Among the backlash Nintendo has been facing for its pricing decisions regarding the upcoming Switch 2 as well as its launch titles is also the fact that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is not a pack-in title. Rather, players will need to spend $9.99 to play the game. In the meantime, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime spoke about the decision to offer Wii Sports as a pack-in title for the immensely popular Wii.
In a conversation with IGN during its Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, Fils-Aime recounted a story about an argument he had with Shigeru Miyamoto surrounding whether or not Nintendo should offer Wii Sports as a pack-in title for the console. According to the story, Miyamoto was quite against including the title as a free pack-in with the console.
“It’s an understatement to say that Mr. Miyamoto pushed back,” said Fils-Aime. “During the development of the Wii and the Wii Sports software, you know again the goal was, we wanted the system to be attractive not only to the most active players, but to new players, and to bring them into the video gaming experience. And we saw Wii Sports as the way to be able to do that because each of these sports made great use of the [Wiimote]. Each sport was known by a global population… and my recommendation was that we pack Wii Sports in with the hardware.”
“And literally, when I first made this suggestion, Mr. Miyamoto said ‘Reggie, Nintendo does not give away software for free. You don’t understand how hard our developers work to create compelling content like this,'” continued Fils-Aime. “Now, fortunately, because my SNES came packed in with software, I knew that in fact the company has given away software in the past. But it was against a very strategic objective. And that was my commentary back to Mr. Miyamoto. That, by including Wii Sports, we would immediately have value in the hardware as the consumers opening it up and setting it up. But more importantly, we would have a touchstone piece of software that so many consumers would experience”
“It’s what led to Wii Sports being played in bars, being played on cruise ships, being played in retirement homes. It became this universal experience. But he was not happy when I first made the suggestion, to the point where, on a subsequent visit to Kyoto and the headquarters, the team showed me software that would become Wii Play. Those themselves were fun as well, but they didn’t have the connective tissue that Wii Sports had with all of the experiences. So then I proceeded to piss Mr. Miyamoto off again by suggesting that we bundle Wii Play with the Wii Remote.”
“In the end, in the Americas and in Europe, Wii Sports was packed in with the Wii. It was not in Japan, which created a bit of a test market, and it was obvious that, in the markets where Wii Sports was packed in that the Wii became much more of a phenomenon. Wii Sports itself became much more of a phenomenon. And we did pack the Wiimote with Wii Play, and I think it became the fifth best selling piece of software in the history of Wii.”
Incidentally, Nintendo hadn’t released any pack-in games with the Switch when it launched back in 2017. Rather, the company has been focused on selling even titles like 1-2-Switch separately, sticking to the philosophy that Miyamoto had told Fils-Aime about in the story.
