Nintendo has just sent word that Shigeru Miyamoto’s ‘Wii Fit’ is set to be released on 25th April in the UK, priced at a reasonable £70. That's slightly more than a month's membership at one of London's top-end gyms.
The yoga and keep fit ‘game’ comes bundled with a balance board peripheral that looks more like retro weighing scales than a traditional gaming controller
TechRadar spoke to the editor of Official Nintendo Magazine, Chandra Nair, earlier today, who informed us that: “Wii Fit works out muscles you never knew you had as well as being genuinely good fun at the same time. And don't forget the fact that the Balance Board is set to be used for at least 10 other dedicated games. 1080º Wii anyone? Let's hope so…”
We are not sure if Chandra is just toying with our Nintendo fanboy dreams by mention of the classic ‘1080º Snowboarding’ potentially being compatible with the Wii Fit balance board. But Nintendo’s new controller has obvious development potential for boarding based games.
We’ve lodged calls with Activision (publisher of the Tony Hawk’s skate series of games) and EA (publisher of ‘Skate’) to find out more about plans by third parties to make use of the balance board.
1080º Snowboarding
Miyamoto himself has stoked rumours of a balance board-controlled 1080º Snowboarding game recently on the official Nintendo US website, telling it:
“'I could make a version of the Snowboard Slalom [Wii Fit snowboard mini-game] with improved courses, or maybe 1080° Balance Boarding!'”
This tantalising glimpse of the future of Nintendo gaming followed Nintendo President's Satoru Iwata's comments: “'I think it’d be nice if some new, simpler software that used the Wii Balance Board came out through WiiWare,” he says.
“I think if you suddenly released new software for the Wii Balance Board at full price, the publishers would find it a bit difficult to market as packaged software to be sold in shops. That’s why I think it’d be good if you could download less expensive software onto your Wii instead of just relying on boxed games.'”
Not all fat people will like Wii Fit
Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime admitted that not everybody will immediately love Wii Fit, simply because it is going to tell you that you are out of shape.
"I do believe we'll get some negative feedback," admitted Fils-Aime at last week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. He was talking about the way Wii Fit’s Body Mass Index assessment is going to work.
"We had to make a hard call… But we went with the standard definitions associated with BMI. And we felt, candidly, that to move off of those standard definitions would have been false. It wouldn't have been right in terms of what we're trying to do with the consumer."
Fils-Aime, somewhat candidly, also claimed: "You're looking at a person that BMI says is borderline obese”. A worrying statement, as Reggie doesn’t really seem that ‘chubby’ to us.
“But on the other hand, we also believe that if that same consumer uses Wii Fit on a regular basis, they're going to see improvement," Fils-Aime added.
