It must be pretty darn easy being an analyst at one of those fancy Wall Street firms. Take this story, that Nintendo may well launch an on-demand video service for the Wii here in North America next year. Japan’s Nikkei reported the same thing nearly two months ago, but it’s only now that someone at Lazard Capital Markets has officially predicted such a store for the North American market.

There’s some sort of video game developer conference going on in Motreal this week (titled, to use its full name, the Montreal International Game Summit), and an interesting charge was just levied there. The CEO of A2M (the company that developed Wet), Rémi Racine, said that some game publishers will go out of their way to deceive the ESRB in order to get a lower rating for their games. You know how Hollywood tries hard to make sure the summer blockbusters are rated no higher than PG-13 in order to ensure a large audience? Same thing with video games, apparently. Why release an M-rated game, and know that your limiting your potential audience, when you can eek out with a T rating?

Look at CNET, breaking news left and right. The site ran a little survey asking its UK readers how many times their video game consoles crashed. No surprise: the Xbox 360 leads the pack with a full 60 percent of heaving died (due to the red ring of death). The PS3 comes in at 16 percent (yellow light of death?), and the Wii is only 6 percent.

It turned out that a lot of those so-called Modern Warfare 2 protesters were talking jive, as they played the game late into the night, alone with their hypocrisy. (It’s overdramatic Tuesday, by the way.) How did the Left 4 Dead II protesters do?

Today’s another big day in gaming, friends. (You’ll notice that we’re practically a game blog now. I blame the publishers for releasing the biggest games of the year within a few days of each other.) Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed II, Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2, and Activision’s Tony Hawk Ride come out today (I assume the Tony Hawk franchise is still around because it’s still popular. I haven’t played one since Tony Hawk 4.)

Note: This post contains Modern Warfare 2 spoilers. If you’re not cool with reading spoilers, well, then move along, nothing to see here (but you’re missing out!).

Short and to the point: Manny Pacquiao beat Miguel Cotto in round 12 on Saturday night via TKO. So EA Sports’ prediction was right in that Pacquiao won the fight.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii hits stores today, and it will probably be on of the biggest games of the year. (Little Tommy and Little Susie shouldn’t be playing Modern Warfare 2!) To celebrate the launch of this latest Mario game, Nintendo invited its fans to the Nintendo World Store in New York yesterday. In addition to being able to buy the game a whole day early, fans could participate in a Mario tournament, get their picture taken in Mario garb, play the older games in the series, and meet Gary and Alison from Nintendo Week.

Long before Fallout 3 there was Fallout 2. And before that, Fallout. Interplay made the two first games, while Bethesda made the third one under some sort of licensing deal that would allow Interplay to create new Fallout games not connected to Fallout 3. Then Bethesda sued Interplay, which puts a game it was working on, a Fallout MMO, in jeopardy. These are screenshots of that game, to be used as evidence during the legal proceedings.

Final Fantasy XIII will come out in North America on March 9, 2010 for both the PS3 and Xbox 360. So says the official e-mail we just received. You can’t see it, but there’s a smile on my face right now.

It seems the Internet doesn’t like GameStop too much, so I’m not sure how this story will be received. The retailer announced at a conference in New York yesterday that it will launch some sort of in-store DLC service next year. That is, let’s say you buy Game, then immediately buy related DLC from inside the store via a special interface. (GameStop worked with both Sony and Microsoft to figure all this out.) Then, when you get home, the DLC is ready to be added to your game.

Man alive, there’s been a lot of gaming news these past few days. Continuing the trend: this Saturday, November 14, is to be hereby referred to as National Gaming Day. Thus decided the American Library Association. The day has been created in order to promote the idea that video games can be used to sharpen one’s reading ability, and to promote critical thinking.

As of next Tuesday, November 17, you’ll be able to access Twitter and Facebook on your Xbox 360. The software update is free, like previous updates, and also includes Last.fm and Zune video compatibility. “What are you doing?” “Losing to 12-year-olds in Modern Warfare 2 over and over again! Not fun.”

Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 racked up $310 million in sales across the U.S. and UK during the first 24 hours of availability. That makes it the biggest video game launch ever. Hooray for war simulators!

Fair warning to those of you who play your modded Xbox 360 on Xbox Live: Microsoft is breaking out the ban hammer. Again.

I know something about MMA, but I know next to nothing about boxing. Yet even I can laugh about the latest EA Sports prediction, via Fight Night 4, that says that Manny Pacquiao will beat Miguel Cotto this weekend. I laugh because saying Pacquiao will win the fight is like saying the sun will rise in the morning. (Now watch Cotto knock out Pacquiao in the first.)

Just a friendly remind to all my fellow World of Warcraft players. You need to migrate your account to a Battle.net account by the end of the day today, lest you’re unable to login.