People have been talking about video game violence a lot lately, and Nintendo’s eShop update manages to hit both sides of the debate.

First up is the Wii U, which (at least for this week) is the place to go if you want video games about kicking people so hard that they explode. That’s because the only new item coming to the Wii U today is the full version of Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2, based on the long-running manga and animé series. While it’s on a disc in Japan, Ken’s Rage 2 is exclusive to the eShop in the United States and Europe.

Things get a little more highbrow for the 3DS this week. Well, it’s technically next week, because you’ll have to wait until then before you can download the full versions of Brain Age: Concentration Training (Sunday) and Pro Evolution Soccer 2013 3D (Tuesday).

Of course, if you’re Veruca Salt and want your new eShop games now, Nintendo also has a few things for you. Starting today, you can download the full versions of Splinter Cell 3D and Rayman 3D, as well as a demo of the upcoming Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan and the Nintendo Entertainment System classic Mega Man II.

Wrapping things up is the DSi, which only gets one new game this week: A vertical-scrolling platformer (think Doodle Jump) called Ah! Heaven. According to Nintendo’s page for the game, you play as a soul trying to get up to heaven, and while God is willing to open the gates for you, he is forcing you to reach them on your own. I’m not sure, but this sounds like a rather literal metaphor for something.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This is one of those weeks when Nintendo is going to have to sit down with all of its consoles and remind them that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it doesn’t have a “favorite.” Just because the Wii U and DSi aren’t getting any new content this week on their respective digital download services doesn’t mean they’re not special in their own way. It’s just that they’re not as special as the 3DS (or even the original Wii, to a lesser extent).

The headliner for this week’s 3DS-centric eShop update is the demo of Fire Emblem Awakening, the latest entry in Nintendo’s long-running turn-based strategy series. You can also get the full retail versions of kid-friendly minigame collection Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue and Deer Drive Legends (which is unfortunately not an animal-driving sim but a hunting game).

Wrapping things up for the 3DS is a port of the Game Boy puzzler Kirby’s Star Stacker and Tokyo Crash Mobs, a game that proves that the DSi isn’t the only place to find totally weird things that are hard to explain. Basically, it’s a Zuma-style puzzle game where you throw people at other people in order to knock them out of line that uses a mix of live-action video and “wacky digital graphics” (according to the official site).

Finally, the original Wii finally gets an Amazon Instant Video app, so you can stream content from the online retail giant’s Netflix competitor. Hey, it’s something at least.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo completely forgot about some of its systems in last week’s eShop update, so today it’s going to make it up to each and every Wii U owner with a small amount of new stuff. You can also get another full 3DS title and a Virtual Console game for the Wii, so it’s a good week for everybody. Sort of. You’ll see.

First up is the Wii U, which does get two additions to its digital download service: a pair of demos, one for ZombiU and one for NBA 2K13. For those who aren’t familiar, the former tasks you with navigating a zombie-infested London and features permanent character deaths, and the latter is a basketball game that constantly promotes the fact that rapper Jay-Z was an executive producer on it. As Nintendo adds more demos to the Wii U eShop, maybe someday it will decide to actually make them easier to find.

The big update for the 3DS is another full retail game: Hello Kitty Picnic with Sanrio Friends. If you’ve been thinking about picking that one up and want to avoid the judging eyes of a GameStop clerk, now’s your chance to have some minigame fun with Keroppi and Badtz-Maru like you’ve always wanted. If you have no heart and don’t like Hello Kitty, maybe this week’s 3DS eShop offerings are for you: Reel Fishing Paradise 3D Mini, Wild Adventures: Ultimate Deer Hunt 3D, and 101 DinoPets 3D. The first two are self-explanatory, but the third one is about dressing dinosaurs up in hats and is “more fun than a puppy,” according to Nintendo.

Seriously, of all the fake names to pick… .

As usual, the weirdest update of the week comes from the DSi. Its only new piece of downloadable content is an app called Biorhythm that somehow tracks your physical, intellectual, and emotional “cycles.” It sounds like the dream that the Nintendo Vitality Sensor still lives on as we all hoped it would.

Finally, another old 2D fighter comes to the original Wii’s Virtual Console, and for once, it wasn’t developed by SNK (though that studio did work on it, so it’s basically the same thing): World Heroes 2, which features characters based on various historical figures like Captain Kidd and … a football player. It was the ’90s — that’s what video games were like.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo is all about dual screens in this week’s eShop update, and specifically the ones attached to the 3DS and DSi. Technically, the Wii U also uses two screens, but it doesn’t get any new content this week, so I don’t care about it.

The biggest additions to the 3DS’ eShop are dungeon-crawler Unchained Blades and the full retail version of role-playing game-flavored beat-em-up Code of Princess. You can also check out Gunman Clive, a side-scrolling shooter set in the year 18XX (maybe it’s a Mega Man prequel?), and Air Battle Hockey 3D, which is a fancier version of those first-person Pong Flash games.

You can also watch a Best of 2012 collection on Nintendo Video, which features fan-favorite clips from the service’s comedy and music offerings. My personal pick? That Skrillex video from last month. Wub wub.

Moving on to the DSi, it gets a pair of new titles as well: Snowboard Xtreme, a game that will teach you how to “use the snowboard,” according to the official site, and Galaxy Saver, which is not a chain of discount grocery stores but a Space Invaders-style shooter that lets you team up with a friend to kill waves of incoming aliens.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo doesn’t have very many exciting surprises in its eShop updates for this week, but you can at least find something new for all four of its online-enabled systems. Yes, even the Wii!

First up is the 3DS, which, as usual, receives the bulk of the new content. Starting today, you can download full versions of Mario Tennis Open, Pilotwings Resort, Pokémon Rumble Blast, and Bit.Trip Saga. With those five additions, the amount of 3DS games you actually have to buy in a store drops even further, which is good news if you’re reading this in the Midwest, because you’re probably buried under a mountain of snow right now and may never be able to leave your house again.

Two more DLC packs come to New Super Mario Bros. 2 this week as well: The “Mystery Adventures Pack,” which sends you through a series of courses filled with hidden secrets, and the “Impossible Pack,” which claims to have the “highest difficulty ever.”

If you prefer your 3DS games more bite-sized, you can get a handful of eShop titles this week as well, including the Game Boy classic Wario Land 2, the formerly WiiWare-exclusive EscapeVektor, pixel art puzzler Pix3D, horse simulator Riding Stables 3D: Rivals In The Saddle (which is an awesome name), and a demo version of 2 Fast 4 Gnomz.

Moving on to the Wii U, its only new additions this week are full downloadable versions of the recently released Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune games, both of which are based on extremely successful and long-running shows that encourage you to yell at your TV about stupid people.

As for the DSi, it gets a holiday-themed spin on a popular slicing series with Cake Ninja: XMAS, strategy game Castle Conquerers: Heroes 2, and Anonymous Notes Chapter 3: From the Abyss. Despite that name, it’s actually not some kind of Nietzschean sexting application, but a “real action RPG with preeminent exhilaration set inside an infinitely-extending dungeon” (at least according to Nintendo), which is slightly more descriptive.

Finally, the Wii gets full and demo versions of Vampire Crystals, an isometric zombie-shooter that supports four-player co-op and looks pretty crazy based on the trailers at its official page.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s a great week for downloading games on Nintendo platforms as the various eShops are welcoming all of the usual staples today: Wii U and 3DS full titles and demos, quirky DSiWare games, another SNK classic for the Virtual Console, and even something slightly bizarre enough to make its mere existence a little funny.

But first up is the Wii U. Last week, we saw the introduction of the system’s very first demo, and today we can add two more to that list: Rayman Legends and Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed. You can also get the full version of Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition. Both it and the demos are available now.

Usually, Nintendo directs most of its eShop focus at the 3DS, but things are a little light this week for the super publisher’s latest handheld, with only one full retail game and a handful of smaller titles and demos ready for download. The full game is Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?!!, which is based on Cartoon Network’s impenetrably weird hit show about a guy with a sword and his crazy mutant dog. Adventure Time is also available as a demo, along with Art of Balance Touch, a physics-based eShop puzzler. You can also check out Crimson Shroud, a tabletop-style role-playing game from Level-5 (the developers of the Professor Layton series); Gardenscapes, which combines a hidden-object game and a gardening sim into something my mom would probably love; and a port of the NES title Ninja Gaiden.

Fans of SNK fighting games can once again turn to the Wii’s Virtual Console this week as Real Bout Fatal Fury is now for sale digitally. This was the fifth installment in the long-running series, and it introduced the “independent Sway Button,” according to Nintendo’s website. As someone who doesn’t follow this genre, I can only assume that is more exciting than it sounds.

Finally, things get weird when we move on to the DSi. First and not particularly weird is Rytmik World Music, a synthesizer app that lets you create music with the included 180+ sound samples. Second and fairly weird is Zombie Skape, a game about dodging zombies on a skateboard. Yes, a skateboard. Not a skapeboard, whatever that is. Lastly, one of the coolest sounding things of all time: Chuck E. Cheese’s Alien Defense Force, in which you play as the giant mouse mascot as he attempts to defeat the evil king of Planet Cheese. Unfortunately, it does not appear to include delicious cardboard-flavored pizza or offer free tokens with a good report card.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo is once again out to prove that it is totally serious about supporting its various online platforms, as you can download new content this week for not just the 3DS and Wii U but the DSi and original Wii as well. Yep, it’s one of those “something for everyone” updates, which should hopefully help clear out the boring taste of last week’s Pac-Man port and YouTube app.

First up is the 3DS eShop, which is getting loads of new content today, including a demo of two-screen-platformer Fractured Soul, two more Coin Rush DLC packs for New Super Mario Bros. 2, a port of the NES’ Mighty Bomb Jack, and an adventure game called Murder on the Titanic. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m pretty sure the iceberg did it.

Also, Nintendo has apparently put on its rooster hat and written “full version of Scribblenauts Unlimited” into its magic notebook, as you can now download that and the full versions of Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning, Classic Games Overload: Card & Puzzle Edition, and Lego The Lord of the Rings on the 3DS eShop.

Finally, dubstep artist Skrillex brings the wub wub to the Nintendo Video section with a video for his song Breakn’ A Sweat, which also features The Doors. I can only assume that classic rock fans are very happy about that pairing.

Moving on to the Wii U, the system gets one of its first demos: FIFA Soccer 13. Adding more demos like this should bode well for the console going forward, especially since Nintendo shows no signs of decreasing the amount of full retail games it adds to the eShop. Speaking of, this week you can download Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade, Ben 10 Omniverse, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, and Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game.

Wrapping things up with the DSi and the Wii, the former gets hidden object/minigame collection Christmas Wonderland 2 and role-playing game Crystal Adventure, while the latter finally gets a Virtual Console title that isn’t an old SNK brawler: the arcade classic BurgerTime. It’s still no Earthbound, but at least you get to kill pickle monsters.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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After the Wii came out, Nintendo supported it with fairly consistent Virtual Console and WiiWare releases. Then they became less and less consistent; now the only offerings are monthly SNK ports. If you’re one of the people who has already picked up a Wii U, you’re probably hoping that Nintendo can maintain updates as exciting as last week’s veritable Thanksgiving feast, when the company added nearly every launch game to the system’s eShop.

Unfortunately, the Wii U is looking a bit too much like its predecessor this week, as the only new thing for you to download is a YouTube app. But hey, it’s free, and you can watch videos on the tablet screen.

Thankfully, things look better on the 3DS (but only slightly). Starting today, you can download a port of the NES version of Pac-Man and an airport management sim/puzzle game called Aero Porter. Developed by Level-5 (the studio behind the Professor Layton series), Aero Porter tasks you with sorting luggage, customizing and upgrading your planes and airport, and, according to the official page, “avoiding security mishaps.” That last one sounds a bit stressful. Both games are available for $4.99.

Finally, a pair of new titles are available on DSiWare this week as well. First is Invasion of the Alien Blobs, an arcade-style action game in which you poke the titular alien blobs with the stylus in order to kill them, and second is Bloons TD 4, a tower defense variant of the popular series about a monkey shooting a cannon at balloons. Both are available now, the former for $1.99 and the latter for $4.99.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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After last week’s slim offerings, Nintendo is peeling off and then gingerly applying a few more exciting additions to its various digital distribution services this week.

See, that was a sticker reference, because Paper Mario: Sticker Star will be available in stores and on the 3DS eShop on Sunday. It joins Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, New Super Mario Bros. 2, and a handful of other games that aren’t focused on a plumber’s quest to murder turtles in the 3DS’s growing batch of full titles you can download from the eShop. GamesBeat’s own Jeff Grubb reviewed Sticker Star earlier this week and was less than impressed by its central gimmick, but he’s probably just waiting for the inevitable scratch-and-sniff-enabled sequel.

3DS owners can also check out a demo for Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion this week. Or if you prefer your mice to be yellow and have electric powers, you can download Pokédex 3D Pro, an application that sorts and ranks more than 640 of the pocket monsters. You can get started on figuring out which Pokémon is the best (spoiler: Meowth) by downloading the Pokédex today for $14.99. No word yet on whether or not PETA is working on a parody version, but we’ll keep you posted.

If you’re looking for something less high-profile, you can download a pair of new eShop-exclusive titles starting today: Johnny Hotshot and Dress To Play: Cute Witches. The former is not only a badass nickname but also a game about a kid who gets sucked into his favorite arcade machine, while the other is about picking out clothes for little witch girls and then taking them on adventures.

As usual, Nintendo is even gracious enough to throw a pittance to those of you who don’t have a 3DS, like the two new DSiWare games — Come On! Dragons and Smart Girl’s Playhouse Mini — that you can download this week. Also, for the third time in as many months, the only addition to the Wii’s Virtual Console is another old SNK game: Sengoku 2. Nintendo may have turned its back on the service a long time ago, but it looks like you’ll have random ports like this to keep the blue light flashing on your Wii until the sun explodes.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo knows you don’t like going to the store to buy video games. It has already made great strides in creating a world in which its fans never have to go outside (by selling New Super Mario Bros. 2 digitally on the 3DS eShop the same day it went on sale at retail), and today it makes a few more.

Joining NSMB2 are four more of Nintendo’s recent handheld hits: Super Mario 3D Land, Star Fox 64 3D, Mario Kart 7, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. All of these are available now for $39.99, which is their full retail price. However, considering that first-party Nintendo games rarely drop in price (if at all), the small premium you have to pay for the luxury of having Fox McCloud and Falco Lombardi delivered right into your hands might just be worth it.

Throwing a bone to the non-existent 3DS owners interested in more games than just those I mentioned up above, Nintendo’s weekly download report has revealed a few more items will be popping up on the eShop in the coming days. These include Sparkle Snapshots 3D, a $5 app that allows you to add badass things like ribbons and glitter to the photos taken with your 3DS camera, and a demo for something called Moshi Monsters Moshlings Theme Park. The download report was unclear about what any of those words mean, but based on the screenshots, I assume it has something to do with a castle eating a dog.

Considerably less confusing is Style Savvy: Trendsetters, which is unfortunately arriving too late to celebrate tonight’s Project Runway season finale (I’m on Team Christopher!), but will be available digitally on Oct. 22, the same day it arrives in stores. Apparently this game, unlike its DS predecessor, allows you to design clothes for women and men. I know a thing or two about men’s fashion (as evidenced by the Voltron T-shirt I’m wearing), so I think I’d do extremely well at this.

Finishing off the week’s eShop announcements are the original Gradius, available now for $4.99, and Dinosaur Office: Halloween Spooktacular!. I gather that it’s a cartoon about dinosaurs working in an office and getting into Halloween-related shenanigans, which sounds incredible, so I’d suggest checking it out and getting back to me.

Finally, if you’re still living in the Stone Age and don’t have a 3DS, Puzzler World XL (available now on the DSi Shop) and Reel Fishing Ocean Challenge (which features a pun in the title) are available now on the Wii Shop Channel).

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you’ve been shopping around for a portable Nintendo system but aren’t sure if you want to deal with that third dimension just yet, you’ll want to wait just a little longer before you proceed to the checkout. Effective May 20, the suggested retail price for the DSi will drop from $149.99 to $99.99, and the plus-sized XL will go from $169.99 to $129.99.

“The new suggested retail prices provide an even greater incentive to pick up the systems, and provide an easy option for parents who want to introduce younger kids to their first portable games,” Nintendo said in its press release.

The drop on the XL is especially significant, since it has cost the same as the newer 3DS since Nintendo dropped the price on that system last year. The console maker pledged to decrease its manufacturing overhead on its portable systems during its financial briefing last month.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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40.1 million of the 77 million Americans playing games on mobile devices play them on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad — nearly catching Nintendo’s 41 million gamers playing the DS and DSi and blowing well past Sony’s 18 million gamers on its Playstation Portable device — according to the Newzoo International Gamers Survey 2010.

Jobs’ announcement came at an Apple event unveiling its new line of iPods, an updated operating system and a new model of the Apple TV. The new lineup included a revamped iPod Touch sporting Apple’s A4 processor that Apple is seemingly embracing as a gaming platform with the unveil of an Unreal 3 engine-powered game from Epic Games, the creators of the Gears of War series.

Sales of Apple’s iPods have been slipping as of late — in its most recent quarterly report, sales of iPods were down 8 percent from a year earlier despite posting blowout numbers in its other sales categories. The outlook for mobile games, though, looks good, as NPD group indicated that it would soon count sales of mobile games as a growing part of the market.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo

The Japanese video game company is cutting $20 off the price of both units. The DSi will sell for $149, down from $169, and the DSi XL (which has a larger screen) will be $169, down from $189. The DS Lite model will remain unchanged at $129.

The DS family of handhelds has been the most successful portable gaming device to date, with more than 133 million units sold since 2004. About 42.3 million have been sold in the U.S. But Nintendo is facing pressure from competitors such as Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, which are similarly priced but offer lots of low-cost game apps.

“We know shoppers want to get the maximum value out of every dollar they spend,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Our new Nintendo DSi prices make it easier than ever for consumers to access the tremendous variety of games, applications and social tools on the Nintendo DSi and Nintendo DSi XL systems.”

Nintendo is launching a 3D version of the DS, dubbed the 3DS, sometime this fall.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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