Some folks from Nintendo's public relations team are in town today showing off the company's new "Mario Kart" racing game for the Wii at Union Station.

The video game company is the middle of a 12-city tour to drum up some buzz for its latest title, and is, at the moment, letting anybody who comes by try the game out for a while at several TVs the company has set up. The event lasts till 8 pm.

Funny thing: When I stopped by this morning, there were more grown-ups than kids in attendance. But they seemed to be enjoying the game as much as any kid.

Raj Aggarwal, founder of a visual communications firm in Adams Morgan called Joint Concepts, brought his entire 6-person office down to the event to check out the new Wii game. He doesn't own the game console, but he's thinking about getting one for the office.

Aggarwal, 32, said the morning's field trip is a "team building" exercise. "Everything is, if you look at it the right way," he joked.

A couple of stations away, two colleagues from a nearby Capitol Hill office were going head to head. "You know I drive better than this," groaned Joanne Brown to her colleage, Paulette Brown (no relation) as they played the game, in which players "steer" their game characters with the game's motion-sensing controller snapped into a steering-wheel that comes with the new video game.

Both women have owned Wiis, though one of them gave hers away to her grandchildren this past holiday season. Neither woman had heard of the game before seeing the Nintendo tent set up at the Metro station this morning, but they both seemed interested after having given it a spin. "I have to get this game," said Paulette Brown after winning against her colleague a few times.

As I was leaving the event, I overheard one guy on his cell phone checking in with his significant other on whether they have enough of a budget to buy the game system.

He didn't get a green light on that proposal, but he said he is strongly tempted to pick up the Wii anyway. "I'm going to be in the doghouse for a week," said Illya Smith, who is 39.

See some of the action from the day here:

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive Software announced today that the latest version of the popular and controversial game has sold 6 million units globally in its first week on the market. Put it another way, that's $500 million in sales.

The company says it sold 3.6 million copies of GTA IV on the first day the new game launched, last Tuesday.

One industry analyst, as I mentioned in a recent column, had predicted that the game's popularity would hurt box office ticket sales Iron Man during its opening weekend, but that flick did $100 million in business during this past weekend. Looks like that forecast was a bit off.

I've played about 7 hours of GTA IV so far. I'm blown away by the quality of the acting and the writing in the game. And, as much as anything, I'm a fan of the music featured on the soundtrack -- I only wish terrestrial radio was as good as the radio stations they have there in Liberty City.

If anybody has observations about GTA IV after having played it for a while, please post away. Also, are any of you having issues with the game crashing? A colleague of mine is complaining that his copy has been freezing up periodically. I haven't had any such issues with my copy on my Xbox 360.

British comedian Eddie Izzard isn't famous for his consumer tech humor, as far as I know, but he worked many observations and riffs about technology into his act last night at DAR Constitution Hall.

Izzard, known by some for his role on the TV program The Riches, and to others for his stand-up comedy, made cracks last night about Bill Gates, Wikipedia, and Macs during his nearly-two-hour show.

He even yanked out his iPhone at one point, as he was asking and joking around with the crowd about what year the U.S. got universal suffrage. Faster typists than he looked up the year and yelled it out before he pulled up the answer.

My favorite part of his tech-related material was when he mentioned the ever-so-slightly guilty feeling that you get when you're updating iTunes and click on the button that indicates you've read (and agree to) the software's legal "terms and conditions" even though you haven't.

"No one person in the world has read the terms and conditions," he declared. "I got halfway through once... and had to kill myself." And, he asked, just how many times are we going to have to indicate that we've read the "terms and conditions" before companies like Apple start believing us?

Izzard joked about not knowing how to feel about Bill Gates. After all, "he's giving away billions... but he's keeping billions."

He also told a story about an iPhone-using lion who was tricked into thinking he's in Paris, thanks to some tricky giraffes and a dodgy GPS system. Izzard backed up the veracity of some of his tales by exclaiming "it's on Wikipedia!" (Izzard joked that Wikipedia is actually written by "three people in a toilet" and that he checks his Wiki entry every day.)

By the way, D.C.: If you're going to spend half the show checking your text messages, like a couple of folks in front of me last night, please hold your phone up high enough so the folks behind you can also read them and see what's so important.

Izzard worked in another couple of good tech cracks, but I'm off this morning to try and find a copy of a popular new video game. If you were at the show, and taking notes, please post away...

Predictably enough, the new Grand Theft Auto game is selling briskly. One local DC game store tells me they've already sold 200 or so copies of the title, which was released yesterday. They have a few left, but those are all reserved copies for customers who already put a few dollars down.

Game industry analyst Michael Pachter has said he expects the game to sell about 9 million units in the first couple of months -- and 11 to 13 million by year's end.

One guy I know who has tried the game got his hands on a leaked version off the Internet this past weekend, in advance of the release. He gives it a thumbs up. (He says he intends to buy a copy of the game soon.)

He notes one instance where the game's developer takes a wink at the camera, so to speak. After one in-game date, one of the game's female characters tells the protagonist:
"I'd invite you in for hot coffee, but it would cost you at least $20 million." Nice little reference to one of the bigger controversies attached to GTA IV's predecessor, San Andreas.

I haven't played it yet, as I've been occupied with more family-friendy fare. Anybody out there have a take on the new game so far?

The Rockville-based ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of game developer Bethesda Softworks, announced today that it is opening a publishing subsidiary based in Tokyo.

Bethesda Softworks is a household name among gamers because of its bestselling and critically acclaimed title Oblivion, which was an epic sword-and-sorcery sorta thing. This fall, the company is scheduled a pretty cool-looking title set in a bombed-out future version of Washington, DC, called Fallout 3.

"Establishing operations in Asia is very important to us as we continue to expand our presence in markets outside of North America," said Robert Altman, CEO of ZeniMax Media Inc. in a statement released by the company.

Last year, the company announced it is opening a new studio in Hunt Valley, Md.