Boosted by a global shipment of over 50 million Wii consoles, Nintendo announced its plans for the foreseeable future yesterday.

It’s the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco where head honchos from various videogame companies are out to impress. For Nintendo’s part President Satoru Iwata chose his keynote speech to confirm astronomical console sales figures and reveal the future for at least one Big N franchise.

In addition to the 50 million shipped (that’s not sold by the way, but we all know they’re selling fast) Wii consoles, over 100 million Nintendo DS consoles have been requested by retailers to date. Hence pots of cash for lengthy research and development into such things as… well, let’s list them:

A new storage solution for Wii
The latest Wii System Menu Update, available now, allows Virtual Console games, WiiWare and Wii Channels to be saved onto SD memory cards. High Capacity DS cards are also supported allowing for over 240 games to be stored. However to launch one of these games from SD Memory you still need to have “an equivalent amount of internal Wii memory” available. Just save one of your larger games onto the SD.

The new Zelda!
It’s for DS though, so anyone hoping for this on Wii will be sighing so hard today there could be a Strong Winds warning issued. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks builds on the great touch-screen ideas from Phantom Hourglass and features a steam train as a mode of transport. How very charming.

Really, really old games for Virtual Console
But you can call them arcade classics. The newly launched Virtual Console Arcade is bringing 1980s legends that include Namco’s Mappy, Gaplus and Tower of Druaga and Tecmo’s STARFORCE. They are available to download as of right now, and this initial line-up costs 500 Wii Points apiece, which is roughly three quid.

DSiWare for Nintendo DS
Nintendo hasn’t forgotten about Wario, don’t worry. He’s coming back in WarioWare: Snapped so that DSi owners will find at least one use for that 0.3 megapixels camera. Or you could download Moving Memo, which allows you to create a digital flipbook. And maybe you will too.

Rock N’ Roll Climber
This is the shape of WiiWare to come, combining the Wii Balance Board with the remote-plus-nunchuck arrangement. Climb a series of mountains and when you reach the top you’ll play some rock ’n roll riffs on an electric guitar. You think this sounds stupid? Wait until you see it. Frankly we’re quite shocked.

Apart from Zelda we feel this is a rather under whelming set of announcements from Nintendo. Hopefully the company is reserving its biggest guns for the upcoming E3 trade show taking place in LA this June.