Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The guys over at Siliconera attended the recently-concluded AARP event Life@50+ and managed to check out the Nintendo booth. Sadly, they report the only Wii title on-hand was Wii Sports, however they report that the game did manage to fetch quite an audience throughout the day. Apparently, even one senior citizen commented that she had never seen anything like this before and, upon hearing how much the console costs, replied in asking "that's all?"

Nintendo's flagship Touch Generations title Brain Age was also available at their booth with several different DS Lite stations set up for attendees to stop by and try. Also, Nintendo held a contest where the winner received a DS Lite including a copy of Brain Age.

Siliconera also managed to get some video of an older gentleman giving Wii Sports: Bowling a whirl with one of the booth's exhibitors. From the looks of this gentleman's play time with the Wii and how easily he understood the controls, Nintendo managed to recruit more than a few "grey gamers" during the event.

Over in the Technology section of New York Times, a story talking about Nintendo's first-ever appearance at the annual Life@50+ event this past weekend, which is sponsored by the AARP and was held in Anaheim CA, shows Nintendo's commitment to hooking in the older demographic. The event, which attracted over 20,000 attendees, not only featured products for older Americans, but also discussion panels and celebrities.

Bruce Sanders, AARP's director of national events, says that technology is showing a stronger presence at the event, stating that a total of 18 tech companies were present this year, with only 10 present at the show in Las Vegas during 2004. The 2005 show, which was planned to be held in New Orleans, was cancelled due to Hurricane Katrina.

While the event, for Nintendo, showed them focusing more on their upcoming Wii console, the strides made through their popular DS handheld, including its Touch Generation line-up of games, made it possible for the company to even think they could gain such a large share of the market.

[Thanks Ian!]