The importance of Wii Bowling to Nintendo

by Blake Snow { Dec 26th 2006 at 8:25PM }

The Denver Post echoes the same sentiments of Gamasutra suggesting that Wii Sports, particularly Bowling, may be the most influential game of the year, at least in terms of its potential impact on the industry. Columnist David Thomas opines on yearly blockbusters like Gears of War (360), Elder Scrolls Oblivion (360/PC), and Zelda (Wii/GCN) by saying: "While each of these games remain a worthy distraction from the pressures of the real world, none of them really changes the art or science of video games the way that Wii Bowling does."

In essence, "who would have thought 'electronic bowling' -- despite its simplicity -- could be this fun?" He believes that if Nintendo (or was it Miyamoto who spearheaded the game's development?) can turn the 5,000 year-old game into something this enjoyable with mass appeal, the company may have an even brighter future on its hands. Hardcores on board or not.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

MattyB @ Dec 26th 2006 8:49PM

I can say from personal experience that Wii Sports: Bowling has made a believer out of just about every non-gamer in my immediate family after just a few hours of interaction. My worry for Nintendo now is palpable, however. How many titles are coming down the Wii's pipeline that truly caters to this new audience? In 2007, I can think of maybe two or three games this crowd will go for. Unless Nintendo cooks up some compelling casual-friendly content quickly, they'll be in danger of losing their new audience just as quickly as they were captivated by Wii Sports.

emmzee @ Dec 26th 2006 8:49PM

I think the article is accurate, but don't ignore Golf either. A lot of older non-gamers who have the MONEY to buy Wiis play golf. My uncle was over for Christmas yesterday, tried Wii Sports Golf and was totally blown away. After playing it, he'll probably buy a Wii whenever they become widely available.

henstar @ Dec 26th 2006 9:38PM

It's been Wii Bowling and Baseball that has won over my family and non-gamer friends. The steam isn't dying out from these titles but I do recognize that Nintendo needs another casual hit. Maybe Wii Play or Wario Ware will be the next title that hooks these guys too.

mark @ Dec 26th 2006 9:41PM

EVERY member of my semi-immediate family is addicted to Wii bowling. My aunt waited at Toy R Us for a Wii just for it, and I have had my Mom, cousins, aunts / uncles, and even my grandfather playing bowling. My grandfather is an avid golfer, but that doesn't pique his interest half as much as bowling does. Wii Bowling IS the game Nintendo set out to make to draw people to the Wii.

Cody @ Dec 26th 2006 9:55PM

I've had nothing but a gleeful time with Wii Sports and the console overall. I enjoyed a nice game of Wii bowling with my 19 year old cousin and 7 year old brother last night, and after festivities, a nice game of Madden, as well. That same morning, my 80 year old grandfather played a game of golf with me, and was able to adapt wonderfully for his age. Heck, the only other time I remember him playing games was when I received an N64 at about the age of eight, where he played a game of SSB against me.

My father and mother both have played a few times since we got the console yesterday morning, and my mom was asking to play Tennis earlier tonight. This is truly a wonderful experience, and I agree that the game is the most influential of the year.

That said, Nintendo must keep this up, as mentioned above. No doubt, the Wii could turn the biggest profit margin for Nintendo, by far, and join a large group of gamers, young and old, with non-gamers.

john doe @ Dec 26th 2006 10:05PM

From experience, I would say that different nongamers like different games. For example, nongamers I know have liked boxing, tennis, bowling, and Excite Truck. No golf or baseball though.
Or Zelda.

SecondChance @ Dec 26th 2006 10:18PM

Good point, Blake. There will always be "hardcore" gamers in the video games industry, it's just that with each passing year (and the process has been sped up considerably thanks to Nintendo, lately), they become more and more irrelevant to a developer/publisher's bottom line. GoW is a nice bookend to the popularity of "hardcore" gaming, methinks. It's a good game, but offers nothing new to those of us with more progressive aspirations in mind. It really is time for something new. You can only pay for the same thing over and over again a certain number of times before you just quit the biz entirely.

- J B Cougar

insertnamehere @ Dec 26th 2006 10:18PM

For most of the people I know, Bowling just doesnt do the trick. Instead the big Wii Sports win is Tennis. Unlike bowling and baseball, it doesnt require button presses at all, and has a visceral element that the rest really lack.

Zozart @ Dec 26th 2006 10:49PM

Bowling sure was a hit with my family too, although I'm pretty rubbish at it!

Tennis is a nice and simple "opener" for those new to the Wii, and it's also quite competitive.

Golf is probably my personal fave; it's laid back, very accurate and is surprisingly detailed (with the wind speed and such).

But the real king with my family has to be the boxing. The way it tracks both your hands left everyone in awe, and before long we had all broken a sweat from the intense punching and dodging involved.

Incidently, boxing also led to our first Wii-related casualty: an unfortunate necklace that got caught up in a particularly violent left hook.

Freakhead @ Dec 27th 2006 12:00AM

Yeah WiiSports is a revolutionary game - A killer app. A fact that's lost on every major game review site.

FSK405K @ Dec 27th 2006 1:11AM

Wii Sports has only SEVENTY SIX VOTES (0%) for Best Wii Game at Gamespot's Readers' Choice Awards! Go Vote Now!
http://www.gamespot.com/special_features/bestof2006/platform/index.html?page=10

Shagi @ Dec 27th 2006 1:50AM

Ok, your almost to the point where you realize the Wii is a gimik. Now that you realize Wii bowling is the only game worth 2 craps on the Wii it should only take you one more leap of logic after getting tired of it to realize the Wii controls are not better than the traditional joystick.

And then your stuck with a Gamecube.

Dukhat @ Dec 27th 2006 3:12AM

What an overhyped system. Guitar Hero is selling more PS2's than Wii's (even if that reason is partially because of Wii shortages) and we have articles focused on Wii bowling.

I have had non-gamer friends play guitar-hero and then get a PS2. A huge amount which got a PS2 just for DDR (which they played on the PSX as well). And a lot that got a PS2 just for karaoke revolution. Theirs a reason the PS2 is a huge hit and its because its been doing what the overhyped Wii has been doing for a long time; drawing gamers from all sects of life.

Shallow arcadey games have always been huge hits in the long-term. Their lack fo depth is the reason they don't equate to mass-marketshare.

Falsoman @ Dec 27th 2006 3:40AM

I gotta be honest, i can not hold it any longer. I LOVE you, Shagi. Consider me a fan of yours. You make me happy in ways no one does. If it weren't for people like you, the internets would be far less entertaining.

One just has to admire your dedication and wit and heart for trolling about the same issue in so many ways it never gets old. You make very compelling to come to joystiq just to read your ( and vlad's) comments and watch people getting angry and desperate with you =)

I actually hope that if i ever get to have a website as popular as joystiq, people like you come and find a home, because that can only mean more hits and add impressions, and for a much more entertaining experience. I can't be the only one who enjoys this.

ON TOPIC: My family loves wii sports in unatural ways. My father (58), my uncles and aunts are so addicted to that only game that they are going to bed late just because of it. I really like it, also, and just because of my personal experience i can understand why they call it influential.

I think i'm having a lovely night, loving wii sports, shagi and almost everybody else. I'm a happy sick guy.

filterpunk @ Dec 27th 2006 5:37AM

Golf, Bowling, Baseball... don't most people interested in this sort of thing already do it as part of their regular life? For these "hardcore" people, i'd bet they'll spend more time and money to go out and play their sport of choice than play at it on the Wii. It seems like this would leave Nintendo with a group of "casual" people - casual sports, casual gamers, casual (read: comparatively rarely) buyers.

Dunno about anyone else, but the past month, we've bought a new console and 6 games for various systems. The industry has grown as it has because of hardcore gamers who pour a lot into it, not the guy who buys a console and a game, then lets it sit untouched for a month or two.

Padriac @ Dec 27th 2006 6:32AM

Bowling may be almost perfectly representative of the sport it mimics, but tennis is still the deeper game. I think people are so used to having to move characters in tennis games that they think that any game where you don't is "shallow", but the the remarkable nuance to the types of shots you can create in Tennis blows away "I can make the ball spin" bowling. I truly think people simply haven't noticed how deep tennis is.

Power serves: ball goes incredibly fast and leaves a trail effect. Very hard to return.
Net-burners ball goes incredibly fast just over the net (require a lower, very fast swing). Risky in that the ball will actually hit the net.
Slams at the net: slam ball at incredible speed when just at the net... almost impossible to return (do a slamming motion from up to down at the right time when the ball is at the net).
ball spin: like bowling, you can add spin to the ball to create all sorts of confusion (rotate wrist during swing). Incredibly difficult to predict when used properly.

etc.

I'm not knocking bowling (I love that too) but I can't believe how quickly some people dismiss tennis as being shallow while claiming bowling is super deep when it is the other way around.

And Wii Sports is the most important game to come out in the last decade, let alone the last year. Not the "best", but the most important. Truly. It represents innovation and the mainstream push that may save videogames from another crash like the early 80's.

sedge @ Dec 27th 2006 6:32AM

When I was younger my whole family would play Atari 2600 games together. The first time I played an electronic bowling game was back then. In retrospect the game was junk, but back then I loved it. I guess it's just because it helped bring my family closer together. I did not see it that way back then, though, now I do. The greatest thing about Wii sports is that it brings people together. The games in Wii sports are very interactive and we(Wii) can all have some great fun together...all of us.

w()()ter @ Dec 27th 2006 8:43AM

Alright, I didnt feel like posting this little story previously but I might as well now that the topic is up.

My girlfriend's dad is basically the target audience for the Wii. He has literally never played a videogame in his life. He scoffed at the fact that I was willing to sit outside before a store opened to purchase one. So a few days after I got it on the 17th, I took it over to my girl's parents house. My girlfriend loves the Wii but she thought it was a horrible idea to bring it to her parents house because there's "no way in hell they're ever going to play it" and that's a direct quote. So we get in the car on the way out there and I say that I'm bringing my Wii along and she whines about it and I tell her that I'll get her dad to play and she basically just laughs in my face. I'll admit that I was EXTREMELY skeptical at first because I honestly didnt think he would play it. So we get out there and I set it up and I'm playing it for awhile and he walks into the room with us and goes "what's this?" And I tell him that it's the item I was camping out for a few nights earlier and he sits down in the chair to watch me. So I play bowling for about 5 or 10 minutes and then move on to golf and play a few rounds of that, he's glued to the television the whole time. That part isnt that suprising because he's a guy and we all love to sit down and watch someone else do something, haha. So my girlfriend calls me into the other room to help with dinner so I tell him that I'm gonna shut it off. At this point my girl is standing in the doorway watching the events transpire. So I'm about to press the power button and he goes "Wait just a second there, let me try that golf you were playing" so I just go with it and hand him the controller and give him a short instruction on how to use it and turn around to leave the room. The look on my girlfriends face was worth every penny I paid for my new system. Her face was white as a sheet and her mouth was open in awe of what had just happened. He proceeded to shoot a bogey on the first hole and a birdie on the second and finished a 9-hole game with a score of 3, which is pretty good for the first time with a motion sensing controller. So thats the story, it was amazing to watch and even though I own the system and was willing to camp out for it, even I had doubted it's power until that night. Cheers ya'll

Quick1 @ Dec 27th 2006 9:42AM

"Ok, your almost to the point where you realize the Wii is a gimik. Now that you realize Wii bowling is the only game worth 2 craps on the Wii it should only take you one more leap of logic after getting tired of it to realize the Wii controls are not better than the traditional joystick.

And then your stuck with a Gamecube."

For the love of Christ, if you are going to troll every Wii thread, can you at least be bothered to learn the difference between "your" and "you're"? Don't make me send you to Bob the Angry Flower.

32_Footsteps @ Dec 27th 2006 10:18AM

"I'm not knocking bowling (I love that too) but I can't believe how quickly some people dismiss tennis as being shallow while claiming bowling is super deep when it is the other way around."

Actually, I think this article backs you up, but not in the way you might expect.

Wii Bowling is a more shallow game. This means that it's much easier to step into, and that's what's driving the initial popularity of Wii Sports (and the Wii in general).

You might like Tennis more, but it's Bowling that brings the buyers.

Josh @ Dec 27th 2006 10:20AM

My personal take on Wii Sports:

Tennis: The best of the bunch. It flows nicely and has enough action to keep me playing.

Baseball: Horrible. I can never hit the ball, and the depth, to me, seems way off.

Golf: Booooooring. I've never liked golf, much less a golf game, and the somewhat wonky motion detection really hurts this one.

Bowling: Very tricky. It's overly sensitive or something. If I try to twist the ball to the right, it often times goes to the left.

Boxing: The worst of the bunch. Motion detection is terrible on both controllers, and randomly swinging my arms through the air seems to work better.

Mind you, I was/am sick (cold) during all my Wii playing experience, so that might have something to do with it.

Regardless, I think not including Wii Sports and saving $40 or so from the console price (or including another Wiimote + Nunchuck or maybe component cables) would have been a much better deal.

Mike @ Dec 27th 2006 10:41AM

I really don't understand the appeal of Wii Bowling. Tennis was fun, but Bowling seemed rather boring and I did substantially worse at it than at real bowling (got spares on the first two frames, but then I ended up with a really nasty hook I couldn't shake). My wife liked it more than I did (probably in part because she beat me which doesn't happen often when we play vidoe games together), but even she agreed it was a little on the weak side. If Wii Bowling is the future of gaming I will be sorely dissapointed.

"Boxing: The worst of the bunch. Motion detection is terrible on both controllers, and randomly swinging my arms through the air seems to work better."

I had the same experience with boxing.

vidGuy @ Dec 27th 2006 11:16AM

I caught some people around the water cooler this morning at the office talking about Wii Bowling. These are 40 and 50 year old business men and they are hollering and laughing about a Nintendo game! Several of them bought the Wii for their kids and ended up playing bowling for hours on end with them. Now the others are looking for the Wii, too.

Wii Sports is a genius pack-in and is easily doing its job of bringing in new gamers. The best part? Nintendo is getting good praise in all sorts of circles: gamer websites and magazines, mainstream newspapers, schoolyards, teacher's lounges, teenage hangouts, college dorms, business offices, etc. What amazes me is 9 times out of 10 the discussion is about Wii Sports, specifically Bowling.

The Wii isn't impossible to get (I have 2), but it could be hard to get for a long while if this hype stays going.

vidGuy @ Dec 27th 2006 11:31AM

For anyone that doesn't like Wii Sports:
PLAY THE WII TRAINING GAMES!

It seems all of the poor reviews of the game include:
"I can never hit the ball", "wonky motion detection", "overly sensitive or something", etc.

Neither I, nor my teenager brother, nor my 8 year old cousin, nor my mother, grandmother, aunt, or girlfriend has had any problem with the motion sensing. After playing the training games, which get you used to the timing of the controls, you can be hitting homeruns on a regular basis (I usually get 3 each game), holes-in-one (I have 2), aces in tennis (there's a secret way to hit a speed serve that is really hard to return), etc. Even boxing becomes a blast when you learn how to use the controls. The game is pick-up-and-play, but to master it, and have more fun, you really have to learn the controls.

BTW, my console has racked up over 30 players and 80 hours on Wii Sports since launch day.

Judd @ Dec 27th 2006 12:33PM

Bowling is hands down the best Wii Sports game, if not just for its simplicity. Bowling is just 10 frames, knock down as many pins as possible. It's because a lot of the other games are complicated that I feel like they are missing things. Tennis, you can't even play a full set, and because the characters move automatically all you do is swing. Baseball, feels like it has the most taken out with fielding completely eliminated, and 3 inning games that can end in ties. Golf would be great except I feel like so many times (especially when putting) you have to use so little power, that it either doesn't read the swing or it goes too far. In boxing half the time the shots are off timed, and while some people say it takes getting used to, it still feels uneven.

Bowling has many great things going for it. Because you need to pull the remote back, although it can be done, it's harder to play sitting down than the other games. Plus after a while you get to see the details in the way the Wii remote responds to the way you break your hand. Compared to something like tennis where you just swipe your hand, the details in the Wii remote motion sensitivity stand out more in this than any other sport game. There should be a Joystiq poll to see which Wii Sports games is the most popular. I bet Bowling would get more votes than all the other games combined.

Dukhat @ Dec 27th 2006 1:11PM

vidGuy @ Dec 27th 2006 1:24PM

Dukhat, the PS2 is also outselling the PS3, remember?

Why, if the mass-market-appeal is such a key to success, has Sony abandoned it at the PS3 launch? There's not a single launch title that has the mass appeal of GH, DDR, or KR. The Wii provides that at launch with Wii Sports, a pack-in, no less. Thus, mass-market-appeal. And as Sony loses the exclusives (GH coming to 360 and Wii?), that mass-market won't have a compelling reason to pick up the beast.

Shagi @ Dec 27th 2006 1:43PM

Is this thing on?

Mike @ Dec 27th 2006 2:26PM

"For anyone that doesn't like Wii Sports:
PLAY THE WII TRAINING GAMES!"
"The game is pick-up-and-play, but to master it, and have more fun, you really have to learn the controls."

Your statements are seemingly contradictory. You seem to claim that the reason some people don't like Wii sports is that they haven't bothered to go through the training yet at the same time you claim it's "pick-up-and-play". Obviously you can't become a master of any reasonably complex game on the first try, but if a game is "pick-up-and-play" you should have fun and at least some level of success with the game with no prior experience with it.

Anyway, my primary gripe with Wii Bowling is that it's boring. I don't find real bowling to be boring. I'm not sure what makes it interesting to me (perhaps its the visceral thrill of hurling a heavy object?), but I have a good time when I go out bowling (though I don't do it often). Perhaps I disliked it because the subject matter was so mundane. After all, I can go to the bowling alley any time I want, but I can't very well pick up a sword and slay monsters or pick up a gun and shoot aliens in real life. Whatever the reason, I found the game boring and not a lot of fun. The fact that I did poorly (60 or 70 when I usually score over 100) and that I couldn't figure out how to correct my error just added insult to injury.

My issues with Wii boxing were more control related. The correlation between the movement of my hands and the actions of my character on screen were quite weak. I suppose with enough practice I could assume better control of boxing, but isn't the whole point of the Wii controller that it's supposed to feel natural and intuitive to use? Tennis was easy to get a grip on and so was Excite Truck (not that I particularly cared for that game either), but not boxing.

clay @ Dec 27th 2006 3:04PM

I LOVE wii bowling. its absolutely fun and even more fun when you can get your friends over to drink and bowl just like you would at the bowling alley.

vidGuy @ Dec 27th 2006 3:05PM

No contradiction at all, Mike. The game IS pick-up-and-play, otherwise I wouldn't have had over 20 non-gamers loving on the Wii Bowling and Tennis over the holidays. Ages ranged from 8 to 65 and years of gaming from 0 (almost everybody there) to 21 (me). For those that jump in and STILL don't like it, their dislike often comes from frustration that they can't control the on-screen action. Thus, training games make the PLAYER better, which allows him or her to have more fun.

Really, it's different strokes and all that. You may not find bowling fun, but it IS a good game. My roommate, a previous "hardcore" XBOX (Halo and Madden) guy, spends at least 10 hours a week bowling. He's averaging 270ish. He claims to have the exact same hook in the game as he has in real life.

crono141 @ Dec 27th 2006 3:06PM

Is dukhat the poster formerly known as ">"?

ackmondual @ Dec 27th 2006 4:15PM

#15
""Golf, Bowling, Baseball... don't most people interested in this sort of thing already do it as part of their regular life? For these "hardcore" people, i'd bet they'll spend more time and money to go out and play their sport of choice than play at it on the Wii. It seems like this would leave Nintendo with a group of "casual" people - casual sports, casual gamers, casual (read: comparatively rarely) buyers.""

I would say so as well, but the fact that sooo many ppl are buying games like Madden, NBA Live, FIFA, etc. despite how relatively easy it can be to get a bunch of ppl together and find a court/space for those sports says alot right there. It's MUCH straightforward to play indoors on a console and not have to worry about driving to a bowling alley, golf range, tennis court, etc. .... not to mention equipment rental/purchase.

Eirinn @ Dec 27th 2006 6:44PM

@1: "they'll be in danger of losing their new audience just as quickly as they were captivated by Wii Sports"

But the next game targeted at that audience will surely captivate them equally as quickly. I don't think Nintendo needs to worry.

DrXym @ Dec 28th 2006 8:03AM

Wii bowling demonstrates the best the controller can possibly hope to achieve. When the player has to make an arm movement which is exactly paralleled in a game, the controller makes sense. Unfortunately not many games have that parallel. When the controller expects you remember that some up down spastic shake means reload, while rapid thrusting means to run, and twirling means something else etc., is when it will suck badly.

MachRc @ Dec 28th 2006 12:10PM

I took my brand new wii and 4 controllers + 360 games(the kids already had GC and 360) to my family's christmas eve dinner.

I arrived early with my siblings and by dinner time we had ALL the kids from the cul de sac in my cousins house playing bowling.

I tried to pry some off bowling with 4 player Marvel Alliance(which is awesome with 4 playaz btw_!)

but with no luck

these kidz had kung Fo0 grip on the wiim0tes s0n.

My uncle jokingly offered me 700$ to let go of the system and controllers. But deep down inside I saw a sad man without a wii for christmas for the kids.

I just hope all of you had a chance to spend wonderful time with the family playing together like I have this season.

I just hope that magic doesnt get lost in forecasted

"drought period"

Ninx @ Dec 28th 2006 2:58PM

Wii sports undoubtedly was the most important game to hit the market this year. It really has had a strong impact and causes a slight paradigm shift and really draws in a new crowd.

NinjaMoose @ Dec 29th 2006 3:08PM

In our family, the two hits were tennis and boxing.

However, everything pales in comparsion to Wii Golf with my father. And he plays Golf regularly. When I was little and we had guests over, he would instruct me to turn off my Nintendo. Now, he's introducing people to the Wii with Golf. I don't even really like the Wii Golf that much, but my father loves it. And he wants more. He's really considering getting one (he can wait, so I'm telling him to wait till the first price cut.) and also, I'm assuming someone like EA will make a really good golf game. He really wants a full-blown simulation. If someone can take the mechanics of Wii Golf and add multiple courses (especially real famous ones), a full selection of clubs (numbered clubs), with different sets of clubs (different brands of clubs), not only will you sell the game, but you'll instantly sell a Wii to my father. And he can't be the only one. Since the start of the week when I arrived, he's played a 9-hole course at minimum once a day.