It just doesn't stop! Nintendo's tiny money-printer, the DS, just saw the 50-millionth addition to its family get sold, which helped to push the stock to an all-time high after a very favorable rating from Goldman Sachs. No surprises there - they're doing well.

In other Nintendo/Wii-related news, as it turns out female gamers are alive and well and glued to their Nintendo consoles. After all the Xbox Live I've been playing, I was starting to think they didn't exist anymore, but I guess I haven't been playing enough Wi-Fi Mario Kart DS. Here's the rest of the good bits in snippets:

- An amazing Samus Wii-mod from that amazing modder-guy
- Okami is coming to the Wii!
- In the ain't-it-cool/they'll-get-sued-for-sure department, a Wiimote for your cell phone!?
- Wii party Evites now available...
- Wii're number one! Wii're number one...
- Samba de Amigo coming to Wii?
- Gears of War, robust 3D engines never coming to Wii :(

Also, hit the jump for the longer trailer to NiGHTS, and listen for the sound of my heart dropping throughout the bullshit cheese.

July was a clutch month for all three major companies, and all their of their respective consoles. I'll spoil the surprise: the Wii and DS are still kicking everyone's ass, though for the first time there was a dip in their Japanese sales numbers, giving the competition a chance to catch up a bit, and possibly implying that a similar trend could happen here (at the normal Japan-to-USA-trend-migration-time of the approximately 27 years it takes us to catch up with their tech markets). While technically this means that the growth rate of the massive, staggering gap between the Wii and the fat unloved PS3 had a chance to diminish somewhat, this means less of a catch-up and more a shrinkage in the ratio of Wii:PS3's sold (from 4:1 to 3:1; whoop-de-doo).

Meanwhile, back home, things got interesting. Despite early predictions that July would be a huge month for the PS3 wherein it would outsell the 1.5 year old Xbox 360, that never quite happened. The RRoD issues for the 360 piss off fanboys, but people are more concerned with playing the library of excellent games than buying a non-RRoD-prone PS3 and playing Blu-ray movies on it for lack of any decent software. Of course, all three companies wasted no time in putting their own positive spin on the numbers, Sony in particular, but in the end it's the same as it has been: Wii kills the next-gen sales (fastest selling console evarrr in the UK!), Xbox 360 is selling well and will continue to gather momentum as the game library increases (Halo 3 anyone?), and the PS3 is too big, too expensive, and too boring for the masses just yet.

Perhaps the rumored price cuts for the PS3 will kick it in the pants...

Great gallery of brick-pixellated Mario chalk art here!

Skinny Bill O'Reilly, 8-bit Mario, children. Fight!

Well, the numbers are all over the place, but one thing is abundantly clear: Nintendo, with the most underpowered and modest hardware/PR campaign, is clearly on top. By far. So much so scrambling for second place has been an ugly, ugly fight between the twin juggernauts of Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo basically smiled its way into first place while the other two were shelling each other with FPS screenshots and venomous statements. Not that they're not taking pot shots at Nintendo now...

Anyhow, the numbers don't lie. For a second, just a quick moment, Nintendo actually surpassed Sony's market value. Sony has sold 1 Million PS3 units in Japan, which according to the same report is more than double the meager 420K Xbox 360's that have sold there. "Oh really? That's nice for you" says Nintendo, chuckling on their way to the bank with huge bags of Yen after having sold their 3 millionth Wii in Japan. So, Sony beat Microsoft 2 to 1, and Nintendo beat Sony 3 to 1. Ouch.

Sony meanwhile remains confident that they can meet their sales goals of 11 million PS3's sold this year, pointing out helpfully that their system should be the logical choice that the Xbox 360's "don't even work!"

Yeah. Wii = money mint. So there. Despite ongoing Wii shortages, reports of increased production of the console may make this a white (and blue LED) Christmas for more people after all!

So, in case anyone isn't totally clear that Nintendo is on track to take over the world using robots made out of 10,000 yen bills, here's some tidbits.

The NY Times has an article detailing the path they took to reclaim the top spot in the console business, which coincides with reports saying that Wii production should reach 1.5 million units per month (thankfully, maybe Mark can finally get one), a bevy of much-needed blockbuster title release dates, and a fair bit of bragging by Reggie, claiming that third parties are dominating on Wii (which I don't see at all, but he's the boss), and that Sony is "grasping" to explain the pathetic PS3 sales.

In more interesting news, Kyoto schools are introducing the DS as an english learning tool, much in the same way I use my DS as a Japanese language learning tool. If only we'd catch on.

I had to sit in a slew of doctor's offices lately, where I had the chance to read every magazine I never would read normally. However, one caught my eye, the current issue of Fortune Magaine, which sums up quite nicely how the Wii surprised the heck outta everyone, including two little tech houses called Sony and Microsoft.

In short, it talks about how the Wii won the console wars. So Money magazine, from the deck of the financial publishing aircraft carrier is calling Nintendo as having achieved mission accomplished status.

It's a pretty good article, featuring some cute pix of Shigeru Miyamoto Wii boxing with the article, and sums up the appeal from a marketing standpoint. It also provides a bevy of useful numbers, useful for making PS3 fanboys cry, that is.

Despite all of this, while I continue to enjoy Wii Sports immensely, after having beaten Twilight Princess, I have to say that once I beat Paper Mario I'm anticipating being bored silly for lack of decent Wii games. I still really want to break down and get a 360 ahead of the 60 nm core version since there are a ton of incredible games in its library, and despite all of the fun the Wii is and the well-deserved accolades it's received, uh, where are the 3rd party games?

Anyhow, nice job Reggie!

Ho. Lee. Crap. Nintendo not only cracked the 10 MILLION mark with Japanese DSL sales, in addition to cleaning up during the "Golden Week" sales rush (a shopping blitz similar to our holiday shopping madness). One of my favorite titles ever, Taiko Drum Master, is expected to see a DS port soon (yay!), and the Rabbids are making a sequel appearance as well. Hell, even classics are money-printers: GBA classic Rhythm Tengoku is being ported to arcades!

And..... on the homebrew scene, the Wii gets a DVD player?

Let's assume you got bopped on the head last October, and were knocked out through all of the launch madness, PS3 sales woes and violence, and generally had no idea what was up with the "next-gen" wars these days. Chances are, you'd think the PS3 would be ruling the world by now, the Wii would be a child's toy, and the 360 would still be losing money for Microsoft.

And you'd be surprised. Why? Well, here you go Rip Van Winkle: an excellent summary of the Wii's success and Nintendo's business brilliance from CNN. A truly excellent read, going very in-depth as to how Nintendo made 3rd place a gold medal, and have managed to remain literally oozing with Yen.

Also you'd probably be frustrated that you wouldn't be able to buy one immediately (though you'd undoubtedly be confused as to why you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a pile of PS3 units for sale). Don't worry: Nintendo is promising to make that problem go away soon. We'll see.