![]() Wii Sports was an easy sell for them since it was quick to pick up and learn, especially if the elderly gamer didn’t have the finger dexterity for a DualShock 3. In fact, while Nintendo’s rival consoles at the time, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, targeted hardcore gamers, the Wii cast as wide a net as possible and attracted a demographic otherwise ignored by the gaming industry: seniors. Essentially, anyone who played live sports or even saw them on TV would feel at home with Wii Sports’ control scheme, which lowered the barrier of entry. That bold design decision came to life in the form of controls that naturally simulated the act of holding golf clubs, baseball bats, and tennis rackets. There are millions of football fans, baseball fans, and basketball fans theoretically interested in sports games but ultimately uninterested in dealing with the relatively complex controls and sub-systems those games rely on.įrom the moment of the Nintendo Wii’s conception, Shigeru Miyamoto wanted Wii Sports to serve as the console’s “ flagship title.” The game was intended to be approachable by anyone regardless of their prior video game experience. That’s why it’s important to understand some of the reasons why Wii Sports was such a system seller in the first place… Wii Sports Was Designed For Gamers and Non-Gamers of All AgesĮven though the gaming world is full of sports titles, most of those titles require a complex series of inputs that are much more confusing to casual fans than you may think they would be. Wii Sports was designed to sell people on the Wii hardware, and it did an incredible job of doing just that. ![]() ![]() Much like the commercial relationship between the Game Boy and copies of Tetris included with that device, you could argue that there was a point when millions of people bought a Wii simply to play Wii Sports and didn’t just happen to own a copy of Wii Sports because they bought the console for something else. Still, it’s important to not dismiss Wii Sports‘ success as a side-effect of the Wii’s hardware success or the result of an unfair tactic intended to inflate software sales numbers. That’s a lot of copies that may have sat on shelves if Wii Sports was hypothetically released as a standalone title only. After all, in the US, the Wii sold around 45 million units, while Wii Sports sold over 41 million copies. So, while we can’t thank the Wii for all of Wii Sports’ sales, the title’s pack-in bonus status for most regions certainly did a lot of the heavy lifting. The game was sold separately in Japan but only pushed a comparatively small 3.77 million copies compared to the 12.7 million Wii units that were reportedly sold in that country. It should also be noted that Nintendo sold quite a few copies of Wii Sports outside of console bundles, though certainly not as many. ![]() That obviously added quite a few digits to the game’s total sales. Every time Nintendo sold a Wii (excluding refurbished units, certain future hardware re-releases that came with different pack-in titles, and some version of the console released in regions that didn’t offer Wii Sports as a pack-in game) they also essentially sold a copy of Wii Sports. While the same could be said of any number of console launch titles, Nintendo went a few steps further in order to turn Wii Sports into the ultimate showcase of their new hardware.īy bundling a fresh copy of Wii Sports with their new console (in certain regions), Nintendo guaranteed that everyone who bought a Wii would get to experience its potential right out of the box. Wii Sports was designed to show off the Nintendo Wii’s capabilities. Wii Sports Was an Invaluable Pack-In Game For a New Kind of Console Brawl or Super Mario Galaxy performed anywhere near that well, which raises a lot of questions about what Wii Sports had that those games didn’t.Īs it turns out, answering those questions requires you to understand and appreciate both the circumstances of Wii Sports‘ release and the merits of the game itself. ![]() Not even all-time great (and incredibly popular) titles like Super Smash Bros. Over 82 million copies of the motion-controlled sports game have reportedly been sold worldwide to date, around half of which were sold in North America. If you look at the sales numbers for individual Nintendo games, the dominance of Wii Sports becomes shockingly apparent.Īs of writing this article, Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii has sold more copies than any other individual Nintendo game. Super Mario games alone have sold well over 700 million copies, but that figure accounts for the success of the entire franchise (including popular spin-offs such as Mario Kart). Nintendo has produced many blockbuster franchises that include legendary names like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon. ![]()
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