Wii Sports 2 sequel planned by Nintendo for Wii

17 February 2008
Ferry

Wii Sports 2 sequel planned by Nintendo for Wii

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata sat down for an interview with the Senior Managing Director of Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto. They discussed their ideas for games families and friends could gather around for at home, like Wii Sports, Wii Play and also “Health Pack”, which later turned into Wii Fit. It turns out somewhere in between Wii Sports and Wii Fit development, planned games for Wii Sports 2 were instead put into Wii Fit.

Mr. Miyamoto talks about the games: Since I’d been doing a lot of swimming and exercising at the gym, I thought that it was essential that we included aerobics in this software [Wii Fit]. At first, Step Basics was part of the Balance Games section, but we later decided to include it in Aerobic Exercises instead. We also decided to add the Hula Hoop to the same section later on. Once we’d done so, that section really began to take shape, and just when we were starting to think about adding something else to the line-up, I just happened to see an experiment done by the Wii Sports team.

Mr. Iwata asks: Isn’t that where the Jogging activity, in which you jog with the Wii Remote in your pocket, came from?

Mr. Miyamoto answers: That’s right. I thought it was pretty good fun. As we didn’t know if there was going to be a Wii Sports 2 at the time or not, I gave the director a call and said to him, “This idea’s really good, and since there’s no official word on Wii Sports 2, could we have it for Wii Fit?” (laughs) Then I told the Wii Fit staff “I know it’s a little late in the project, but put this in too”, and the Aerobic Exercises selection finally started to meet our standards.

No word on when Nintendo will pick up the plans they have for Wii Sports 2, but with the huge success of the Wii pack-in game it seems likely to be sooner rather than later. As long as they include new games and most importantly, online multiplayer, I’d be happy with it! — You can read the full interview at Wii.com.

UPDATE: Wii Sports 2: Resort is coming in spring 2009. It will also be bundled with a Wii MotionPlus accessory for more precise 1-on-1 controls in the new games like Jet Ski, Sword Play and Disc Dog.