Some excerpts from a CNN/AP article below:

When Will Nickelson and his daughter want to spend some quality time together, they fire up Nintendo Co.’s Wii and play a few rounds of “Wii Sports” or “Mario Party 8.”

“It’s kind of difficult picking a game for a 7-year-old girl, but she really likes to beat her dad at bowling,” says Nickelson, 30, a stay-at-home dad from Huntsville, Alabama.

“I like the Wii baseball because it’s just so fun because I always beat him,” [his daughter, Sara,] said. “Sometimes I beat him at Wii bowling. He gets kind of mad.”

The rest of the article linked below talks about parents playing games with their children in general, but mentions that games “don’t encourage reflective thinking skills, language development, social skills or physical activity.” I think Nintendo’s plethora of in-the-room multiplayer/party games and motion-sensitive Wii controller are definitely helping on the latter two points, and I can’t help but think that most action, puzzle, strategy, etc. games help encourage reflective thought. Basically, if it doesn’t work, it’s the player that has to figure out why whatever they did didn’t work and how to go about it again.

As for language development, I remember a ton of licensed games back in the NES games that did this. I think I still have those Sesame Street games somewhere. Too bad all little kids watch these days are the same anime and live action teen drama shows that some older kids watch.

CNN.com