As it does every fall, Nintendo held a U.S. press event in San Francisco today. The DSi was on everyone’s mind, and will stay that way for the foreseeable future as the handheld won’t hit the west until next year.

The DSi, while available in Japan starting November 1, will not be available in the U.S. and Europe until well into 2009." The rationale for this, according to Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime, is that the DS Lite is still selling well in the States, and will continue to do so through the holidays. Also, since some DS titles, like Guitar Hero: On Tour, utilize the Game Boy Advance slot for peripherals, bringing the GBA slot-less DSi may hinder both hardware and software sales.

Fils-Aime also touched on holiday hardware sales, saying that the number of Wii’s shipped to retailers this season will be significantly more than last year. How many exactly? "Ask me in January," said Reggie. Along with a boost in Wii’s, consumers can expect the newest peripheral, Wii Speak, on November 18th. The Wii Speak Channel and the microphone itself will be launched in tandem, with the latter going for $30 in the U.S.

As for the plethora of software Nintendo announced last night in Japan, Nintendo America did little to fill in the gaps regarding U.S. release dates, leaving many of the titles as 2009 releases with no specific day/month. Only two titles that were talked about were given concrete release dates, Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Personal Trainer: Cooking, will be available on November 10th and 24th, respectively. Other titles, like Sin and Punishment 2 (Wii), Punch-Out (Wii), Fire Emblem: Fire Dragon (DS), and Mario and Luigi RPG (DS) will be out sometime in 2009.

The "Wii de Asobu Selection", or "Play on Wii Selection" announced by Nintendo Japan last night is shortened to "Play on Wii" for the U.S. Play on Wii will bring heralded GameCube titles to the Wii, including games like Pikmin. This service goes live in Japan in December, and is TBA (2009?) for everyone else. Nintendo also confirmed that the first two titles for the DSi Shop, which allows DSi owners to download games and store them on the handheld, will be Brain Age 1 and 2.

Matsushita Electric Industrial, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics companies, is celebrating its 90th anniversary by changing its name. Never heard of Matsushita? That explains why the company is switching its corporate identity to match one of its biggest brands: Panasonic.

Matsushita’s U.S. division made the switch four years ago, but the Japanese parent company—founded in 1918 and headquartered in Osaka, Japan—was more reluctant to ditch the traditional banner, which honored the company’s founder.

Panasonic manufactures a broad range of products, ranging from batteries and semiconductors to personal computers, telephones, radios, digital cameras and camcorders, audio/visual gear, and household appliances. The company has carved out a particularly profitable niche with its Toughbook line of ruggedized notebook computers.

Company executives celebrated the event in the U.S. yesterday by ringing the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange and displaying the company’s new 150-inch plasma HDTV outside the Exchange, the first time that product has been shown outside of private industry events.

Last week members of the senate proposed a bill that, if passed, would see the Department of Homeland Security require reasonable suspicion before confiscating your laptop or other device capable of storing information.

At the beginning of August the Department of Homeland Security disclosed border search polices, which stated border officials could confiscate any device capable of storing information (including hard drives, flash drives, your cellphone, MP3 player, Kindle, pager, and any books or documents you happen to have lying around) for “a reasonable amount of time.”

Aside from the fact they can take your precious electronics to a far off place for an unspecified amount of time, more people had a problem with the fact that they can do so without any suspicion of wrongdoing. Homeland Security officials also had permission to share your data with other federal agencies or private entities for language translation, data decryption or, our personal favorite, “other reasons.”

The polices currently in place apply to both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens, however if passed, the Travelers Privacy Protection Act would see "electronic searches" of U.S. on merely the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or national origin disallowed and officials would require probable cause and a warrant before seizing your device. The Act also includes restrictions on the disclosure and handling of any information obtained from the confiscated device.

Described as, “a bill to protect citizens and legal residents of the United States from unreasonable searches and seizures of electronic equipment at the border, and for other purposes,” it seems non-U.S. citizens entering the country will still be subjected to the same policies as before.

The Travelers Privacy Protection Act was introduced by Senator Russell Feingold and is co-sponsored in the senate by Daniel Akaka and Ron Wyden.

A report released this week by Canadian researchers alleges TOM-Skype, the Chinese version of Ebay’s Skype, run in cooperation with TOM Online, monitors users Skype chats, scanning for certain words.

The report, Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform, claims that the chats of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China. Such keywords relate to Taiwanese independence, the Falun Gong and political opposition to the Communist Party of China.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a Skype spokesperson, Jennifer Caukin, said that the idea that the Chinese government “might be monitoring communications in and out of the country shouldn’t surprise anyone,” however other findings of the report were also worrying. The report says that the conversations stored are easily accessible by the general public.

“These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are stored on insecure publicly-accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to decrypt the data.”

While Caukin said people shouldn’t be surprised to hear about the monitoring of communications, she did say the company was concerned to hear about the “apparent security issue.” Caukin said that once they informed TOM about it, they fixed the flaw.

The news comes after a long summer of controversy over censored content during the Olympic Games in Beijing.

According to a report over on Memphis’ commercialappeal.com website (source), eight current and former employees of Gamestop have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft of property charges, and was thus ordered to serve one year of diversion (a light form of probation) for buying purported stolen video games. Strangely enough, the eight defendants do not have a prior criminal history.

Rory Rhoads, GameStop’s Regional Vice President of Stores, quickly took up a defensive position on behalf of the gaming retail chain. “GameStop takes this situation quite seriously,” he told the Memphis online magazine. “We are pleased to partner with the ALERT Unit and have taken very deliberate steps to improve our operations. Specifically, we have suspended our cash-for-trade transactions in Shelby County and DeSoto County, Mississippi until February 2009.”

After reports that several GameStop stores were knowingly purchasing the stolen games, an undercover sting operation revealed that eight out of eighteen stores participated in the illegal trade between April and May. Rhodes claims that employees undergo strict training, especially when stolen gamers come into play. GameStop employees will even freely admit to the strict security measures the chain goes through on a daily basis, making sure employees do not walk out the front door with games and other related items.

Last year GameStop faced a different fiasco. As reported by Joystiq (story), a GameStop employee sold Aeropause’s James Munn a "new" game by inserting the game disk into a display box and then offered to shrink-wrap the package. Of course, games are de-classified as new once consumers/retailers break open the package. But many gamers reject the company’s policies on hardware warranty, and there’s even a gaudy page online requesting to boycott GameStop altogether.

As for the Memphis, Tennessee incident, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg in regards to a nationwide problem. After all, the purchase of stolen games transpired in eight Memphis locations alone. Consumers who regularly purchase used (or so-called "new") games from GameStop might want to reconsider additional purchases before shelling out hard earned cash for something that may or may not be legal to own.

In a press conference in Tokyo today, Nintendo revealed the successor to the wildly popular DS and DS Lite handheld consoles.

The Nintendo DSi picks up where the DS Lite left off, and incorporates a myriad of new features that make the DSi a true multimedia device. While many will lament the lack of a Game Boy Advance cartridge slot (removed to allow for a 12 percent thinner profile), the DSi more than makes up for it by adding an SD card slot as well as a 0.3 megapixel camera. The SD memory card slot will allow the user to take pictures with the new camera and transfer them to a Nintendo Wii’s Photo Channel. The DSi also features larger screens with both the top and bottom displays bumped to 3.25-inches, a quarter inch bigger than the current DS.

The DS and DS Lite both have built-in WiFi, but the DSi takes internet connectivity to a whole new level. With the new DSi Shop, customers can download and store games directly to the DSi. Like every other console online store, the DSi Shop will work on a points system, with some content being free, but most going for 200 points, 500 points, and 800 points for "premium" content. DSi buyers will automatically receive 1000 free points, which will be good until 2010. Assuming the DSi Shop works in the same way as the Wii Shopping channel, 1,000 points will be equivalent to $10 USD.

While a U.S. release date has yet to be announced, the DSi will hit store shelves in Japan on November 1 for 18,900 yen, or about $179 USD.

Because Nintendo is skipping this years Tokyo Game Show, the press conference covered more than just the new Wii. Nintendo also elaborated on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, which will be out for both the DS and the Wii. In fact, Crystal Chronicles will link the DS to the Wii for what promises to be some very unique gameplay. Animal Crossing DS was also detailed, including a feature that will allow users who also own a Wii to transfer their Mii over to the DS title to use in game.

Nintendo CEO Saturo Iwata finally addressed an issue that has been on many a Wii owner’s mind: storage. Starting in the spring of 2009, said Iwata, Wii users will be able to download games from the Shopping Channel directly onto SD cards, completely bypassing the Wii’s internal memory. Nintendo also dated and priced the Wii Speak for Japan. The "Wii Speakerphone" will be released on November 20 and go for about $74 USD.

Taking a page from its wildly successful Virtual Console, Nintendo will soon make popular GameCube titles like Pikmin available in a series called "Wii de Asobu Selection", or "Play on Wii Selection" in English (likely to have a different title stateside). While old favorites are always good, some new Wii titles were also announced. Expect to see Punch Out, Another Code, Sin and Punishment 2, and a Dynasty Warriors title (Sangoku Musou 3, to be specific), sometime in the near future.

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Speaking in an interview with MTV, Christian game maker, Digital Praise, has said it may endeavor to produce a wholesome version of Jack Thompson’s favorite video game, but admitted such a game would be a challenge to produce.

Digital Praise’s “Guitar Praise” hit shelves last week and while the studio has a number of other games out already, last week’s addition to its catalog, being a Christian version of the already hugely popular Guitar Hero, definitely struck a few chords.

MTV asked CEO of Digital Praise, Tom Bean if the company would consider making a more family friendly version of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto. Nothing like taking a game named after a crime and trying to do what the company endeavors to do through interactive media: Glorify God.

Bean explained to MTV that there are popular games out there that are derided for being inappropriate for children or even in general that are popular because they really are fun to play and one of the major problems was that people are often distracted from the fun of the game by the content. He also said that the company was interested in open-gameplay and “several designs of that kind of an open world” but that the real question was what people were able to do in that world and whether it would be fun and enjoyable. MTV asked Bean how Digital Praise would go about essentially taking the “Grand Theft Auto” out of GTA and not surprisingly, he wasn’t quite sure.

“That would be one of the bigger challenges. How do you do that — make it fun and make it something that people want to play?”

Read the full interview on MTV