Nintendo yesterday announced it has sold more than 50 million Wii game consoles since the device launched. The company recently announced that sales of its popular DS portable game console had passed the 100 million mark.

The Wii has distinguished itself from the ‘bigger’ consoles both by keeping its price well below the (US)$400 range, where the competition currently sits, and by offering innovative accessories including the Wii’s dynamic controller and the Wii fit exercise platform.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata had lots of other news for fans in his keynote opening the annual Nintendo Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, yesterday.

The new Nintendo DSi portable officially goes on sale in North America on April 5. At the same time, a new online DSi Shop débuts, selling both games and applications. DSi owners who visit the DSi shop at least once before October 5 this year will get 1,000 free DSi points that thy can redeem at the shop. Users can also purchase DSi points at the site with most major credit cards.

Wii users get expanded storage for downloaded games, Wii Ware apps and Channels. Users can now save downloads directly to High Capacity SD cards, in addition to SD memory cards.

To play games that have been saved to SD cards, consumers will be able to select and launch them from an SD Menu icon on the Wii Menu. An equivalent amount of internal Wii memory is required to actually play the games or run the apps. To clear space from the internal memory, users can transfer games or channels from the Wii Menu to an SD card.

The memory expansion feature is included in the latest version of the Wii System Menu Update, which owners will receive immediately after performing their next system update.

Iwata also announced a list of new DS and Wii games, coming  out over the next few months.