Nintendo is increasing the stakes in 
its fight for control of the handheld gaming market.
The company will drop the price of its popular DS Lite portable system to $99.99 on Sunday June 5. That $30 cut is the first time Nintendo has adjusted the system’s price since 2006.
The Easter Bunny apparently stuffed a 
few baskets with video games this year. The late holiday and a strong slate of titles overcame gloomy headlines of data theft to boost April video game sales by 26 percent, according to the NPD Group.
Hardware sales were also impressive, climbing 12 percent overall, though Microsoft and Sony had a lot more to celebrate than Nintendo did.
Sony’s network woes may have dominated 
headlines in April, but they didn’t do much to hurt overall sales in the video game industry.
Software sales, the most closely tracked data, climbed 26 percent to $503 million, according to The NPD Group, which tracks video game sales. (Analysts had expected a 15 percent increase.) This is the first month software sales have posted a year-over-year increase since November and only the third time they have done so in the past year.
For only the third time in the past year, retail 
game sales saw a year-over-year increase in April. And what a rise it was.
The NPD Group reports that software sales were up 26 percent last month to $503 million. Overall (including hardware and peripheral totals), the industry had brick and mortar sales of $930.7 million – a 20 percent increase.
With a new console set to be released
next year, Nintendo has cut the price of the Wii.
Beginning May 15, the system will drop from $200 to $150 and will come bundled with hit title Mario Kart along with the Wii racing wheel peripheral. At the same time, the company plans to launch a ‘greatest hits’ line of games — called Nintendo Selects — that will cost $20 instead of the usual $50.
Conduit 2 is hardly perfect, 
but it’s much better than most shooters on the Wii. The action is fairly well paced and the boss battles are fun. More importantly, though, the game never takes itself too seriously, injecting humor into the action — such as an enemy who shouts, after you’ve been shooting him for quite a while, “That’s it! I’m through negotiating!” The story, though, is pretty thin and some moments will have you wondering what the heck is going on. The multiplayer mode is a welcome addition, given the natural fit between online play and shooters. For parents, this is an example of the Wii’s limited online capabilities working in their favor, as they can easily monitor who children are playing with.
It’s official. Nintendo will have a new home console in stores next year.
The company confirmed the rumors Monday morning, saying it would have a playable version on display at this year’s E3 trade show in June. That’s also when the company plans to announce details on what will make the unnamed system notably different from its predecessor and competing systems.
Faced with rapidly declining sales and a less 
enthusiastic than expected reception to its newest handheld gaming device, Nintendo has confirmed that it will be releasing a successor to the Wii in 2012.
A prototype of the new device, which has been rumored for the past several weeks, will be unveiled at E3, the video game industry’s annual trade show in June.
When Nintendo announced Super Mario was on the
way to the 3DS in March, the company didn’t offer a lot of details.
Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s global president, tossed out a logo (which had a tail), showed a few screen shots and said we’d hear more at E3. It was a frustrating tease for fans.
While the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 
were born with 10-year life cycles in mind, the Wii hit the market with a much shorter projected lifespan.
With no support for high-definition graphics and shaky online multiplayer functionality, everyone including Nintendo knew the Wii would show its age first and would probably be the first console in need of an update.
Now there’s growing talk that the company could announce its successor as early as June.
Chris Morris: Journalist 