Nintendo has seen a significant drop in profits lately and most say Apple’s mobile gaming platform is to blame. Nintendo themselves are even keeping an eye on Apple. Sony and Microsoft is no longer the thorn in Mario’s side. It’s the big “little i”.
Is Apple really the biggest issue Nintendo is facing or is it a larger issue? Most likely, a little bit of both. As a hardcore Nintendo fan, I can safely say that my favorite gaming company has failed me the past few years. It all began with the shoddy release of Twilight Princess, the lack of core titles for the DS and then the Wii games that were off-shoots of “Sports” started to move through the shelves.
What’s left for us? The Moms, families and kids are only going to enjoy their Wii for so long. Then, they will put it down for a new toy that’s promising family fun. I have it on good authority to say this since I’ve sold my Nintendo Wii. Why? Because my kids stopped playing it and moved on to something else.
Nintendo has forgotten about their core audience. They have been pumping out games for a brand new audience that were quite successful. You can only go so far with the “Wii-fit-sports-swimming pool-billiards-backyard party” franchise. Frankly, you can only go so far with any franchise. I have to admit, even Zelda is in desperate need of an upgrade.

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Like other uber geeks, we are the beautiful people and we have awesome taste in tattoos, clothing, games, tech, gadgets and nostalgia. A generation grew up on Atari, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and the Mother of video game entertainment of the 1980’s – Nintendo. We proudly wear our dorky gamer badges on our bodies for all to see.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of Nintendo tattoos out there. We scoured the web to find our 5 favorite Nintendo character tattoos.

#5. Hey. Hey Listen!

Why Navi? Of all things, why Navi?! Because you said that as soon as you saw this tattoo. She’s embedded into your brain, the constant screaming of “Hey, hey hey listen!” and this brave man has made sure everyone will remember it. The tattoo is really well done, but we all hate him just a little bit.

Original

#4. Stars and Ghosts, oh my!

This tattoo comes complete with invincible stars and a Boo. It’s quite obvious this girl loves her Nintendo. We love her half-sleeve and her stars. The original photo by Kotaku stated this woman’s husband was the tattoo artist. We love both of them just a little.

#3. 8 Bit Mario

Memories of throwing your controller when Mario died, moving the controller with Mario to make him jump and wanting to kill Toad when your Princess was in another castle come to mind when looking at this tattoo. The original tattoo is credited to artist Jon Poulson on Flickr.

Number 2 and number 1 are after the break

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Netflix has announced that their internet streaming movie service will be coming to the Nintendo Wii in Spring 2010.  The service will be identical to the PS3 service added some months ago which requires a physical disc to assess the streaming content (as opposed to an Application installed directly on the console like the XBox 360).

Please keep in mind that with the Wii’s maximum resolution of 480P wide-screen, the Wii-Netflix service may not be capable of properly displaying 720P HD content.  Although it is unknown at this time, chances are the HD videos will be downscaled to 480P.

To reserve your Wii Netflix disc today, click on the image below.

What You Mean More Attachments? Am I Going To Vacuum The Place With It?

Get ready folks, WiiSports Resort and Wii Motion Plus are coming.  Nintendo has announced both the release dates and prices of WiiSports Resort and the Motion Plus attachment.

WiiSports Resort – The sequel to the hit “pack-in” game WiiSports.  The game will include the Motion Plus attachment and will retail for $49.99.  Release date is set at July 26th.

Motion Plus attachments, on their own, will be retailing for $19.99 and are scheduled to go on sale June 8th, six weeks earlier.

Some speculation about the spaced out release dates suggests that Nintendo will be selling Wii Motion Plus devices early to help cut down on shortages.  Only a handful of games will support Motion Plus when it initially comes out, including Tiget Woods PGA Tour 10 and EA’s Grand Slam Tennis both set to release on June 16th; however, as summer continues and WiiSports Resort hits the market things will definetly change.

Nintendo made a number of large announcements at the Game Developers Conference, some of which includes…

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Step off our Wind Waker boat and ride the rails in the next chapter of the Zelda franchise.  Making use of the visual styles of Wind Waker, Spirit Tracks looks to be another interesting reboot of the long running, critically aclaimed series.

Virtual Console Arcade: First there was NES, SNES, N64, TurboGrafx 16 and Genesis.  Soon after was Neo Geo, Sega Master System and the Commadore 64.  Now the old era of the arcade has arrived on the Virtual Console with such games as Gaplus, Mappy, StarForce and Tower of Druaga to start with.  Now if only they can get Operation Wolf (arcade or NES, though if Arcade i’d like Operation Thunderbolt) with Sensor Bar support.

Wii 4.0: SD Card Menu: When an SD card is inserted, an SD Card menu next to the Wii menu button becomes available.  Clicking on this icon will bring you to a screen that looks much the same as the main Wii channel guide, but with a black backdrop.  From here you can browse and play any Virtual Console, WiiWare or Channels directly from the card.

Wii 4.0: SDHC (High Capacity) Support: With SDHC based memory cards, the Wii is now capiable of having up to 32GBs of additional storage.  There have been some reports on some gaming forums that not all SDHC cards seem to be working properly, but the 4GB SDHC card I have seems to be working fine.

Wii 4.0: Download Wii Shop games to internal memory OR SD card: As the name suggests, users now have the option to install games from the Wii Shop Channel to either the internal 512MB or to a larger SD card.

The Wii System 4.0 Update is available for free by navigating to your Wii System options and selecting System Update on page 3.