Essay 4850

From The Washington Post…

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Granny Got Game
Wii’s Move-Around Style Appeals to a New Demographic

By Mike Musgrove, Washington Post Staff Writer

Earl Davis is hoping there’s truth to a rumor he’s heard about an upcoming version of the game Dance Dance Revolution. He’s heard that it will feature the golden oldies he knows and loves, instead of all the latest pop hits.

Davis, 73, a retired Marine sergeant major, said he plays for at least a few minutes on a Nintendo Wii video game console every day. When he and his wife have friends over to their apartment, at the Riderwood retirement community in Silver Spring, the Wii helps get the party started. It loosens the joints, stirs the brain waves and breaks the ice.

“We had no interest in video games until the Wii came along,” Davis said. “Now I think we’re addicted.”

On the retirement community scene, bingo is looking a little like last year’s thing, as video games have recently grabbed a spot as the hot new activity. More specifically, retirees are enthusiastically taking to games on the Wii, which has been under-supplied and over-demanded at retail stores all year, thanks largely to the system’s appeal to a range of consumers.

Davis likes that the Wii emulates the motion of real sports. Playing a Wii tennis game involves swinging the controller as if it were an actual racket. If you slice in your real-world golf game, you’ll slice on the Wii, he said.

“The advantage is, I haven’t lost any balls yet,” he jokes.

(But, alas: The maker of the DDR dance game said yesterday that it doesn’t have plans for an oldies version of its hit game franchise.)

The Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry trade group, has long maintained that video games are a pastime for grown-ups as well as kids. The age of the average gamer has been creeping north over the years, according to ESA research, and now stands at 33. In 2007, 24 percent of Americans over age 50 played video games, an increase from 9 percent in 1999.

Nintendo says the average age of the Wii player is 29, but the company expects to see that number surge upward as the supply of the system starts meeting demand. So far, most of the people able to procure one have been younger fans with the will and stamina to stand in line at stores.

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