Nintendo Wii bowling over U.S. retirees
MSNBC, March 23rd, 2007
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.
While she took the early on-court
lead, the Wii beat her in the end. Still, it hurt less than her real-world
losses: "I didn't mind losing to a video game. It couldn't rub it in."
Read more of this article.