Digital downloads seem to be the way of the future, looking at the current landscape of the gaming industry now. Even analysts say that retail will be overtaken by digital distribution in a mere three years' time. Nintendo's big boss, Satoru Iwata, begs to differ, however. To him, digital distribution will sure be a hit -- but not till 20 years later.

After four years of staying on top, it's the first time for the Wii to experience a sales decline. Satoru Iwata owns up to the issue, but remains optimistic about Nintendo bouncing back into the game. Much of that is apparent as early as now - Nintendo is steadily adding more games into WiiWare and Virtual Console, grabbing more big Wiixclusives, unleashing the Black Wii, and even introduces a new king-sized DSi.

by Glenn M.

Japan is without a doubt the Monster Hunter capital of the world, so what happens when you release the next big Monster Hunter title there on a new console? That console sells, of course. That's what happened with the Nintendo Wii, which saw sales quadruple following the release of Monster Hunter 3. Find out how each console fared in the latest Japanese hardware sales charts after the jump.

If you're reading this, I'm sure you would be expecting Nintendo news spanning across E3. But since we're doing a QuickPeek feature on E3, we're gonna stick with the news outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo for now. Besides, there's still some non-E3 info that you might wanna catch up on, especially this week's lineup of great homebrew, so you can get those on this week's recap.

Did you know that Nintendo actually started development on a new handheld, but eventually scrapped it? President Satoru Iwata revealed this himself in an interview with CNBC.

Ninty fans are getting the big guns at this coming E3 2009 as the bigwigs of Nintendo confirmed attendance for the event. Among the heavy-hitters making their way to the LA Convention Center on June 2, 2009 are Satoru Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime, and Cammie Dunaway.

Now this be crazy! The April results from NPD show that the DS outsold all other platforms combined, thanks to its whopping one million units sold. Satoru Iwata, adopt me now.

Nintendo is getting ready to roll out a new video streaming service for the Wii this year. The new service may not be limited only to the Wii, however.

At the ongoing GDC, Nintendo prez Iwata announced that the Wii is the fastest-selling game console in history. But who cares about that. You'll care more about the new Zelda game, as well as the firmware update that they issued as an answer to the Wii storage problem.

*UPDATE* now with trailer for the new Zelda game

Here's some wisdom on the economy from Nintendo prez Satoru Iwata: "When the economy is strong, people tend to buy three things from the top of their wish list. But when things are bad, people often buy only the first thing on their list."

So all you have to do is own Nintendo, and you'll have no problem. "Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list."