Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé has pointed to the story of Wii pack-in game Wii Sports in thinly-veiled tweets addressing the controversy surrounding Nintendo’s decision to charge for Switch 2 tutorial game Welcome Tour.
Amid the furore around the $449.99 price of the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World's $79.99 price tag, there was also shock at Nintendo’s decision to charge for interactive instruction manual, Welcome Tour.
Nintendo revealed Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour during its Nintendo Direct last week. It’s a game set to launch alongside the Switch 2 in June that offers a guided tour of the console itself in video game form.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is described as a "virtual exhibition" of the new hardware. Per Nintendo: "through tech demos, minigames and other interactions, players will get to know the new system inside and out in ways they may never have known about otherwise."
The Nintendo Direct showed footage of a small player avatar exploring a super-sized Switch 2, reading about the different features and facts about the console. It also includes mini-games such as Speed Golf, Dodge the Spiked Balls, and a Maracas Physics Demo.
IGN has confirmed that Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour costs $9.99 and is a digital-only product. That’s significantly cheaper than other Switch 2 games, but IGN has already reported to the complaints from some Nintendo fans that Welcome Tour costs money at all, with many saying it should be a Switch 2 pack-in, as DualSense tech demo game Astro's Playroom was for PlayStation 5.
Now, Fils-Aimé has tweeted three clips from IGN’s two-year-old interview with the former Nintendo executive in which he discussed the internal battle he had with legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto to get Wii Sports as a free pack-in for the hugely successful Wii console.
In the first clip, Fils-Aimé says "it is an understatement to say that Mr. Miyamoto pushed back” on the call to make Wii Sports a Wii console pack-in. As we know, this is a battle Fils-Aimé won to a degree, with Wii Sports bundled with the Wii everywhere except Japan.
The story of Wii Sports pack in ...https://t.co/LhflSFWaL3
— Reggie Fils-Aimé (@Reggie) April 9, 2025
The second interview clip Fils-Aimé tweeted pointed to a similar battle to bundle Wii Play with the Wii Remote. In the clip from our interview, Fils-Aimé revealed he “pissed off” Miyamoto once again with the suggestion. “He was not happy about that either.”
And finally, tweeting “and the results,” Fils-Aimé clipped out the section from our interview in which he reveals that all this was, ultimately, the right call.
“In the Americas and in Europe Wii Sports was packed in with the Wii proposition. It was not in Japan, which created a bit of a test market. It was obvious that in the markets where Wii Sports was packed in that we became much more of a phenomenon. Wii Sports itself became much more of a phenomenon.
“We did pack the Remote with Wii Play. And it became the fifth best-selling piece of software in the history of the Wii.”
And the results.https://t.co/xrFTDeJMQf
— Reggie Fils-Aimé (@Reggie) April 9, 2025
It’s clear to see what Fils-Aimé is doing here. Although he’s not directly commenting on Nintendo’s Switch 2 strategy, he is making the point that free pack-ins have worked in the past for Nintendo consoles,so it stands to reason that it would do so again for Switch 2.
Fans know what’s up, too. “Hahaha, guys I think Reggie is watching our comments about the Switch 2,” said one X / Twitter user. “We know you would have packed in Welcome Tour,” said another.
This week, IGN published its interview with Nintendo of America's Vice President of Product and Player Experience, Bill Trinen, conducted at a recent Switch 2 preview event in New York, but before Nintendo announced the delay to pre-orders due to Trump’s tariffs.
Trinen said there’s more to Welcome Tour than it appears based on the showing during the Nintendo Direct and even during recent hands-on opportunities the media had access to. Based on what’s actually in the game, Nintendo decided $9.99 “is not an exorbitant price,” he continued.
“It's an interesting product,” Trinen began. “We're actually getting ready today, we're going to be doing some Nintendo Treehouse Live segments and covering a lot of games in detail. That's one of them. And I think people will be able to see through Treehouse Live probably a little bit more maybe than you were able to see on the show floor. It's a pretty robust piece of software. There's a lot of great detail in there.
“For some people, I think there are people who are particularly interested in the tech and the specs of the system and things like that, for them I think it's going to be a great product. It's really for people that want more information about the system rather than necessarily a quick intro to everything it does.
"And for that reason and just the amount of care and work that the team put into it, I think it was decided that, 'Yeah, this feels like $9.99 is not an exorbitant price. It feels like a good value for what you're getting out of the product.' "
Welcome Tour is of course just one part of Nintendo’s next-gen push to become embroiled in controversy, and we’ve also got Trinen’s response to questions surrounding the company’s decision to go for $80 Switch 2 games, as well as going for $450 for the Switch 2 itself.
Photo by Susan Goldman/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
