Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Xbox 360, PC) is shaping up to be quite a game. Jorgen Tharaldsen, the product director for Funcom, has shared quite a number of details about their plans to include cross-platform connectivity between the Xbox 360 and PC version of the game, the possibility of a PlayStation 3 version, and more. To find out what he had to say, check out the full article.

In times of console gaming trouble, great customer service coupled with simple solutions prove to work best. A father recounts how a Nintendo customer service rep helped him make his Wiimote work, using one of the most primitive solutions: smacking it. Details in the full article!

 

While nothing's confirmed yet, there could be chance of a microphone add-on for the Nintendo Wiimote headed our way. This not-quite-rumor comes from a response from a Nintendo Customer Service representative when e-mailed about the audio translator chip recently found in the motion-tracking wands of pure happy. His response, verbatim:

While the chip is there, there is no inherent microphone function in the Wii Remote. Even the article you link to says it's not used yet. However, you never know what the future holds for new accessories that would attach much like the nunchuk! We've created a microphone accessory for the Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube, and built one into the Nintendo DS/DS Lite, so it goes to reason we might think ahead in case we ever want to build one for the Wii! Keep an eye on http://www.nintendo.com for official information.

As you can see, despite the vague way he said it, he hints that there MIGHT be a microphone add-on to the Wiimote on the works, one that will hopefully take advantage of this unused bit of technological magic. After all, they did it with almost all their products, it'd be a shame if they didn't make one for the Wii. Talk about letting such potential go to waste.

 

Instead of talking about death and destruction and the callousness and emptiness of some sad human souls, let's focus on something bright and cheery for news today. Something even better than Ponies and Kittens: customer service done right!

Saska recounts the story of her three-month old Wii, which, as is customary in these types of stories, wasn't working properly. Luckily for her, she was able to get in contact with Nintendo's customer service rep, who not only did some quick thinking about Saska location to the CSR's position, but also offered to fix their broken console in thirty minutes if she could come up to their offices in Washington, D.C. It gets even better:

In those 25 minutes, they'd transferred all of my Miis, friends, and saved games from the old console to a new one. She logged on to make sure my 500 points transferred to the shopping channel. She sent me out with a $0.00 invoice showing a warranty replacement of my Wii and a reset of the warranty clock, meaning the Wii I took home has 15 months of coverage from today, even though I bought my original one almost 3 months ago.

It seems unbelievable, but the pictures we're showing here are of the actual place she went to with her son, complete with demo stations and a sweet Ninty display. In any case, definitely read the link. It's a great story that speaks of stellar customer service and a motherly opinion on a monolithic gaming company.

  

Tipster Grannd sends us some sad news from the Netherlands about the Wii launch in The Hague. A less than stellar delivery to Gameshop, one of the game stores there, has prompted the store to not sell any Wii units or accessories, at least for now.

While Gameshop's website is in Dutch, Grannd manage to give us the gist of the issue. Nintendo seems to have promised the Gameshop stores 600 units, and around 400 pre-orders were made by people based on that assumption.

The problem comes when, as Grannd tells us, "a week ahead of the release, Nintendo told Gameshop that they could only deliver 10 (!) Wiis". Since Gameshop has three stores, that means three units per store, and 390 customers feeling very annoyed, not to mention the folks at Gameshop who'll have to work with the customer service nightmare this might entail. As a result of this, Gameshop opted not to sell their units, nor offer any accessories or games for the console.

While some of you might be thinking that something of that sort is unfair for the store to do, you can also see why they're doing this temporary boycott of sorts. Who wouldn't be rather annoyed at only finding out a week before launch of something like this? Perhaps the problems of next-gen launches have taught them the value of sticking to their guns, even if their own customers don't agree with the methods. Waiting for Nintendo to actually send them the goods they asked for seems safer than fans fighting over a console, at least.

If any of you folks know Dutch, we'd appreciate a translation of Gameshop's statement at the source link. Translation sites can only do so much, you know.

Okay, we won't need to call Robert Langdon for this one, but it would be useful to have a Rosetta Stone for Wii errors, including the infamous 110213. Someone came up with one for the Xbox 360 and its Ring of Light - or Death, depending on how unlucky you were. And just as with the 360, not everyone can decipher what's up - or down - with their Wiis.

So someone decided to craft an online guide to Wii Error Codes, not to mention game hangups and hiccups and other things that could go wrong with a Wii. Wii Error is, frankly, a compilation of Nintendo FAQs, Customer Service information, and reports from other gamers, assembled in one easy-to-access, easy-to-understand database.

Call it your checklist to (a) help you understand what the heck is wrong with your Wii, and (b) be able to tell Nintendo what the heck is wrong with your Wii. It even includes YouTube-posted videos of the various Wii Error Codes and other hangups and hiccups and whatnots your Wii gaming can suffer.

Because understanding the hitches of next-gen gaming is harder to understand than the Da Vinci code, sometimes.

Yesterday, North America's favourite online bookstore, Amazon, began taking pre-orders (on and off) for a Nintendo Wii console, including the eagerly-awaited Wii Sports title, and have now gone out of stock again. You may think that is quite quick, but according to users from the cheapassgamer forums, all day yesterday the Wii was going in and out of stock on Amazon, with customer service representatives from the company stating that the only way to pre-order the console would be to keep refreshing the page.

If you signed up to Amazon's Wii alert service, you may have received an e-mail that will warn you that the Wii would be going up for pre-order. But with a high volume of gamers signing up for the alerts, Amazon was only able to send out a few thousand emails before Wii systems went up for purchase. Will you find the Wii on Amazon again before the November 19 release? The only way you can tell is to visit the page via the link below and keep refreshing the page!

Pre-Order: [Nintendo Wii console including Wii Sports]