CNN:
Until two weeks ago, Ruth Ebert never had the slightest interest in the video games favored by her one and only granddaughter.
“I’m 82 years old, so I missed that part of our culture. Soap operas, yes. Video games, no,” chirped Ebert, who recently started playing a tennis game on Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s new Wii video game console at the Virginia retirement community she calls home.
“It was funny, because normally I would not be someone who would do that,” said Ebert, who picked up the console’s motion-sensing Wiimote and challenged the machine to a match.
“I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I had such fun doing it,” she said.
Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.
Japan’s Nintendo has been on a mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers.
While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.
That bet paid off.
Photo by Reuters.
No comments yet.