For some reason, sprinkling a 20,000 crystals all over a $250 Nintendo Wii, with patterns that depict Mario on one side and Bowser on the other, turns it into a $4,000 “luxury item”. This is definitely in the grand tradition of all those other diamond encrusted gadgets we’ve featured before.

In case you’re interested, check it out on eBay.

According to tree-hugging journalist Lori Bongiorno, the Wii is a great choice for anyone looking to cut down on the electric bill. Here are the key points of her article:

Sony Playstation 3 is the most power-hungry model. For the 2007 version, you’ll spend about $12 a year if you turn the console off when you’re not using it, compared to about $134 if you leave it on all the time.

Microsoft Xbox 360 ranks a close second. If you shut it down when you’re not playing a game or watching a movie, it costs about $11 to operate annually. Leaving it on continuously will cost you $103.

Nintendo Wii uses significantly less energy than the others. It costs about $3 a year if you turn it off after use, compared to about $10 if you don’t.

Then again, as the obnoxious commenters of Lori’s article point out, who the heck leaves their gaming console on the whole day?!

(image from Yahoo! Green)

Weeeeee, I can hear the Brit’s shouting in the back. So you lucky blokes now have the excellent BBC’s iPlayer service right on your Nintendo Wii. What does that mean ?

For starters, the current beta version of the iPlayer service will cost 500 Wii points or £3.50 to get the Internet Channel installed. Its free from then on to be used. Anybody up for Dr Who reruns?

via t3

Looks like there is plenty of Wii games to go around but are there enough Wii consoles in the USA and UK? Hmm….Have you bought a Wii yet ? I have not touched my machine for the past 1 week now. Its been busy for me. Check out a whole list of Wii games here.

A study from Research and Markets says that the total number of games for the Nintendo Wii is reaching the total number of games available for the much older Xbox 360 console. According to the study Sega leads the pack with the most releases for current generation game consoles.Eight of the Sega releases are based on new intellectual properties. Other key findings in the reports are that Wii support levels seen in Christmas aren’t continuing into 2008.http://www.i4u.com/article14459.html