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The Charismatic, Energetic, Takes-No-Prisoners Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, Reggie Fils-Aime, has become the new President of Nintendo of America. The current president will become the chairman of the board. Reggie will maintain his work as the overseers of the Sales and Marketing department as well as "lead the day-to-day operations of Nintendo of America." Mentioning the name "Reggie" to a hardcore Nintendo fan will generally elicit a big smile - this move will surely draw the fanbase closer to Nintendo as well as draw attention to the company as the Wii's release date draws nearer.

Source: Games Are Fun

After dropping the new-name bombshell, Nintendo must have realized that they had to come up with something good for E3 or risk being laughed out of the console market. (At least they seemed to realize that no one liked the new name.) But if you're looking for anything as concrete as, oh, a launch date, maybe, or a price, quit reading now. They don't have their act together that much.

What they did have was largely an amalgum of concept videos designed to show off the new--not next--generation of gaming. Mostly, they demonstrated how their new controller can function as a gun, a sword, a fishing rod, a tennis racket...and possibly a back scratcher, if they make it a little longer.

The real gem of the presentation was evidence that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will actually be released someday. In fact, it's planned in two versions, for both the GameCube and the new system. There has been little detail about what the differences will be, but they will have to be substantial if the new controller is to play a significant roll. Weapons and items are mapped to the D pad, and fighting is done by swinging the remote and the nunchaku attachment. Also, you'll get to hear sound effects from your hand thanks to the built-in speaker.

Source: GameSpot

In case you can't tell from the tone of the above, I'm feeling a wee bit (pun intended) disillusioned with the console formerly known as the Revolution. It seems like Nintendo is giving up producing things that gamers actually want and just trying to figure out something new. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I haven't heard much lately to suggest that Nintendo is in any way interested in making their supporters happy.

Personally, waving my arms around while playing a video game sounds like a pain in the butt.

At their recent presentation at E3, Sony dropped several PS3-related bombs, including several key pieces of info about the PS3.

The PS3's new controller is indeed a Dualshock 3. It looks extremely similar to the Dualshock 2, but now features a USB port and a built-in motion senseor with "six degrees of freedom". Here's a picture

The Sony PS3 will be available in two models - a standard version with 20 GB of hard drive space, and a deluxe version with 60 GB of hard drive space. The lighter version will cost $499 and the deluxe will cost $599. This is not a terribly surprising price, considering the PS3's specs and production cost, but it is also significantly more expensive than the prices of its competitors.

So yes, if you do the math, it is quite probable that you can buy both a Wii and an XBox 360 for the price of a single PS3 - I say "probable" because we aren't positive of the Wii's price yet, but we'll probably find that out at Nintendo's presentation tomorrow afternoon. Start saving up, people.

Source: Gamespot

EDIT: I edited in the controller bit. Here's the pic again: Dualshock 3

The DS Lite, the first (but possibly not the last) upgrade to the Nintendo DS portable system, will hit North American shores on the 11th of June, priced at $130 US. Earlier rumors of the DS Lite being packaged with a specific game at launch (most guesses involved New Super Mario Brothers) have proven to be false, while there are in fact no high-profile DS games coming out in the US that entire week. Japan has the Lite available in three colors (Crystal White, Enamel Navy, and Ice Blue), but right now we only know that the Crystal White color scheme will be available for the US release.

The DS Lite boasts four brightness settings, all of which are brighter than the normal DS's one brightness setting. It's significantly slimmer and 40% lighter than the original, but is still capable of playing all DS games and GBA games, albeit with GBA games noticeably portruding from their slot more so than on the DS. The screen size is the same as the original and the power, start, and select buttons were repositioned from the original. The DS Lite has seen immense popularity in Japan, with initial shipments selling out in its first day on the shelves.

EDIT: GS was wrong originally, but they fixed their post some hours ago; It's $129.99

Source: Gamespot

The official name of Nintendo's latest video game console has finally been announced. After months of speculation and some hope that they might just stick with "Revolution", the new third generation console will be...

Wii.

No, that's not a typo. It's pronounced like "we", and, to quote R51, "I wish it were on nintendo.co.jp so I could hope they wouldn't give it a stupid name for the US." It's unique, it's easy to remember, it's...spelled with two i's.

The flash is pretty good, though.

Source: Nintendo

Sony has announced that the retail price of the PS2 will drop from $149.99 to $129.99, only weeks after they adjusted the price of their PSP handheld and around a year and a half after the release of the PS2's slim model.

The PS2 is still the undisputed market leader in console sales, having sold more than double the amount of XBoxes and Gamecubes combined to date. Also, despite the upcoming release of the PS3, Sony will continue producing PS2 games well into the holiday season later this year. This is a stark contrast to Microsoft's strategy, which essentially abandoned the XBox immediately after the release of the XBox 360; Microsoft even raised the recommended price of the XBox by manditorily packaging new XBox units with Forza Motorsport after the release of the 360.

What this tells us is that Sony hasn't given up on their money machine just yet. It would appear that Sony is trying to gradually slow the production of new PS2 games to an eventual stop some time after the PS3's launch (rather than take Microsoft's more abrupt approach), and decreasing the price of the PS2 in order to increase sales enough to maintain the PS2's status as a valuable cash cow. We can only wait and see how the PS2's story ends, but right now it seems liike it is going to stubbornly cling to life for awhile longer.

Source: Joystiq