Even Senior Citizens Love the Nintendo Wii

Nintendo may have been going beyond their traditional core gaming audience with the Wii and its user-friendly, motion-sensitive remote controller, but getting to the senior citizen demographic is truly trailblazing. And that's exactly where the Wii is turning out to be a big hit, if this Chicago Tribune piece about a bunch of Wii-loving seniors is to be believed. It turns out the gaggle of gaming grandparents is all over the Bowling game from Wii Sports.

Now, I'm having trouble getting my own parents, who are not yet grandparents, into the Wii (my Mom only recently got into IM-ing and e-mailing), but I've got a friend whose 70-year-old father is a big Gran Turismo fan on the PS2. (Apparently Dad's really into cars.)

And Nintendo has been actively pursuing the over-50 market since the Wii's launch, as this Siliconera post from the AARP Life@50 event attests. (Nintendo also recently gave away portable Nintendo DS systems to 100 "ageless americans" between the ages of 54 and 104.)

Could it be that the Japanese video game pioneer is going after the vast group of baby boomers who are beginning to have plenty of post-retirement time on their hands? Is Wii Sports bowling the new canasta? Or is this a trial for the eventual Gen-X retiree bunch, who are probably the first group to actually grow up playing video games? And we though that senior citizens were only into casual and massively-multiplayer online games. (According to the Entertainment Software Association, 25 percent of all gamers are 55 and older.)

Either way, I'm all for it. My only fear is the potential injury that can arise from swinging that Wii remote too hard—I'm far from retirement and have given myself sore arms playing Wii Sports Tennis on several occasions.

How about you? Do you look forward to a retirement full of video games? Or if you're already in retirement, how badly do you want a Nintendo Wii system now? 

Related links:

Hands-on With Nintendo Wii

More Hands-on With Nintendo Wii 

Even Grown-Ups Are Excited About Nintendo Wii

Yahoo! Games: Wii