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Injured athletes may find themselves playing Nintendo’s Wii Fit as part of their rehabilitation.

This and other fitness-oriented video games have “great potential” for core strengthening and rehabilitation and may boost compliance with rehabilitation exercises, Sue Stanley-Green, a professor of athletic training at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, told Reuters Health.

“We are looking to incorporate Wii Fit into the athletic training room as far as rehabilitation, for example, on post-operative knees and ankles,” she noted in a telephone interview.

Fitness video games that have the user perform lower-body balance and weight-shifting activities could help patients with weight-bearing rehabilitation after an injury or surgery. (link)

With Crytek claiming its going to start developing games for consoles, only to then announce a PC exclusive, people have been talking about whether there will be more PC-only games released in the future. While there may technically be more PCs in the homes of consumers, the number of consoles is growing, and your 360 or PS3 is much better at playing games than your average home computer, an argument Roy Taylor, NVIDIA’s VP of Content Business Development, can’t ignore. He sees a trend in gaming: titles begin life on consoles, and are then improved for the PC.

“In the past, PC gaming development meant pandering to the lowest common denominator—which meant some poor integrated graphics,” Taylor told Eurogamer. “Today, developing a PC game means starting at a console, and console graphics are way above integrated graphics. That means the baseline is getting better. Now we’re going to add to that version additional features, additional content, to make the PC version even better.” (link)

Compared to basically every other appliance you have plugged in at home, the Playstation 3 sucks up more juice. That’s according to a new study by Australian consumer agency Choice, which found that when a PS3 is running, it sucks up five times more energy than a refrigerator. If you leave it on all the time for something like Folding@Home, you’re looking at an energy cost of nearly $250 a year.

The Xbox 360 isn’t all that much better, using 23.57kWh per week when idling compared to the PS3’s 31.74kWh. The Wii, on the other hand, is downright dainty in comparison, using only 2.97kWh per week when idling, less than 10% of the energy used by the PS3. (Gizmodo)
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The NPD console sales numbers have been released for April, stuffed with fascinating content. How did the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto stack up against each other? Did Mario Kart Wii sell as many copies as expected? Will Nintendo continue its winning streak?
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Before we break things down by company, it’s important to point out that the games industry is still going strong. “The industry continues to set a blistering sales pace, and now shows a year-to-date increase of 31 percent over last year’s record-setting revenues,” NPD Group’s Anita Frazier said. (link)

A company called “Immersion” holds a patent that allows them to claim royalties for things that vibrate or provide force-feedback. They’re the reason that Sony’s Playstation 3 controllers had no rumble features at first — it took losing an $82 million lawsuit before Sony capitulated.

But you know what else vibrates? Things you put inside yourself for sexual pleasure. (Including my personal all-natural pleasure generator: a jar of bees. Just be sure to keep the lid on tight or it won’t just be a colony that’s collapsing.)

Immersion didn’t want to enforce its patents on teledildonic gaming devices — the name is also the cleaning instructions! — so they licensed the rights to the blandly named “Internet Services, LLC”, who is in turn suing some other people and then the lawyer left so they sued him and oh I appear to be falling asleep. (link)

U.S. video game sales — including hardware and software — jumped 34 percent in February to hit $1.33 billion, even with two top-selling consoles in short supply, according to data from market researcher NPD Group.

Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 have been in such high demand stores are having a hard time keeping them in stock. Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said the company moved up shipments during the holidays and hasn’t been able to catch up since.

He added ”we should be in good shape” by the time ”Grand Theft Auto IV,” the highly anticipated latest installment of the Rockstar Games franchise, hits store shelves April 29.

The game, which will be available on the Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, is expected to boost sales of both consoles. Pre-orders have been better than expected, according to its publisher, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.

Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan, expects the game to sell about 9 million units during the company’s fiscal year, which ends in October. Roughly 6 million of this, he added, will be to Xbox 360 owners. (link)

Microsoft Corp said late on Wednesday it will cut the prices of its Xbox 360 video-game consoles in Canada, in a continuing battle with Nintendo Co Ltd’s Wii and Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3 for dominance of the gaming market.

But prices in the United States will not change, Microsoft spokesman David Dennis said, adding that each market makes its own decision on the matter.

Microsoft said in a statement it would cut the price of the Xbox 360 console to C$349 from C$399, while the premium Elite model with a larger hard drive would drop to C$449 from C$499. The more basic Arcade model is dropping to $279 from C$299. (link)

No More Heroes (Ubisoft, for the Wii): The last console game written by Goichi Suda - aka Suda 51 - was 2005’s “Killer 7,” the spectacularly weird tale of an assassin with multiple personality disorder. “No More Heroes” isn’t quite as bizarre, although it’s perverse enough that fans will definitely recognize the Suda touch.The antihero, Travis Touchdown, is a young hit man with an itch to make a name for himself in the brutal town of Santa Destroy. He’s the low man on the assassins’ totem pole, and the only way to advance is by killing everyone ranked above him. His rivals are a colourful bunch - a gunslinger named Dr. Peace, a wannabe superhero called Destroyman - and a lot of the fun comes from witnessing their distinctive attacks.

You wield Travis’ “beam katana” by pressing the Wii Remote’s A button; finishing blows are accomplished by swinging the remote and nunchaku to match on-screen prompts. The mix of button-mashing and physical exertion creates an unusually visceral experience, especially after you’ve made a garage full of henchmen explode like blood-filled pinatas. “No More Heroes” suffers from some lacklustre side missions, but the primary assassination jobs are so deliriously entertaining that they’re almost as much fun to watch as to play. Three and a half stars out of four.

Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3): You wouldn’t expect much originality out of a game with a “4″ in its title, but “Devil May Cry 4″ does throw a few curveballs at fans of the series. Longtime demon-hunter Dante has been demoted to supporting character; the prologue is an extended duel between the erstwhile hero and new leading man Nero.

Nero flashes some familiar weapons - a big gun and a bigger sword - but he also sports the Demon Bringer, a glowing right arm that he can use to rip apart monsters or zip across the landscape. As the game progresses, the weapons become more powerful and Nero’s arsenal of moves becomes more varied.

Despite the new hero, none of this is particularly fresh, and the level designs are obvious and repetitious. But “DMC4″ looks spectacular, and working Nero into a demon-slaughtering frenzy can be highly entertaining. Three stars.

(link)

Now before you remind us that arcades are long dead, this story is about Japan. After a 38 percent cut in their profit forecast, in response to which Namco Bandai is closing between 50 and 60 of its arcades, the company’s spokesperson Yuji Machida directed the blame at home video games. “A lot of the types of games that people played at an arcade can now be done at home,” said the representative of the Namco Museum publisher. (link)

Machida mentions the Wii specifically, due to its popularity and its ability to simulate the kind of specialized controls that are a strength of many arcade games. While arcade ports are nothing new, and neither are arcade ports of games requiring special controllers (such as Dance Dance Revolution), a home console whose controller can substitute for many motion-based control schemes is. Also, it’s a convenient scapegoat.

The WiiPhone is one of those mods just adored by the House of Giz. It’s the bastard son of a Wiimote and a common or garden-variety DoCoMo cellphone, stuck together by a clever guy who’s good at this kind of stuff. I particularly like the wrist strap, to stop unnecessary accidents (just ask another writer here, whose CrackBerry met an unfortunate end when it hurtled to the floor following a difference of opinion he had with his wife). Anywii, take part in our exclusive poll below the gallery.

Gizmodo