In an effort presumably aimed to maintain the legitimacy of his fitness business, Michael Torchia is in the process of putting together a class action lawsuit against Nintendo. The reason? Products such as Wii Fit and Wii Sports don't have proper warning labels informing consumers about the potential dangers in using them.
"Nintendo is contributing to the epidemic of obesity," says Torchia. "Young and old are putting away their gym clothes and shying away from going outdoors to play sports, because the addictive appeal to the Wii game products." In other words - Nintendo should stop pretending to make products that encourage a fit lifestyle.
Of course, for someone who's been in the industry for over two decades, Torchia's been strangely silent about other home fitness products such as the treadmill, the Thighmaster, the Total Gym, or any other hardware that someone might buy on a whim and then leave to collect dust a month down the road.
In a society as litigous as the good old USA, it's conceivable that Torchia could make some headway with this suit. But the simple truth is, if you're dedicated to getting fit, you can do it with the help of many different products, including Nintendo's. If you're just out to hurt yourself on something, well... you could probably do it just as well with a Michael Torchia-designed gym.
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A news bit from the ever-questionable VGChartz was revealed this weekend, stating that the longstanding Super Mario Bros has been surpassed in sales by Wii Sports, making the Wii's pack-in game the best-selling video game of all time.
Let's be realistic for a moment and assume that VGChartz is right about this. Even if Wii Sports hasn't yet overtaken the NES classic, at this point there are no doubts that it will.
You might say this momentous occasion doesn't matter, because Wii Sports is a pack-in and everyone who buys a Wii must own one. Let's not forget that Super Mario was a pack-in under certain conditions as well, but the up-and-coming Wii title and the evergreen Super Mario Bros have something even more important in common: they both gave consumers a reason to buy a console.
Yes, just as people bought the Nintendo Entertainment System for Mario's jumping, mushroom-fueled hijinks, they're buying the Wii in order to smack a virtual tennis ball around an onscreen court. What does this mean for the relevance of VGChartz's sales data? It means the Wii has revolutionized video gaming in the same way that the NES did in the early 1980s, back when Atari was the king who never saw the disruptive wave as it crashed onto the shore.
Congratulations, Wii Sports. Your victory is well-deserved.
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