In a new study about how much energy video game consoles consume, the Natural Resources Defense Council found that consoles in use today consume “an estimated 16 billion-kilowatt hours per year,” which, the report goes on to translate, is “roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego.”

Link to full story: Consumption Study Takes Aim at Game Consoles – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

Downloading: That Other Way to Get a Video Game
By Joe Hutsko
Game downloading services have been around for years and are only just beginning to make a dent in sales of packaged game software.

On MSNBC.com: Take your gaming from good to great: Five cool console gadget combos
By Joe Hutsko

Amazon links to products described in story:

Dear Joe,

The Legend of Zelda®: Phantom Hourglass will hit store shelves on Oct. 1, marking the debut of the franchise on Nintendo DS ™.

You can get a sneak peek of Link’s heroic quest and the game’s cool 3-D graphics now – before everyone else! Just click on the e-card link below to get a taste of Link’s newest adventure.

http://www.redwoodeditor.com/content/Nintendo/ecard/

Your Friends at Nintendo

Enjoy the (brief) show!

Click here to watch ->

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The DS Lite is:

• wonderfully brighter than the original DS
• pleasantly smaller than the original DS
• has a glossy white finish that looks and feels like an iBook
• fixes the original’s too-easy-to-shut-off-by-accident power button with a slider switch like the PSPs
• moves the original’s built-in mic front and center, below the top screen
• has a pop-out dummy card to protect the lower, front GBA cart slot
• is so much smaller than the original, GBA carts plugged in stick out like an ugly tongue
• and lastly, requires me, when playing the excellent shooter Metroid Prime: Hunters, to poise my left pinky in a way that’s similar to how I sometimes oh-so-naturally hold a martini glass, and is necessary here to balance the DS Lite in order to shoot

As for whether I’ll suffer the hand and wrist numbing affliction I get when I play my PSP (pinkies thankfully curled under in a manly fashion), I haven’t played the DS Lite enough yet to say.

Intending to share photos on my games and gadgets blog joeygadget.com (which is unfortunately resolving its domain after switching from TypePad to WordPress, and won’t be running for another day or so), I opened the box and started snapping pics.

It wasn’t until I removed the handful of shiny silver tinsel that I noticed the red and black wires and strange device taped to the bottom inside of the box. My brain flashed with much-loved memories of Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: The box was rigged with some kind of incendiary device that for whatever reason didn’t blow up when I opened it. Crazy thought, I know, but being a fan of spy novels and movies and most of all, games, it was a natural reaction.

Anyway, I then noticed the four clear LED lights taped to each inside corner, and also what appeared to be a light sensor, which was obviously meant to detect the moment I opened the box – at which point something should have happened. But didn’t. My box just sat there, wired but dead.

Careful not to rip anything, I gently excised the spider-like wires and inspected each until I found the culprit: the exposed – / + wires of the sensor were touching, shorting the circuit. Using my fingertips I gently pulled the wires apart, packed up the box again, and closed the lid.

This time when I opened the box I was greeted with flashing lights and song, as shown in this video.

Up next: A few shots of the DS Lite in hand.