When Microsoft emailed me Thursday morning to tout that the Xbox 360 had passed 10 million in total U.S. sales, I knew something was up. Sure enough, later in the afternoon, Nintendo announced that the Wii had just passed 9.5 million. Then, last night,  the NPD Group released its video-game sales data for April, which showed that the Wii sold an astounding 714,200 units during the month compared with the Xbox 360’s paltry 188,000.

You know what that means? Last year’s seemingly outlandish predictions about the Wii being the No. 1 system in U.S. households by the end of this year are apparently wrong. It looks as if it will happen by the end of the summer at that sales pace.

You might think that the release of Grand Theft Auto IV for the 360 would turn the tide. (The first five days of its release are included in the April data, where it was the top seller.) But Nintendo has its own blockbuster titles, too.

“As retail supplies become more plentiful, we’re seeing continued sales strength of Wii hardware,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier said. “With a couple of blockbuster games [such as April’s No. 2 title, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl] already in the market this year, and with Wii Fit and Rock Band still to come in the next two months, the pipeline of content to continue to drive hardware acquisition looks very good.”

Coming Monday: the highly anticipated release of Wii Fit. Look for my review of it on Tuesday.

This just in: Grand Theft Auto IV is a violent video game. That’s why it’s rated Mature, for sale to players who are 17 and older — the video-game equivalent of an R-rated movie. But Congress wants to ensure that kids can’t buy the game and others like it, so two of its members introduced a bill this week to make it mandatory for retailers to confirm that buyers are actually 17 or older if buying an M-rated (or Adults Only-rated) game.

Sounds OK on the face of it. But this is really just another sign of society’s ghettoization of video games over other entertainment media. Consider the results of this just-released study by the Federal Trade Commission, as reported by Lou Kesten of the Associated Press:

According to the Federal Trade Commission, it’s easier for an underage shopper to buy an R-rated movie ticket, an R-rated DVD or a CD labeled “explicit content” than it is to buy an M-rated game. The commission sent 13- to 16-year-old undercover shoppers into various establishments to see what they could get away with. Only 20 percent were able to buy unrated games, a big drop from 42 percent in a 2006 survey. By contrast, 35 percent of the shoppers were able to sneak into R-rated movies.

So it’s easier for kids to sneak into an R-rated movie or buy an R-rated DVD. Where are the laws to regulate those sales?

Right now, retailers voluntarily check buyers’ IDs before selling them an M-rated game. The FTC study found that GameStop and EB Games did the best, refusing sales to 94 percent of underage buyers. Best Buy and Wal-Mart turned away 80 percent, while Circuit City tallied an embarrassing 62 percent refusal rate.  

A law that fines stores for selling M-rated games to minors might get better numbers from those stores. It also might prompt stores simply to stop carrying such titles. Either way, where’s the legislation to regulate R-rated movies, CDs and DVDs? Aren’t they a bigger problem?

I’m back after three weeks off, and I kept my vow to take a vacation from technology that would otherwise tether me to the office — no checking work-related e-mail or voicemail, no updating the blog, no reading tech websites, etc.

Traveling around Scotland for a few weeks made that easier to do. My wife, Laura, and I didn’t really have free and easy access to the Internet until the end of our trip, when we stayed in Edinburgh for three nights. The Radisson SAS there was the only hotel we visited that offered free access via computers in the lobby. (We didn’t bring a laptop; a few hotels on our cross-country trip offered free Wi-Fi.) Otherwise, the few times an Internet cafe or pay-per-use hotel computer was available, we had to pay £1 for 10 to 15 minutes of use — which is, like, $320 an hour after the conversion against the weak dollar. But I checked only personal e-mail and news about the NFL draft and Miami Dolphins — no work.  I used a cell phone to keep in touch with our daughters, but not office voicemail.

Hooray. There was no downside. I just had to reintroduce myself to colleagues when I returned to the office, reset all my forgotten passwords and take the company’s new-employee orientation class again.

While I was away, a wee thing (as they say in Scotland)  called Grand Theft Auto IV came out and quickly became the biggest video game of all time. That was something we couldn’t help but notice even in another country. Posters and store displays in Edinburgh trumpeted the game’s release. It was selling for £49.99 there — equal to about $6,700 stateside. I haven’t played the game yet, but I’m raring to give it a go soon now that I’m back. The PS3 version has a ridiculously high average Metascore of 99 out of 100 at Metacritic. I’m curious to see if it can live up to that hype. What are your thoughts on the game?

(Yes, those conversions from pounds to dollars are completely made up. It’s more like $2 equals £1 — but it sure feels higher when you’re actually over there and paying the equivalent of $30 for soup and a sandwich at a mom-and-pop lunch counter.)

The idea of free movies has patrons waiting for months to check out DVDs at their local library, as I wrote about in a front-page story today. Just the suburban part of Hennepin County Library, for example, has nearly 60,000 DVDs, 70 percent of which are checked out at any time (among non-kids titles). And if you want to watch Juno, get your reservation in now so that you’ll see it before the end of the year.

With all of those discs being circulated, one might think that the library occasionally has killer used-DVD sales to clear out old stock. But that’s not the case at all. The discs are so popular that they simply wear out from being handled so much and are discarded.

“They go through so many circulations that at some point a customer will bring it back to us and say, ‘You know, this is damaged,’” said Gail Mueller Schultz, who heads the department that manages DVDs at Hennepin’s suburban libraries.

One trick to getting DVDs through your library is to use the online catalog to put holds on the title you want. But use the service like Netflix. Get in the habit of placing a few dozen titles on hold at once. That way, a steady trickle of them will come in at your local branch and there will always be something waiting for you on each visit.

Oh, and just a heads up that I’m going on vacation. This will be the last post from me for a few weeks. In keeping with my previous column on how tech ruins vacations, I will not be updating from the road.

Creativity pays off, as the Minneapolis agency Mono has discovered with its second Webby nomination in two years.  Mono is one of three Twin Cities-based Web creators up for the Internet’s version of the Oscar this year. You have a few more weeks to vote for them — and dozens of other nominees from around the world – in the 2008 Webby Awards

Last year, Mono got a nod for its clever Monoface interactive time-waster. This year, it’s up for  The Good Food Fight, a website it created for General Mills that turns typically dry information about healthy eating into a fun game that blows out the boundaries of what users expect from such a site. 

“General Mills approached us with an interest in doing something different, and in fact, went outside their usual roster of agencies to hire us,” Mono partner Jim Scott explained. “We found a willing partner in Doug Moore, VP of Advertising for Big G at General Mills, who recognized the importance of engaging people on the Web in a way that was unconventional for health-related sites. For us, we came to a simple conclusion. There’s no shortage of information. There’s just a shortage of interesting ways to deliver it. And the simple idea of a food fight (albeit a healthy one) grew out of that conclusion.”

At the site, you begin by picking a healthy dish and an on-screen virtual opponent. Then you can start throwing food around the site using the fruits, vegetables and other food items in images from the recipes and articles. When you get hit by food, it splats against your screen and drips down. Your opponent climbs atop the text boxes and other website furniture to get a better shot at you or to hide. It’s wild fun.

“The Good Food Fight has remained a successful ’side door’ into eatbetteramerica.com and has helped that site register nearly 2 million
members to date,” Scott said.

You can vote for The Good Food Fight and the other Twin Cities nominees — Tay Zonday’s Chocolate Rain video and Jesse Vig’s geoGreeting – as well as dozens of other nominees, through May 1 at the Webby Awards ballot site. Winners will be announced May 6.

The NPD Group released its latest monthy sales report last night — and here comes the spin this morning. This time, Microsoft is touting a small victory for “reclaiming the No. 2 position in the next-gen console category.” Well, yeah, the Xbox 360 has pulled back ahead of Sony’s PlayStation 3, by a mere 5,000 units. But the 360 sold 459,000 fewer units than Nintendo’s top-selling Wii at 721,000 units – in one month. Hooray?

Microsoft also continues to note that “some key U.S. retailers were still experiencing the trickledown effect of Xbox 360 console shortages.” What? My checking over the past few months has shown the 360 readily available in many stores and dozens of places online. Target, Best Buy, Amazon, you name it; they all have it in stock. I don’t believe the contention that it’s hard to find. I think that’s just a way of explaining away lagging sales, especially when the Wii is getting so much buzz for being truly hard to find — and still outselling its console rivals by a substantial margin. The Wii might be gimmicky, but it sure is holding its appeal with mainstream consumers — read: casual gamers — more than a year and a half after its debut.

Microsoft is right that 360 sales should receive a substantial bump once Grand Theft Auto IV comes out April 29. But how is it going to spin things if the Wii, which has the equally anticipated Wii Fit (May 19) and Mario Kart Wii (April 27) in its back pocket, continues to outsell the 360 next month?

Who says the Wii is hard to find? Nintendo’s hit video-game console sold a whopping 721,000 units in March, according to just-released figures by tracking firm the NPD Group — as filtered through a giddy Nintendo PR department. (The DS portable also sold nearly 700,000 units for an incredible non-holiday one-two punch.) Obviously, despite consumer demand that has made the Wii nearly impossible to find in stores, someone is buying them.

Speaking of, a reader passes on a tip for those looking to buy a Wii online. Nick Gaul, a former producer at Minneapolis creative agency Fallon who now lives in New York, says to try Wii Alerts:

“They send an SMS message to your phone when Wii’s become available at a retailer.

I signed up and received a text saying that they were available at Amazon.com. Luckily, I was at my computer and was able to purchase 3 Wii’s for me and my siblings before they were sold out (which was less than 10 minutes).  Made
life easy to just not even think about a Wii until I got the call (message).

I’d still be Wii-less if it wasn’t for that site.

Totally worked and I have no affiliation with them.  Just a guy who happened to use the site and was impressed.”

So there you go — one more way to find the evasive Wii. Thanks, Nick.

Universal Studios is making up for lost time after its HD DVD debacle with news this morning of an aggressive release schedule for its first Blu-ray titles through the end of the year.

Universal had been the only major studio to release HD DVDs exclusively, so it was the most severely affected when that format lost the high-def disc war. (Paramount had released titles in both formats before being persuaded to go HD DVD-exclusive.)  Uni’s move to Blu-ray has been hotly anticipated.

The Blu-ray release getting the biggest push is the second season of Heroes, which is slated for Aug. 29. The first season, previously issued on HD DVD, is due on the same day.

New feature films due later in the year on Blu-ray include The Incredible Hulk, Doomsday, Wanted, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Mamma Mia! and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. To prop up the release of the latter, Uni will reissue The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King July 22 on Blu-ray — all previously available on HD DVD.

Other HD DVD titles being brought back on Blu-ray include American Gangster, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Miami Vice, End of Days, U-571 and Land of the Dead. Other reissues are expected. There’s no word yet on catalog titles making their high-def debut on Blu-ray. The reality is that Universal issued so many new and catalog titles on HD DVD that it will be playing catch-up for a while.

Which video games are the best for demonstrating your high-def setup? High Def Digest answers that question with its list of the top five PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video games whose high-def audio and video look great, as selected by contributor Wayne Santos. It’s an interesting list, albeit with a few quibbles. The Xbox 360 gets priority, but the PS3 should have, because its built-in Blu-ray capability makes it more likely to be part of a home-theater setup. Also, there are only two current games for each console — Heavenly Sword and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for the PS3, Gears of War and Bioshock for the Xbox 360 — with three spots dedicated to games not yet released. The list should have been all current games, with a note about interesting upcoming titles. And Resistance: Fall of Man, the PS3 launch title that out-Haloed Halo, is a glaring omission.

Speaking of the PS3, the latest firmware update that adds true high-def audio, which I mentioned last week, is now live. Just click on System Update under settings, and you’ll be good to go after the pain-free installation process. 

Have you been able to find a Wii lately? Nintendo’s hot video-game system continues to be difficult — if not impossible — to find a year and a half after its debut. I wrote about this phenomenon in an article today, which you can read here.

One place you can definitely find a Wii is on eBay, where more than 3,300 systems were up for auction to the highest bidder this morning. The going rate seems to be $300 to $350, once the exorbitant shipping costs (read: extra profit) are added to the winning bid — a tidy profit on the $249 console. One reader emailed me this morning to complain that I didn’t write in my article that store employees hoard Wiis for themselves and then sell them on eBay.  I couldn’t get any store to confirm that, but all kinds of prospectors are turning to eBay for video-game gold, not just store employees.

Another selling ploy for Wiis is to bundle the system with unwanted or unneeded games and accessories at a much higher price. Wal-Mart charges more than $700 for a bundle that includes the Wii, three accessories and seven games — the only way to buy the system at the store’s website.  One of the more decent bundles I’ve seen is GameStop’s Mario Bundle. It packages the Wii along with three of its best family games —  Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Party 8 — and extra controllers for $456 (plus $25 shipping), a fair price for truly useful accessories and highly rated games. It’s up for preorder on an April 30 ship date; quantities are limited.

If you’re patient, Wiis should be more visible by mid-May. Nintendo releases its highly promoted game Wii Fit on May 19, and some analysts believe (as mentioned in my article) that it will make the Wii console more readily available at Target and Best Buy to support the release of the interactive fitness game. In other words, Nintendo wants to make sure new customers can play the new game. (By the way, Nintendo announced a $90 retail price this morning for the Wii Fit game with balancing board.)

What has your Wii-buying experience been like? Did you find one easily? Or are you still looking?