On Thursday, a jury established that Nintendo would have to pay East Texas company Anascape no less than $21 million, as the first was found to have indeed infringed on the latter’s technology.

Everything began back in July 2006, when Anascape filed suits against both Nintendo and Microsoft, claiming that several patents used by the two companies violated its own registered patents. Microsoft managed to settle the lawsuit on May 1; financial details haven’t been made public. Strangely enough, although its technology is quite similar to that of the other two parties involved in the trial, Sony wasn’t named in the case.

Anascape’s patents were found in Nintendo’s GameCube, WaveBird, and Wii Classic; however, the motion-sensitive Wii Remote and Nunchuk are in the clear. According to Nintendo spokesperson Charlie Scibetta, the company will appeal, and it is expecting a "significantly reduced" award.

Nowadays, when talking game consoles, there are only three major names that immediatly come to mind: PlayStation, Xbox and Wii. Sony has dominated the global game industry over the past years, thanks to its gaming platforms PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Although the dynamics of the competition are quite complex, Nintendo’s Wii game console seems to have a great advantage: at $250, it is $30 cheaper than Microsoft's Xbox 360 and $150 cheaper than Sony's PS3.

This was in fact Nintendo’s plan from the very beginning, to come up with a reasonably priced console that would reach a much wider range of customers than the already existing machines.