Every week, it seems like there’s a new study that either praises or decries Nintendo’s Wii as a vehicle for getting into shape.

The most recent comes from the University of Mississippi. The study loaned Wii Fit units to eight families, who spent three months without the console and Balance Board, and three months using it. In conclusion, moderate Wii Fit use “may have provided insufficient stimulus for fitness changes,” said the study.

Nintendo would beg to differ. The company recently funded a study by the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Tokyo, which found that a third of the games in Wii Fit and Wii Sports meet the American Health Association’s guidelines for moderate exercise.

Yet another recent study from the American Council on Exercise found that the Wii Fit provides “underwhelming” health benefits. However, ACE conceded that Wii Sports is more strenuous, and could help people meet minimum intensity guidelines for exercise.

Do we really need all these studies to declare whether the Wii is an exercise machine? Of course not. If you’re sweating a little after a round of Wii Sports Boxing, chances are you got some exercise. You also probably understand that it’s less of a work out than actual boxing, but it’s better than sitting on the couch. Duh.

The bigger problem with trying to quantify the Wii’s fitness value is that there are too many variables. You can play Wii Sports Tennis from your couch, or you can flail around like maniac. You can play Wii Fit every day for two months, and then never touch it again. Like any exercise, the Wii is totally dependent on what you put into it.

Indeed, the most important point in the University of Mississippi study is glossed over as an afterthought: After three months, the amount of time families spent playing Wii Fit dropped by 82 percent. Sounds a lot like my gym-going habits.

I can’t say it better than Kotaku editor Brian Crecente did in a Forbes feature on the matter: “What Nintendo did is they tapped into that desire people have to be healthier… Everyone wants to work out, but nobody really wants to put the effort into it.”

No amount of scientific fitness measurements can account for that.

With Nintendo’s Wii worming its way into the homes of unlikely gamers, the number of U.S. households with video game consoles has spiked dramatically.

VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has the details on the State of Media Democracy report from consultancy Deloitte, which found that game console ownership jumped from 44 percent of homes three years ago to 60 percent this year.

That’s probably because Generation X and Baby Boomers have either rekindled a lost love for video games or discovered it anew thanks to the Wii. Roughly 70 percent of Gen Xers now own a game console, compared to 53 percent in 2006, and 44 percent of Boomers own a console, up 13 percent from three years ago.

There are certainly other contributing factors besides the Wii. The recession may have caused people to seek video games, which provide more hours of entertainment on the dollar than a vacation or even a movie. I’m also hesitant to pin the entire rise in game console ownership on the Nintendo. Though the Wii has dominated sales charts since its debut, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have appealed to broader audiences by functioning as Blu-ray and DVD players, respectively, and by offering videos on demand. But the Wii’s success shows that people don’t necessarily need those extra multimedia features in a game console. They want to play games, and in that regard, the Wii still reigns.

As I read back over this information, a lot of it seems pretty obvious, but when you realize that the majority of households have a game console — not just a PC for playing casual browser games — it’s pretty remarkable.

Starting next month, the Playstation 3 will be able to stream Netflix Instant Watch movies, and just like that, the Xbox 360 and Netflix are no longer an exclusive couple. But does this open relationship signal a similar offering for Nintendo’s Wii? Doubtful, for now at least.

The details thus far: PS3 owners will be able to order a free Blu-ray disc from Netflix that taps the Internet through BD-Live. This connects you to the streaming content through your Instant Queue or directly from Netflix’s Web site. The ship date for these magical discs wasn’t announced, but you can now sign-up for an alert. It’s not the ideal solution, but Sony and Netflix use the word “initially” when describing the process, so maybe a firmware update can fix this.

I’m wondering about the Wii because in June, Netflix surveyed some users on whether they’d like to see disc-assisted streaming on Nintendo’s console, just as Netflix conducted at least two similar surveys for Playstation 3 owners. The curious thing is that the Wii doesn’t have a Blu-ray player, and therefore, no BD-Live access, but I imagine something similar could be worked up with a regular game disc.

That’s assuming there’s enough interest in Netflix for the Wii to begin with. I don’t see why people wouldn’t want it, especially if they don’t already have another capable set-top box handy. But Nintendo might not love the idea, as its console has avoided multimedia features like the plague. Nintendo has been building a video channel in Japan, even adding Hollywood movies last June, but there hasn’t been any word that the “Minna no Theater Wii” (”Everyone’s Theater Wii”) will be available elsewhere.

If Nintendo does ever bring its video channel here, it’ll make Netflix look like a glaring omission, but right now, its absence bolsters the Wii’s posture as a straight-up gaming console, one that looks ever more different from both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

Update: For the record, Netflix told Joystiq that “the Wii represents a great opportunity given the size of its installed base, but we have nothing specific to say about it at this point.”

Nintendo finally responded to the pressure from Sony and Microsoft, cutting the Wii’s price to $200, effective this Sunday. There were plenty of warning signs – store circulars, retailer’s internal e-mails, and plain old common sense — but now it’s official.

I’ve said my piece about the Wii’s holiday prospects, but I had to chuckle today at the indirect responses from Sony and Microsoft, who individually offered the same message. To paraphrase: “Hey, we’re making motion controllers too, you know!”

Exhibit A is Microsoft’s brag-laden press release about Project Natal, an upcoming 3D motion-sensing camera peripheral for the Xbox 360. Microsoft name-dropped a dozen publishers who are “actively working on games” for the motion controller, and spoke of a “high-powered panel” at Tokyo Game Show, in which a few top game designers will talk about how they love the new technology.

The message is that Microsoft loves third-party development, and wants to get publishers on board early on. That’s a not-so-subtle dig at Nintendo, which has a reputation for putting its in-house work on a pedestal. I’m still waiting to see whether the accuracy-boosting Wii Motion Plus will be adopted by more than a half dozen brave publishers.

Not to be outdone, Sony revealed some concrete information on its remote-like motion controller. Resident Evil 5, which was released earlier this year, will get a “Directors Cut” with motion controls, and 13 other titles are in development now. Some are existing games, like Flower and EyePet, while others are mysterious working titles, such as “Champions of Time” and “Eccentric Slider.”

I’d say Sony has been far more open about its technology than Microsoft, which makes sense because the Playstation 3 motion controller isn’t that revolutionary. It’s merely a ticket for the motion control bandwagon, and Sony’s trying to get on board by next spring.

Will the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360 beat Nintendo at its own game? We’ve barely seen either in action, so it’s hard to tell on quality alone. But the Wii’s price cut, combined with undying interest in franchises such as Mario, will ensure Nintendo’s success for a long time.

Evidence that the Wii will become a $200 console is piling up, with the latest rumor coming from Best Buy management. Engadget scored a screen grab of a company letter, warning that the price drop will happen on Sunday, following an official announcement this Friday.

Alongside price cuts for the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 Elite, this is great news for anyone looking to buy a gaming console this holiday season. But even if you’ve got the itch now, consider holding out for the inevitable software bundles that will follow.

The Best Buy letter notes that stores should “use bundle bands to create bundles that tell a story and truly meet customers’ needs.” I’m not exactly sure what it means to tell a story with products, but I’ll bet Best Buy will try tacking on games and extra controllers to get you spending a little more. Those deals can work out in your favor if you are, in fact, buying the same things you planned to purchase a la carte.

Another thing to watch for are official bundles from the console maker. Ars Technica has a rumor that Xbox 360 Elites will include two games, Pure and Lego Batman, for the same $300 starting in mid-October. Sure, those wouldn’t be the first two games I’d choose, but for the same price tag they do sweeten the pot. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony and Nintendo started offering their own added incentives.

Just remember that your brand new gaming console is worthless without at least one game, and it’s not as fun without two controllers. As the holiday shopping season approaches, keep an eye out for bundles that will save you from spending too much beyond the console’s initial price tag.

It’s been rumored lately that Nintendo will cut the Wii’s price from $250 to $200 some time this month. That wouldn’t be a surprising maneuver, as Sony and Microsoft have recently tinkered with their own home console pricing.

But at first, I laughed off the news. Nintendo doesn’t even have a killer app for the holidays, I thought to myself, wondering whether a measly $50 price cut would really help juice the lead between the Wii and its competitors.

Then again, I initially forgot about Mario.

Confession: I’ve had enough of Mario ever since 2007′s Super Mario Galaxy — hailed by critics as nothing short of perfection. In my eyes, Mario 64 was the last game to bring with it a sense of magic, so either I simply grew out of Mario, or Nintendo dropped the ball. Either way, after 20-plus years of playing video games, I approached Galaxy with a “been there, done that” mindset, and the game didn’t sway me.

But I’m in the minority, and sometimes I lose sight of Mario’s enduring popularity. That’s why, when I looked at NPD’s August sales figures, I was shocked to see New Super Mario Bros., a Nintendo DS game that is 3 years old, hanging in 12th place for software sales. And that doesn’t count the number of people who bought a used copy of the game. The Nintendo DS was the top-selling console last month, at 552,900 units, and I’m sure many of those consumers chose New Super Mario Bros. as one of their first purchases.

Here’s the kicker: New Super Mario Bros. Wii is coming out in November. It’s essentially the same side-scrolling, 2D Mario game you’ve been playing for decades, but with up to four players at a time. The idea couldn’t bore me any more, but I know people will lap it up. Pair that with a Wii price cut, and Nintendo’s golden again.

I know, I said 2009 is the Year of the Playstation 3, and I still believe it, in that Sony will hit a major turning point this year. But Nintendo, which has reigned since the Wii debuted in 2006, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Okay, so it’s becoming clear that Nintendo doesn’t know exactly what to do with the Wii Vitality Sensor. The gadget, which supposedly measures pulse and other vitals from a player’s finger, was briefly introduced at E3 to a curious, if not bewildered press. Two months later, Nintendo brainchild Shigeru Miyamoto still won’t say how, exactly, the peripheral will be used.

“Ideally we would have been able to talk about this in terms of the software implementation rather than just the sensor itself,” Miyamoto told Mercury News. “I don’t have any indication for you (of what we have in the works) other than to say that we have lots of very creative ideas.”

Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera calls the sensor’s unveiling a misstep, because Nintendo failed to furnish any software that makes the hardware seem irresistible. I’ll take this a step further and say the Wii Vitality Sensor is headed towards Nintendo’s small but historically significant pile of video gaming vaporware.

The most notable of these half-baked failures is the Nintendo 64DD. This hardware expansion had considerable clout among my neighborhood friends, promising what seemed like infinite gaming muscle and endless possibilities. We read about it in Nintendo Power, waiting for a North American release that never came. Long after we had forgotten it, the Nintendo 64DD was released mainly as a subscription service in Japan, where it flopped.

There are other examples, like the Sony-developed SNES CD that ultimately evolved into the Playstation, along with “Project Atlantis,” a powerful successor to the Game Boy that was never officially confirmed, though it surfaced from obscurity this year. Though not exactly vaporware, there was also an unnamed, unexplained Nintendo handheld that was completed a few years ago and then scrapped.

It’s said that when Nintendo shelves an idea, the company tends to recycle it into future projects. This happened with a touch screen peripheral for the Game Boy Advance that eventually became the Nintendo DS, and I can see it happening again with the Wii Vitality Sensor. It’s not a flat-out bad idea, but it’ll have a tough time standing on its own. If we ever start hearing about the sensor in any significant detail, I’m guessing it will have already morphed into a different product altogether.

A game programmer is getting mouthy about the Wii, saying that an iPhone is more powerful for gaming.

This argument transpired at the forums (via GameZine) for TellTale, which developed Tales of Monkey Island as a downloadable title from the WiiWare online store. A programmer with the handle “Yare” explained that the Wii is just not meaty enough to address all of the issues players are having, including blurry textures and choppy framerates.

“Frame rate issues will probably get sorted out eventually, but keep in mind that the Wii is just not a powerful console,” Yare wrote. “An iPhone is much more powerful than a Wii, even.”

A boisterous claim, no doubt, but does it hold water? It’s hard to say given that neither Apple nor Nintendo freely discusses hardware specs. You can take a look at the leaked specs for both the Wii and the iPhone and be the judge, but even then you’d have a hard time making a direct comparison.

In any case, I don’t think it really matters. One of the things I like about WiiWare is how it forces simplicity. The console space is so otherwise littered with face-melting graphics that a space for constraint in game design and visual aesthetics is welcome. To that end, a couple of my favorite games for this generation of consoles – World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat – are downloadable WiiWare titles. Both games have simple foundations, but they manage to create complex challenges without relying on technical muscle.

I understand some of Yare’s concerns, particularly that WiiWare titles can be no larger than 40 MB in size (Nintendo has not explicitly confirmed this, but has said the company encourages smaller games). With Nintendo now allowing access to games directly from an SD card, there’s room to relax those constraints, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates should open for games of all sizes. I don’t want WiiWare to become musclebound.

Nintendo is getting closer to a streaming Wii video service that would translate well to Western audiences.

In Japan, where the Wii’s video channel launched in April, Hollywood films will be available through the same service that powers Blockbuster’s on demand offerings. Sonic Solutions, with its Roxio CinemaNow service, will partner with Fujisoft, which handles Nintendo’s “Minna no Theater Wii” (“Everyone’s Theater Wii”) channel.

It’s no stretch of the imagination to see this video service coming to the US and Europe. In addition to Blockbuster, CinemaNow is already available in the West through LG Blu-ray players, Dell PCs and Archos portable media players.

Paramount Pictures will be the first to offer content on Japanese Wiis, with new releases and catalog titles. Presumably, other studios will follow, and if I had to venture a guess, I’d say Nintendo will line up more content before considering a western migration.

In its current form, the Japanese video service is vastly different from those of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It’s more like Second Life, with Mii avatars socializing in a virtual living room. There are also coupons to download onto Nintendo DS handhelds and celebrities who drop in to peddle their own content. Before the CinemaNow partnership, videos were created specifically for the Wii.

I’m not sure whether that format would work outside of Japan, but with the addition of Hollywood films, a Wii video channel seems readier for export than ever.

Over the weekend, I finally had a chance to dig into Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 with the Wii MotionPlus, an accuracy-boosting dongle for the motion controller.

The game itself is a blast — there’s something inherently addicting about creating a likeness of yourself and molding it into a pro golfer — but for our purposes here, I’m more interested in the MotionPlus. The peripheral can detect pretty much exactly what you’re doing in real space and translate it into something on screen, but what really counts is how the game responds to that input, and it’s hard to find a metric with more subtleties than golf.

One thing’s certain: The game is staggeringly different with the added motion controls. Unplugging the dongle mid-game is a reminder of how awful the Wii’s controls were before, requiring little more than a slight arm flick to execute a full golf swing. The MotionPlus, by comparison, takes into account backswing, stroke speed and slight twists of the wrists.

On the game’s “Standard” difficulty setting, you can get away with plenty of non-traditional swings, including one-handed strokes and slapshots that channel Happy Gilmore. On this difficulty level, all that matters is how far your arms go back over your shoulder, stroke speed and how straight your wrists are aligned when “hitting the ball,” so to speak.

But crank the difficulty up to “Advanced” and the exploits become harder. It’s actually advantageous to swing like a real golfer on this setting, winding up without bending your elbows, then twisting the wrists slightly to bring the club all the way back. On the follow-through, hooks and slices become much more common.

Still, I’m not sure the Wii MotionPlus could teach someone how to swing properly, because there’s not enough feedback within the game. If you mess up, the game suggests that you try an easier setting, but it doesn’t explain in detail what’s wrong with the player’s swing. It’s impossible to tell whether a slice was caused by a twisted wrist or incorrect fundamentals.

If someone releases a proper golf trainer, we’ll know for sure how precise the MotionPlus can be. For now, I’m content to have fun.

When Nintendo releases the accuracy-boosting Wii MotionPlus peripheral next month, it’s possible that game developers won’t force players to use it, and those that do may consider it a gamble.

I get that impression from recent comments by Jason Vandenberghe, creative director for Red Steel 2. Speaking to Nintendo Power magazine (via Nintendo Dpad) , Vandenberghe said making MotionPlus mandatory for the hack-and-shoot game is “a huge risk,” but there’s no way around it.

“We have no idea what the penetration rate for Wii MotionPlus will be,” he said. “We assume high. We would like it to be high. I would love to say to you that it’ll be compatible with just a regular controller, but the gameplay simply isn’t there without MotionPlus.”

Given the Wii’s 45 million lifetime unit sales, I understand not every game maker wants to limit their product to a subgroup of players, but I always assumed the concept of MotionPlus would reboot the Wii and terminate the era of gimmicky gesture controls. Now, I’m not so sure.

Some game makers will try to have it both ways. Producers for EA’s Grand Slam Tennis, one of the first games to showcase MotionPlus, will also let players use a standard Wii Remote at no disadvantage against players with the peripheral. The intent is good — Wii owners won’t have to spend $20 more on each controller — but it reminds me of the way Mario Kart Wii allows you to use a thumbstick instead of steering the remote. If more accurate motion control isn’t a crucial part of the game, is it really an improvement?

Red Steel 2, meanwhile, will reportedly feature “more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion,” CVG reports. That sounds a lot more interesting than merely replacing static crosshairs with a moving pointer, as previous shooters have done, or relying on a limited set of pre-determined gestures to simulate swordplay.

I’m glad the producers of Red Steel are taking the leap. I hope it works out, and that other game developers follow suit, wholeheartedly.

We’re just over a month away from the release of Wii MotionPlus, an attachment to the Wii Remote that adds much-needed precision. Two EA Sports games, Tiger Woods 10 and Grand Slam Tennis, will be the first to show off the new technology, and hopefully they’ll be the antidote to Wii Sports’ heartless wrist flicking.

But an opinion piece by Crave’s Jeff Bakalar, titled “Is MotionPlus too little, too late for Nintendo?” got me thinking. The article brings up a familiar criticism of some Wii games’ tacked-on waggle controls when simple button presses would do and wonders, without a definitive conclusion, whether motion control’s ship has sailed.

For me, at least, accurate swordplay and sports simulation — both ideas that currently exist in half-baked form — still sound like a blast. To answer the core question, though, Nintendo may have missed its opportunity to dominate that experience.

It depends on whether Microsoft and Sony unveil their own motion control devices in the near future. Rumors of motion-tracking camera technology coming to the Xbox 360, which we reported on in February, have surfaced again, and Sony reportedly has its own motion controller in store. Now that everyone’s expected to cough up extra money for a cool gaming peripheral, the playing field is level.

As year after year of dominant Wii sales suggests, the average buyer of Nintendo’s console either didn’t know or didn’t care about the Wii Remote’s lack of accuracy when making the purchase. In more dedicated gaming circles, however, you still hear talk of “1:1″ control — that elusive idea of seeing one’s gestures mimicked precisely on screen, no matter how complex. Nintendo may be working with a bigger install base, but I don’t think its customers will be more inclined to pick up a new peripheral than owners of the other two consoles.

Come E3, if motion control comes to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, it’s anybody’s game. Best of all, the competition could inspire some great video games for everyone.

There appears to be a world domination plot afoot with Nintendo’s “Wii no Ma” video service, which will launch next week in Japan.

Until now, details on the service were slim, other than an announced partnership between Nintendo and media giant Dentsu to produce original content. The full scoop, revealed on Nintendo’s Japanese Web site and conveniently translated by Andria Sang, talks of a virtual world that blends eerily with the real.

The channel places Mii characters in a living room, where time passes by in equal proportion to the outside world. This is the hub for various other services offered in the channel. Foremost is the video channel, providing paid and ad-supported shows, as previously reported. Partner companies will have their own content, accessed by clicking on a plant in the room, as well as product samples that can be delivered to a pre-entered real world address. Weirder still, celebrities will occasionally visit the virtual home as “concierges” peddling additional programming.

In addition, DSi owners will be able to sync the handheld to the channel and download virtual coupons, which can be redeemed at participating retailers.

This is all pretty wild stuff — sort of like Second Life, but much more restrained — and you have to wonder how much of it, if any, will make it out of Japan. I can see the original content coming west, as it allows Nintendo to bypass the licensing kerfuffles that are making a mess of existing online video sites. And the delivery system is smart, drawing families in with another channel for their Miis.

But samples in the mail? Celebrity avatars invading your virtual home? They could be failures stateside, or Nintendo could strike gold again. I won’t venture a prediction.

Funny thing about the Internet age: When a video game company announces a significant improvement in its console, there needn’t be any countdown to implementation.

So it went at the Game Developers Conference today, where Nintendo announced common-sense SD card support for the Wii and said users could reap the benefits right now. Sure enough, when I updated my console (which, admittedly, took about 5 minutes), a small SD icon appeared in the lower left side of the Wii menu. Popping an SD card into the console’s front slot and selecting the menu icon revealed a bounty of open channel slots, ready to store my data. Kotaku reports that cards of up to 32 GB are now supported.

While downloadable games — such the classic NES titles offered through the Wii Shop channel — could be transferred to an SD card before, it was impossible to play them without transferring the file back to the Wii’s internal memory. You can now download games directly to the card, or transfer existing ones from the Wii’s internal memory, and load them from the SD menu. To protect against piracy, the Wii still uses a bit of system memory to load these games, but it’s a much more serviceable solution than before.

If you’re the kind of Wii owner who hasn’t drifted far from Wii Sports and maybe a few classic Virtual Console selections, you’ll probably never use the SD support. Still, it’s a big deal because of last year’s addition of WiiWare, a library of new games available for download. Nintendo has been quietly adding titles to the WiiWare catalog since last May, including the excellent World of Goo, but the Wii’s 512 MB built-in flash drive made it difficult to download too many of them. Maybe SD support will change that.

Now, if only Nintendo would allow demos for those WiiWare games, then we’d really have a fully-functional console on our hands…

For over two years, the Wii was regarded as a family system, and in many ways, it still is, with Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Mario Kart commanding most of the revolutionary console’s popularity. But a sudden turn of events hint of changes on the horizon.

This week’s release of Madworld — a high-profile and thoroughly blood-soaked affair — drew the ire of the National Institute on Media and the Family. The game’s main character uses a chainsaw and a variety of deadly environmental objects to maim his foes, earning more points for more gruesome kills. Here’s a statement from the watchdog group:

“In the past, the Wii has successfully sold itself as being the gaming console for the entire family and a way to bring family-game nights back into people’s living rooms. Unfortunately, Nintendo opened its doors to the violent video game genre. The National Institute on Media and the Family hopes that Nintendo does not lose sight of its initial audience and continues to offer quality, family-friendly games.”

I don’t think Nintendo will abandon the family audience — it’s too big of a market to lose, for one thing — but there are signs that the Wii is moving away from its image as a console strictly for kids, parents and the elderly.

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