Nintendo Spanks Sony and Joystiq Rocks the Casbah

This is actually pretty big news. While production continues to be a question for the PS3, it's obvious that Nintendo is well along the path to releasing the Wii. This also means that developers have been starting to get full-fledged final-version dev-kits since this time. Certainly better than Sony has been doing. Again, it's important to keep in mind that the Wii pipeline is a much more "known entity" to developers, and rather than figuring out what the heck to do with the hardware, many are spending time thinking about what to do with those controls.

It is a little uncanny to me that Nintendo and Apple are having big annoucements the same week. I guess this is probably wild speculation on my part, but certainly based on recent patents and other posturing, it wouldn't surprise me.

Shipment of Broadway for Wii has been well underway; hint of power revealed - Joystiq

So what does this news mean to gamers who have been waiting patiently for a release date from Nintendo? Well, considering that Nintendo has had their hands on a large amount of the final Broadway chips since July, we can easily speculate that the Wii could feasibly be released within the next few weeks. Perhaps by the end of the month.