Nintendo Switch Sports is more of a gamble than it seems

digitaltrends.com:

For February’s Nintendo Direct, I watched the show while chatting on Discord with Digital Trends’ gaming writers. Of all the new games announced, there was one in particular that elicited gleeful squeals from the crowd: Nintendo Switch Sports.

The unlikely sequel to Wii Sports brings the thrill of 2000s motion-controlled athletics to the Switch. Nostalgic gamers will get to bowl, golf, and more with the flick of a joy-con. It was the kind of left-field announcement that got everyone talking on social media. No other moment had my phone blowing up with caps-locked text messages more.

Once the initial excitement died down and I took a step back from the show, I started thinking about how strange the entire premise of the new game is. Wii Sports was a phenomenon in 2006, but will players really be willing to shell out for an updated version of it in 2022?

Wii Sports is one of the most successful video games of all time, but context is everything. The game came bundled with Nintendo Wii systems at launch and acted as a sort of free tech demo for Nintendo’s odd Wiimotes. It was a simple sports game that let players test out motion controls with intuitive mini-games. Anyone who owned a Wii had a copy of the game (depending on what country they bought it in), making it a built-in success story.

As of 2021, Nintendo reports that the game has sold 82.9 million units in its lifetime. For context, the next best selling Wii game is Mario Kart Wii at 37.38 million units.

It’s a skewed statistic since the game was bundled with a console. The number is more reflective of how many units the Wii moved than how eager fans were to buy Wii Sports. That makes it difficult to gauge how hungry audiences are for more. A sequel, Wii Sports