With everyone watching the pennies this Christmas the battle between the gaming giants, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, is expected to more fierce than ever as they’re competing for fewer consumers, with less to spend this year. However, despite the gaming giants battling it out, and the economy being at such a low ebb, Nintendo’s Nintendo Wii is expected to win the battle, even though it’s in very short supply again this year.

According to the website VGChartz, the Nintendo Wii has sold 336,517 consoles already this month, which is more than the Xbox 360 (190,440) and the PlayStation 3 (88,561) combined!

The Nintendo Wii has literally gone from strength to strength this year as new ground breaking releases in the video game industry have come out for the Wii, including Wii-Fit and Wii Music. As a result of titles such as these, a whole new audience has been introduced to gaming.

Sony and Microsoft aren’t taking the Wii’s success lying down though, as they’ve both released their own ‘family focused’ games in the run up to Christmas in a hope to capitalise on the new games audience that Nintendo has created.

Just how green is your Wii? I know, it’s white, but you know what we mean. According to the US Natural Resources Defense Council the Wii is very green indeed, a veritable friend of the Earth. According to their research the Wii is the greenest of all the games consoles (which must make Sony and Microsoft very jealous, more jealous than the fact that the Nintendo Wii is outselling them across the globe).

The US Natural Resources Defense Council state that the Nintendo Wii uses less energy than any other games console when it is being played on, and when it’s on standby. This means that Wii owners can make savings on their energy bill while saving the environment.

So you’d expect Greenpeace, the company that lobbies to protect the Earth and the animal kingdom wherever possible, to love the Wii? You’d be wrong. Greenpeace has ranked all technology companies based on how green they are, the sort of chemicals they use and their use of recycling, and they’ve scored Nintendo with a very lowly 0.8.

Mobile phone giant Nokia scored a 6.9, which was the highest score, which is more than 8 times greener that Nintendo.

She may have survived dozens of video games on multiple formats, including the PC, PlayStation 2 and even the Sega Saturn, plus she’s survived two movies, but could Lara Croft have finally met her match in the shape of the Nintendo Wii?

Sadly it doesn’t mean that the Wii version of Tomb Raider: Underworld is devilishly hard, it means that there’s a bug in the game meaning that players can’t actually complete it.

The problem occurs when Lara is in the Coastal Thailand level. Our favourite heroin must utilise a lever in order to access an underwater tunnel, but sadly many game players have found that the lever simply isn’t there!

This means it’s impossible to open the tunnel and proceed to the next level.

Lara’s creators, and publishers for the game, Eidos, have asked that players who get stuck in the game revert to a saved game from earlier in the level and try again.

It’s not an ideal solution, but hopefully it will mean that players won’t get stuck forever, and Lara will be able to escape and complete the Wii version of the game.

According to a report from the researcher NPD Group, consumers in the USA won’t be spending as much this Christmas on technology as in previous years. With the struggling global economy, consumers in America aren’t expected to buy as many iPods or Nintendo Wii consoles as they perhaps would normally do this time of year.

The research showed that 54% of those questioned were looking for specific items on yesterday’s Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, instead of just browsing for bargains that retailers were hoping to offer them.

Some consumers had even stated that they were no longer looking to make any technology purchases at all this year, with 33% of consumers who said that had planned to be a big screen TV, now choosing not too because of the economy.

Many consumers said that because of the economy they wouldn’t be loyal to the big brands when it comes to choosing an MP3 player, which isn’t such great news for market leader Apple, or Sony. Consumers stated that the price was the main factor.

Many associate MP3s with pirates, but usually the association comes from pirated music downloaded in MP3 format from the Internet. This news however is very different. We’re talking about the sea faring, cutthroat pirates that smuggle and steal, and the MP3 is a sonic blast played on an MP3 player to defeat the pirates.

If only Orlando Bloom had thought of that!

A British security firm has created a ‘sonic laser’ which can be used at sea to thwart pirates from stealing treasure, of sorts. You may think that pirates aren’t such a big problem anymore, but you’d be wrong. In the Gulf of Aden, just off Africa, piracy at sea is rife.

The MP3 plan involves a long range acoustic device (LRAD) which is attached to a simple MP3 player, or even a cheap iPod. The equipment is the same size a satellite dish and can emit a painful noise to fend off pirates if they get too close.

The security firm, Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions (APMSS), uses three man teams to help shipping companies ward off pirates with the MP3 player technology, and they’ve been inundated with work off the east coast of Africa.

It doesn’t get much press in the UK, but today in the USA is Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year for the American public. Apple, with its range of iPods, is all geared up for the event with a series of discounts.

Traditionally Black Friday, which is the day following Thanksgiving, signals the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, and is heralded by a day of huge discounts, both online and in the high street. Apple is reported to be offering discounts today of up to 15% on its products, making for some very cheap iPods on offer.

With the current financial crisis, the prediction for sales this year in the US isn’t optimistic, but Apple hopes that their planned price cuts will tempt people to part with their cash this festive season.

Apple announced their plan for discounts on their own website, but hasn’t provided any details. Experts predict that Apple will be very aggressive with their discounts, as with the global economy the way it is, they’ll need to take drastic measures to kick start the holiday season.

There are even rumours that Black Friday might make an appearance here in the UK, so if you’re looking for cheap iPods, you know where to go!

Apple’s iPhone 3G has been wowing audiences everywhere, with its MP3 player functionality, Internet browsing options, games player prowess and general do everything nature. However the iPhone 3G has fallen foul of Advertising watchdog ASA. They received a total of seventeen complaints over the TV advert for the iPhone 3G, all protesting that Apple had somewhat exaggerated their claims about the speed of the iPhone’s Internet connectivity.

As a result, the TV advert for the iPhone 3G has been banned.

The TV ad for Apple’s phone showed the iPhone downloading a file in a matter of seconds, and browsing from page to page online in moments. The speed shown in the advert was ‘exaggerated’ as the iPhone 3G isn’t that fast at all. Apple claim the advert wasn’t supposed to show the iPhone 3G in reality, was just supposed to compare the phone to the first release. Apple say that users should easily realise that Internet speeds would vary for everyone.

ASA disagree however, and the ad has been banned from our TV screens. The voiceover for the ad that claims the iPhone 3G was “really fast” has been deemed to be misleading.

With the success of the Nintendo Wii and its plethora of games accessories comes equal success for the companies that make and distribute those accessories. If you want Guitar Hero accessories, Simpsons addons or of course the much anticipated Star Wars Wii accessory (you know what we’re talking about) then Bolton based A4T are the guys behind it.

The company has gone from strength to strength since the release of the Nintendo Wii, and has just secured further investment with a £4 million funding boost from RBS.

The company has only been trading for four years, and has already made all manner of games accessories, for all of the major consoles, including the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. Anyone who’s played a golf game, fishing game or car game with a custom controller will have most likely used A4T’s products.

Andrew Shephard, the founder of games accessory company A4T, stated:

The business has performed very well and we have made great progress in a short space of time.

We are one of the leading gaming accessory providers in the UK and our goal is to build upon this success and become a major player on the world stage.

As we secure an increasing number of quality licences, it is essential to have the necessary funding structure in place to cover the cost of our operation.

This facility with RBS is a good solution and will support our future growth plans.

Despite recent reports showing that standalone MP3 players, such as the iPod Touch, were better in terms of performance that mobile phones that also player MP3s, such as the new iPhone 3G, it seems that the UK consumer still wants to see MP3 players and mobile phones as one unit. In fact, as many as 75% of MP3 players sold in the UK are also mobile phones.

No wonder Apple was so keen to make a mobile phone that played music; they’ve just quadrupled their sales potential for the iPod with the iPhone.

The research comes from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), showing that in the past 12 months 32 million MP3 players were sold in the UK, with three quarters of those being mobiles.

These figures dwarf the sales of CD playing technology, where only 8 million players were sold in the last 12 months.

It’s hardly surprising that so many MP3 players sold are also mobile phones, as approximately 90% of mobiles feature MP3 player functionality. This doesn’t of course mean that consumers are buying mobile phones over MP3 players, it just means that many mobile phones being purchased also happen to be MP3 players.

There are a few different ways to recharge your iPod or MP3 player, including the old fashioned method of plugging it into a wall socket, charging it via USB, and even the recently announced ‘shoe recharger’ that we featured a few weeks ago. Now though a new, more environmentally friendly, way has been suggested.

Charging your iPod using an onion!

It started as a viral video on the Internet, which many people believed to be a hoax, but now claims from a shop worker in Portsmouth are that he has invented a way to recharge an iPod using an onion, soaked in a drink. He says he can add enough power to his MP3 player to last an hour, meaning you’ll never need to look for your charger again, so long as you have an onion to hand.

There is even a degree of science behind the notion, as the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Jon Edwards states:

The science behind the idea isn’t bad - you can generate an electric current from vegetables - but the video is a hoax.

It appears then that using an onion to charge iPod might not be the way forward, but it’s an interesting idea, and one that deserves further exploration.