Kotaku reports that the same sex relationships enjoyed by male characters in the Japanese game Tomodachi Collection: New Life have been patched out. Last week it came to light that male characters in the cutesy Japanese life sim for the 3DS could have relationships with each other. Nintendo promised a patch but many had hoped that the game would patch those same kinds of relationships for females into the game.

Last week I asked if Nintendo should exit the hardware business.  571 of you chimed in with an opinion and 56% of you think Nintendo should keep producing consoles while 13% say Nintendo should drop the hardware business, go third-party and focus on outputting software.

Of course, 4% of you (25 people) think Nintendo should pack it in altogether.  Man, a world without Nintendo.  That sounds horrible but as Alfred Pennyworth said, "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Episode 50 of the show is certainly a milestone for hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight (and myself) - which just happens to mark nearly a year of the podcast to boot. So, yay for us! On this week's show we discuss the prank on pirates played by the maker of Game Dev Tycoon, the Nyan Cat / Keyboard Cat- Warner Bros. lawsuit, the latest poll over at GamePolitics, and some other fun stuff. Download Episode 50 now: SuperPAC Episode 50 (1 hour, 15 minutes) 68.6 MB.

Here's some more bad news for Wii U owners that might also be Madden NFL game fans: you won't be getting the popular football franchise on your platform of choice this year, according to this Ars Technica story. More importantly, what does EA's decision not to support the Wii U with one of its biggest sports franchises say about the current perception of Nintendo's struggling console system?

If you read gaming news with any regularity, you will often hear someone opine that Nintendo should just give up the hardware business and focus on software.  No more consoles, just become a third-pary developer and put Mario on everything from Sony and Microsoft's consoles to digital distribution platforms like Steam and GOG to iOS and Android.

A hacking group is claiming that it has managed to circumvent the copy protection on Nintendo's Wii U. Nintendo is not commenting on the story publicly. According to the group who seems to have no formal group name, they were able to bypass the Wii U's copy protection and play pirated games via USB media. The team claims that it has "completely reversed the Wii U drive authentication, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation key."

In Episode 49 of the show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the ongoing turmoil inside EA, Nintendo's decision to not host an E3 press conference, results of the latest poll and catch up on some mail that went into the silly spam filter. Download Episode 49 now: SuperPAC Episode 49 (1 hour, 3 minutes) 58.5 MB.

Nintendo today revealed details on just how many Wii U users are connected to the Internet. According to the data collected by Nintendo, about 80 percent of its world-wide customer base is connected to the Internet, while the 3DS hand-held has an even higher average connected rate of 83 percent. That's 80 percent of the 3.45 million Wii U consoles sold worldwide are connected. Nintendo says that this is the highest number of connected devices the company has ever seen.

Nintendo will not be hosting a big press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this summer as it has in the past, according to an announcement made by the company earlier in the week. Instead the company plans to host something that is in line with its Nintendo Direct online broadcasts. Instead of its usual press conference and show presence, Nintendo says that it will host smaller private events for media and distributors, and that its E3 presence will be limited to showing off software this year.

With the current chairman of Nintendo of America, Tatsumi Kimishima, set to move over to his new position as managing director of Nintendo Co. Ltd. - assuming shareholders approve the move (which they likely will), Nintendo wants to move its global president Satoru Iwata into the role. More specifically he will absorb Kimishima's current responsibilities as the CEO of Nintendo of America. Nintendo of America president and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime isn't going anywhere, and will remain in his current positions, reporting directly to Iwata.

As part of its fiscal year earnings report, Nintendo revealed projections for DS software sales for the current fiscal year but offered no guidance on sales for the DS hardware. This would seem to indicate that it plans to halt production of its popular Nintendo DS hand-held system sometime in the current fiscal year.

Nintendo released its earnings report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, revealing that it had taken a loss much like it did in the last fiscal year. Nintendo recorded a 36.4 billion yen operating loss ($366 million) for the fiscal year, with less than expected sales of the Wii U continue to have a "negative impact on Nintendo's profits." Thanks to a depreciation of the yen, Nintendo's net income was 7 billion yen ($71 million). Net sales for the year were forecast at 635.4 billion yen ($6.38 billion), down from the year before.

Fans want a new Earthbound game so badly in North America that some have even offered to translate Mother 3 into English for Nintendo for free. The team of fans, which includes a professional translator, has offered to localize the game in English for Nintendo free of charge in a post on its development blog.

Mother 3 has never released outside of Japan, much to the chagrin of just about every gamer in North America and Europe.

You may recall a digital protest in the Wii U's Miiverse way back in late January concerning Nintendo bringing Earthbound (or Mother 2 as it is known in Japan) to territories outside of Japan. Well Nintendo apparently paid attention, announcing today that the game would finally be making its way to North America and Europe via the Virtual Console sometime later this year.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a preview note sent out to investors late last week that not even a price cut to Nintendo's Wii U will help it sell more units. He also predicts that Nintendo will report another month of weak sales for the console later this week.

Nintendo announced today that it will discontinue five channels on the Wii in June due to what it calls a "very low participation rate" of its customers. It will also kill one service that apparently very few people use. A handful of original Wii channels and some network services are soon to be no more. Nintendo announced today that due to a "very low participation rate," the company has decided to discontinue the following applications beginning June 28, 2013.

A fourth member of the hacktivist group LulzSec has pled guilty to attacking websites owned by Sony, Nintendo, and News Corp., according to Bloomberg. Ryan Ackroyd entered a guilty plea at a hearing in London today. He will be sentenced on May 14 along with the three other hackers, according to presiding Judge Deborah Taylor.

Is your Wii U running too slow? Well the video to your left from Nintendo UK shows that the Wii U Spring system update speeds things up considerably when you exit a game and the system menu loads.

The video shows the Wii U's system menu loading after exiting New Super Mario Bros. U. It takes about seven seconds, compared to the current load time of 17 seconds.

Source: GameSpot

Remember those ridiculous age restrictions on Wii U eShop content in Europe because Nintendo of Europe is based out of Germany and subject to German laws about content? Yeah, well those silly restrictions have been removed much to the delight of our Wii U owning brothers and sisters in various regions throughout Europe including the UK, according to Daily Joypad.

Nintendo has lost a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Tomita Technologies and has been ordered to pay $30.2 million. The patent relates to glasses-free 3D displays, which Sejiro Tomita claims Nintendo used to develop its 3DS hand-held after a 2003 meeting with the plaintiff where he introduced his technology to engineers within the company. Nintendo has been ordered to pay $30.2 million in damages to Tomita Technologies after a jury found that the company infringed on a patent for glasses-free 3D displays.

Speaking to MCV recently Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated the obvious: the Wii U needs to sell more units. The topic came up because Guillemot was talking about all the resources his company has green lighted for Ubisoft Montreal - the studio developing Watch Dogs. That game will also be coming to the Wii U, amongst other platforms.

"We think Wii U is a great machine. But it just has to sell more," Guillemot said.

Earlier in the week we reported that Nintendo announced plans to bring the budget minded Wii Mini to the United Kingdom after launching it in Canada back in December. One of the things we did not know was just how well the scaled down console was performing at retail in Canada. Popular Nintendo-focused web site Nintendo World Report offers some insight on that today. According to NWR, the Nintendo Mini has sold 35,700 units across Canada - from launch to January 31.

Nintendo is the target of a patent infringement case that claims its use of 3D technology in the 3DS violates the patents held by 58-year-old inventor Seijiro Tomita. Opening arguments in the case began today, according to Destructoid. Tomita claims that he presented his glasses-free 3D technology to seven Nintendo officials at their Kyoto headquarters in 2003. At the time, claims Tomita, he was looking for licensing partners as he awaited his patent application to be approved.

Every year rights holders get to offer their input in the U.S. Trade Representative’s Special 301 report, identifying piracy sites and offering recommendations on how best to combat piracy both online and offline. In a special letter, Wii, Wii U and 3DS maker Nintendo offers its two cents on the issue. First, Nintendo points out that it is suffering major losses at the hands of online piracy:

Kill Screen Daily points out some inspiring news for gamers in general and for Legend of Zelda fans in particular: Dark Horse Comics and Nintendo's collaborative hardcover book on the history of Hyrule, "The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia," is the top selling book on Amazon and has managed to top the