As weeks go, Its been quite an interesting one for Nintendo, and the games industry in general, and there's plenty of news to get through- not all of it good, unfortunately. So I'll start with the bad news: sales figures in Britain show a very disappointing Christmas season performance from the Gamecube- only 10,000 units sold, compared to much improved Xbox sales of 21,000 for the same period. The PS2 still reins supreme- Sony's console shifted more than three times the units sold by the Gamecube and the Xbox put together.

Of course, the real event of the week is the launch of Zelda: Kaze no Takuto in Japan (titled The Wind Waker in the west). You should know this by now, but Famitsu, Japan's revered games magazine, has awarded Zelda 40/40- joining a very small elite band of games in getting top marks. The comments of the four reviewers can be read here. Somewhat interestingly, the review cites the emotional responses of the player towards the game as being one of its most appealing factors- more than that, the reviewers talk of little else. Shigeru Miyamoto has always aimed at making that crucial emotional connection between a game and the player, and certainly the new Zelda is no exception. It just makes the waiting all the more harder to bear. Be joyful that Zelda is as good as ever- the critics have finally been answered. Elsewhere, Nintendo this week unveiled a new and improved Wavebird controller- using a 2.4Ghz radio frequency- apparently allowing greater range (which is already more than sufficient) and increased battery life (ditto).

Ah, the Megaton announcement. No weekly digest would be complete without a mention of Nintendos impending 'explosive' news . Rumours suggest that the announcement will be made early next week, most likely Monday or Tuesday. All I can say is, it had better be good- Nintendo will dissapoint a lot of people if 'Megaton' isn't an announcement of earth-moving magnitude- let me make one guess, for the record. My money's on the acquisition of Capcom. Why? Simple, really.

a) They have more or less stopped announcing new PS2 games, and have just announced 5 new Gamecube exclusives.

b) Nintendo have allowed Capcom to more or less take over Zelda GBA development- the Oracle series on Game Boy Color, and the new Link to the Past conversion were both handled by the Japanese giant. Nintendo do not usually trust other companies with their two key franchises- Mario and Zelda- and it was an unprecedented move giving them the Game Boy Zelda games.

c) Senior figures in Capcom are coming out- publicly- against the PS2 and actively supporting Nintendo's consoles.

Well, that's the case for the Capcom acquisition. If you have any thoughts on the Megaton news or on anything else in this issue of the digest, drop us a line here.

Until next week, Mark.