Nintendo Wii Fanboy

A poll from the UK insurance firm Sheilas' Wheels analyzed the exercise habits of women, and the potential disaster area that has become their homes. Despite the initial "ZOMG Wii Fit destruction!" outcry from the mass media, the details of the poll really don't have much to do with Nintendo at all.

The general response criticizes massive damage caused by these women knocking over junk as they worked out on Wii Fit. On average, £6.55 per person was the estimated dollar (that is, pound) value of destruction, or a whopping £20 million worth total. Wii Fit, you've got some 'splaining to do!

Or, not. Wii Fit isn't responsible for the damage at all, and the original release from Sheilas' Wheels merely mentions the popularity of Wii Fit and Nintendo in general -- then immediately states the most popular home exercise method is watching an instructional video or DVD. Sure, the Wii has been responsible for some breakages in the past, but tacking the £20 million sum anywhere near the Balance Board is just poor form. Read over the official Sheilas' Wheels news article before subscribing to the Wii Fit Angry Mob newsletter.

Finally, the results explain that the survey was conducted to gather home damage estimates over the past year. Wii Fit has only been out in the UK for a month. The math doesn't add up, and a genuine attempt to gather information on home exercise routines has been misrepresented. Besides, if Wii Fit was solely to blame, what have the women been doing to smash up their stuff during the 11 months before it was released? If you guessed cleaning the kitchen, sewing and baking cookies for the men, you would be correct.

We mentioned this yesterday, and now look! There's a helpful scan to illustrate our point. While some female-oriented publications are all about Nintendo's new console, it looks like the good folks at Cosmopolitan aren't quite convinced.

Cosmo's take on the Wii craze? Guys assume girls might want one, because the guy really loves the Wii. That's some deep psychologizin' they've got going on there. And in referring to the Wii as the "wrong gift," Cosmo is insinuating that the modern woman just isn't interested. Are they wrong? With all the stories and videos of nongamers embracing the hands-on experience that Wii provides, we're not sure that Cosmo's on the right side of the fence with this one. Can't the modern woman want to decode weird male behavior, agonize over not-so-harmless habits,* and then play a game of tennis after work?

The Wii is perfectly poised to help gamers break down some of these walls that we've created to keep the interests of men and women separate. The DS broke some of that ground, but the Wii brings the fun and ease of gaming into the open, making it a social experience that anyone can get into, even if you have to kick off your stylish shoes first.

*Actual stories in the same issue.

While these aren't the best quality we've ever seen for scanned pages, it's still exciting to see the Wii getting mainstream press coverage, particularly in a nontraditional market. Magazines targeted at women and teen girls are often down on video games. Even the Wii gets this treatment, alas, in the March issue of Cosmopolitan, wherein it is referred to as an example of a poorly-chosen gift. Of course, we tend to think that anyone who can find a Wii must be a gift-giving superhero, but we are admittedly biased. No matter. We just find it refreshing that Teen Vogue is taking a pro-Wii stance and indicating that it's the bee's knees for girls.

And we definitely wanted to point out the shirt the girl on the left is wearing. It reads "Oui Wii" and we here at the 'Fanboy feel a burning need to get our hands on one of those right now. We're probably not going to read Teen Vogue to get one, though. We'll do a lot of things for Wii gear, but that's a line we're so not crossing.

Go Nintendo has larger (blurry) scans if you'd like to see the rest.

Apparently, pretty girly. 'Cause, you know, women only care about cute packaging and accessories. Tee hee!

It's hard to understand why someone would write a piece like this on GameWorld Network. Who's likely to read it -- a gamer who happens to be female, or one of the super girly-girl types whose only encounter with Nintendo occurred during third grade? The article seems to be written toward and about the latter, but the former is more likely to read it, considering the site ... and it seems a little, what's the word here -- oh yes. Insulting.

Sure, the Wii is "girly." It's girl-friendly. Why? Because it's fun. Because of the intuitive nature of the controls. Because even the games that involve what are considered male things -- like shooting, though there are many women who will burn your ass in any FPS -- make sense, with logical control schemes and interesting actions. That's what makes a game appeal to girls. Fun. If you want to pull in more non-gaming women? Great, hand them a Wiimote. If the game takes advantage of the new-gen controls, it probably won't matter what you have inside, whether it's Trauma Center or Madden. In fact, it's likely that non-gamers are going to be more taken in by the unusual controls, because while some of us gamers view the whole process with a raised eyebrow (we have to ... move?), the Wiimote is less daunting than a traditional controller.

The Wii is likely to be something that will, in fact, interest your non-gamer friends -- yes, even the girls. But don't limit them to "girly" games. You never know what will interest someone, or what they'll be good at, and it seems somewhat limiting to assume only certain Wii games will appeal to non-gamers, regardless of gender. Maybe all grandma needed was something to aim with, or she'd have been beating you down all these years.

In the most shocking news of the week, Nintendo has announced that they're -- are you ready? -- working to market the Wii toward women and the elderly. You know, like they've been doing for a long time with their Nintendo DS! Who expected that, huh? "We want to appeal to mothers who don't want consoles in their living rooms, and to the elderly and to young women,'' Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said. "It's a challenge, like trying to sell cosmetics to men."

But is it so hard? Even more so than with the DS, the Wii sells itself. From the moment the Wii controller surfaced, even non-gamers were considering the vast possibilities the system would bring to the industry. In that same report, Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Japanese research giant Enterbrain, seemed to strike closer to the truth. "Wii definitely could become the most popular console of all time. Non-gamers can see how fun it is to play just by looking at people playing it." We here at the Fanboy offices can attest -- even our mothers and our non-gaming friends (we do have a few) seem interested in the Wii. Perhaps the best thing Nintendo could do to sell the Wii is to simply ensure their demo kiosks are everywhere. All the system needs is exposure, and it will sell. The only factor that is up in the air is how successful it might become. How many people will stop and want a longer look, and end up taking one home? Time for a little holiday sales speculation -- tells us what impact you think the Wii will have outside of the traditional market.