the controller itself.

The controller also allows for a variety of expansions, including a "nunchuk" style analog unit offering the enhanced game-play control hard-core gamers demand.

Freedom of design: A dynamic development architecture equally accommodates both big-budget, high-profile game 'masterpieces' as well as indie games conceived by individual developers equipped with only a big idea.