While Nintendo previously said that they were looking into the Wii wrist strap issue, today the company finally took definitive action. According to the Associated Press and other news agencies, Nintendo has officially decided to offer a replacement plan for 3.2 million Wii straps. [Note: Nintendo alerted us that this is technically not a recall.]

Many of the incidents that have been cited about people accidentally throwing the controller into TV sets, walls, ceilings, etc. likely could have been prevented if the connecting thread (the part that connects the remote to the actual wrist strap) had been a bit thicker. Well, that's exactly what Nintendo plans to do. Company spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa explained that Nintendo is going to allow customers to exchange the old strap attachments (0.024 inch diameter) for a slightly more beefy one (0.04 inch diameter).

"People tended to get a bit excited, especially while playing Wii sports and in some cases the control would come loose from their hands," Minagawa said. "The new strap will be almost twice as thick."

Note the much thicker connecting strand on the left side

Unfortunately this global replacement effort is going to cost Nintendo several million dollars as well. And on top of that, Nintendo today separately announced that it's recalling 200,000 AC adapters for its DS and DS Lite in Japan; this does not affect overseas DS adapters but it will cost Nintendo approximately another million dollars.

If you believe you have the older, thinner strap attachment, you can visit this page for instructions on what to do.