NINTENDO DS/3DS

Are all those ambassador games crowding your 3DS' home screen? Sit tight, Nintendo's got a fix. During the outfit's Nintendo Direct conference livestream, head honcho Satoru Iwata announced that folder organization is coming to the 3DS. Fastidiously organized gamers can expect the firmware update to land on April 25th, bringing with it the joy of creating directories, stuffing them with up to 60 items and ascribing them fitting names. Iwata also detailed a handful of upcoming titles, including New Super Mario Bros. ...

With the beginning of a new month comes a new selection of downloadable Club Nintendo rewards. This month, you can trade your hard-earned Club Nintendo Coins (earned by registering purchased games) for Art Style: Cubello on WiiWare, or the Game Boy games Mario's Picross and Radar Mission on 3DS eShop. They cost 100 Coins each. As with previous monthly selections, these are all games that you can buy through the Wii Shop or 3DS eShop with real money. You simply have the additional temporary option of using your Club Nintendo stash. ...

Like any new console, the 3DS has had its share of growing pains. But the awkward acne of its first year has mostly been smoothed over, giving way to an attractive price, a library of compelling content and even DLC freebies. So, what's left for the Big N to do? Well, over in Europe, the company's partnered up with free-hotspot.com giving, you guessed it, more gratis WiFi to owners across 21 different Euro zone countries. These 5,000 or so new access points will be made available at a variety of hotels and fast food chains throughout the continent. So, the next time you're lined up for a Royale with cheese, feel free to hop online and start working through that Netflix queue. ...

Nintendo and Japanese telecom company NTT are working together on a voice recognition project, aimed at making it easier for students with hearing or other disabilities to keep up in classrooms. The project, which NHK reports is undergoing trials in Okinawa and Tottori Prefecture, captures instructor speech, converts it to text, and saves it to the cloud while also sending it to devices -- like the DSi. That way, students can read along, and have an automatic record of lessons. See it in action in the video on NHK's site. The downside to ...

Nintendo released its latest quarterly earnings report this morning and, as with last quarter's report, there's not a whole lot to celebrate. The company posted profits of ¥40.9 billion (about $631.6 million) for the October - December period, representing a 61 percent quarterly drop. That's especially disappointing, considering that this period has traditionally been strong for Nintendo, which had previously forecast an operating profit of ¥1 billion (around $12.9 million). Those forecasts have since changed, however, with the manufacturer now ...

3DS owners have been waiting (and waiting) for a chance to take advantage of a downloadable content market, and while Nintendo already accomplished the tough part (read: launching it) a few days back, there's still been no word on when paid content would make an appearance. Pushing those freebies aside is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, which is seemingly destined to be the first 3DS title in existence to offer up enhancements in exchange for a few yen. The box here is actually an "early retail dummy unit," though the verbiage on the back makes ...

We've been (somewhat) taken with Nintendo's dual-screen handheld's 3D screen, AR features and overall unique experience, but it appears that the 3DS has been a real boon to gamers, with more than four million U.S. consumers picking up the console since it hit stores in March of last year. 3DS games like Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7, which sold more than one million units each in the US alone, were also incredibly popular, along with the aging Wii, which made its way to 4.5 million additional U.S. households in 2011. All told, Nintendo sold more than 12 million consoles stateside last year, and has solid hopes for an equally successful 2012. ...

Did you get a Nintendo shaped bundle of joy for Christmas? Completed the games already? Fear not, as from March Kyoto's gaming veterans will be launching paid downloadable game content for its 3D handheld. The first title to get the goodies will be Fire Emblem, and as yet, there's no clues about what treats you'll get for the reported "several hundred yen" you'll be asked to stump up. Nintendo, however, is understandably keen to stimulate interest in its 3D titles, and more importantly, claw back some of that mobile gaming market-share. With ...

If you've still got the 3DS price drop blues, perhaps a fresh (and final) infusion of free games will help. Early adopters that signed into the Nintendo eShop before August 11th will find ten GameBoy Advance games tacked on to their handheld's purchase history, retrievable via the same clunky redownload system that delivered the 3DS Ambassador program's NES titles. Thankfully, the unintuitive process is relatively simple -- just hop into the eShop's menu, scroll down to "Settings / Other", and select "Your Downloads," to claim your (potentially-exclusive) ...