Plays Well With Others: Video Game System Transcends Solitude

Six years ago, while much of the video game industry continued to obsess over explosion-addled young men in basements, Nintendo had the gumption to move in a different direction with the introduction of the Wii. It was built around a vision of families having fun together in living rooms. And it worked.

Since its release in 2006, the Wii has far outsold its more powerful yet less approachable competitors: Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. But personal lives and entertainment habits have been reshaped by smartphones (the original iPhone was released seven months after the Wii), social networks and tablets. Wiis that once brought families together now sit largely unused. Today many of us are familiar with the disturbing mise en scène of a family or friends sharing the same room, yet each person is wholly, silently absorbed in his own screen — a phone, a tablet, a laptop. Sherry Turkle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology social scientist, described the phenomenon most succinctly in the title of her 2011 book, “Alone Together.” That is also the phenomenon that Nintendo hopes to alter with its next game system, the Wii U. Beyond all of the technical parameters, Nintendo’s most expansive goal with the Wii U, expected this holiday season (no price has been announced), is to persuade family members to put down their disparate gadgets once in a while and play together again. In a counterpoint to “Alone Together,” one of Nintendo’s tag lines for the Wii U is “Together. Better.”