Did you think the last Zelda game was too difficult? Me either, but apparently Shigeru Miyamoto believes the control scheme has become too complex and is promising a much more simple affair for the next installment.

“For us, it is important to the to optimise gameplay and make the controls easier. We do our best to make the controls player friendly, since Zelda has become complicated. For us, two things are important: to meet expectations and to surprise people. How we do it this time, I will not reveal. Normally, we create the video sequences, and these sequences are expanded. But this time we started with the game structure. And then with the video sequences. So this time it was reversed. Therefore, we have had little so far from the game to show. But will publish a lot close to the game’s completion.”

From our sister site GameAlmighty.

Today marks the official kick-off for Netflix on the Wii.  After announcing partnership plans back in January to bring the streaming video service to the console, Nintendo is finally making the service fully available to all users in North America.

While some subscribers’ Netflix discs were sent out as early as last month, starting today all Wii owners who have a Netflix plan starting at $8.99 a month and a broadband internet connection can view unlimited movies and shows via their console.

The Netflix streaming disc is all that is needed to utilize the service on the console (no installation needed), and you can navigate menus, read synopses and rate movies via the Wii remote’s infra-red pointer function.

If you own a Wii and have a Netflix unlimited membership but have yet to obtain the service on your console, you can order the streaming disc at no additional cost via www.netflix.com/wii.  Nintendo is offering 20 points via http://club.nintendo.com to all Wii owners who register their Netflix streaming discs, so you’ll want to remember to do that.

What a missed opportunity. Hudson has just announced “Oops! Prank Party” for the Wii, which instantly conjures thoughts of wonderfully juvenile delinquent activities such as egging cars and toilet papering houses. Sadly though, it’s looking to shape up as just another party game.

So what are the actual “pranks” you ask? They’re a bunch of “family-friendly pranks that allow the winner to taunt the competition.” Oh, and there are also “embarrassing costumes and pranks for the mini game winner to assign to any losing player.” How cruel!

Despite a whopping 100 party games, not one mini-game in Oops! Prank Party appears to even marginally encourage amusing law-breaking activities such as sticking a banana in someone’s exhaust pipe. No toilet papering a teacher’s house, no duck-taping a person to wall in his sleeping bag, no stealing street signs with your girlfriend’s name on them for Valentine’s Day, and worst of all, no borrowing those flashing “Road Closed” signs to block off an intersection late at night to screw with irritable midnight drivers (I’m speaking from personal experience on that last one).

There will be none of this hilarious tomfoolery in “Oops! Prank Party.”

Perhaps Hudson should have farmed this one out to GTA publisher Take-Two, who jumps all over digitized criminalism like Budweiser ads on Nascar. I’m sure they could create an exotic party game far by beyond the scope of my prank-happy imagination. And hey, why even limit it to a party game? Let’s just make a prank city game.

In the mean time, I guess I’ll have to settle with picking on little kids in Wii version of Bully.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan who is no doubt paid an enormous sum of money to get just about everything wrong, is actually copping to a few mistakes in his predictions for 2009.

Mr. Pachter predicted a 7% rise in sales during November.

Reality: 8% decline.

“…It should have been evident that a slowdown was coming, but many observers (including us) were lulled into the belief that the video game software business was recession-proof. Compounding our error was the belief that Wii sales would never slow, and that the music genre could continue to grow.”

“Wii hardware unit sales are down a staggering 28% through November. Even though combined PS3 and Xbox 360 sales are actually UP 5% this year, in absolute terms, the three consoles have sold almost 14% fewer units than in the prior year.”

Source