I was in Game recently looking at all the accessories you can get for the Wii: the steering wheel, golf club, tennis racquet, shotgun, crossbow, fishing rod, the list goes on… But mostly these are simple extensions of the Wiimote; they don’t actually do anything. However the ‘balance board’ is coming to the UK and proves to step up beyond the capabilities of Wiimote prosthetics.
The balance board could be as revolutionary as the Wiimote itself. The board so sensitive that it tells how well you are balancing, even if you are standing on just one foot. So immeadiately you get to notions of surfing and snowboarding. Pretty cool. But the first ‘game’ will be Nintendo made, fitness oriented, Wii Fit (£70 including the balance board). As well as a fitness regime, there are party games such as hoola hooping, and the obligatory cheesy dance routines. Wii Fit will showcase the balance board the same way Wii Games showcased the Wiimote, but we can expect other games developers to jump on and really tune into the board’s capabilities. Apparently there are over ten games in production right now. I would be suprised if it was not more.
Nintendo’s choice to market the balance board as a fitness tool shows that it is continuing to carve the Wii away from the hardcore gamers market into a much larger market unsold to by Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox. It looks like Microsoft is getting in on the game but it will have to work hard not to be perceived as an WiiClone. It will need more success to fight this war than the Zune has had in fighting the iPod. Chances are it may just look like another a poor imitation. Sony seem to be holding their ground as hardcore gamers but who knows if they will attempt to stray onto Nintendo’s turf too? All we can say is that Nintendo has blasted the gaming world open by inviting a new breed of gamer and the balance board only strengthens their positioning as they soak up this new market.
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When I originally drafted this post weeks ago I finished with: I just hope Nintendo haven’t damaged their potential sales by releasing Wii Fit on April 25th - one day after the launch of one of the most anticipated Wii games to date, Mario Kart. Oh how foolish of me! It turns out that if anything it may work out that Mario Kart sales are cannibalised if at all following the news that Wii Fit is almost sold out over here. Well now I don’t have a closing line….
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Eisley 9 Apr 2008
ReportIt will be interesting to see how much the finished game allows the players to actually get fit. I played an early version last September and it was primarily about balance and core strength which is a very eastern perspective of fitness, I don’t think it will offer much in the way of a cardio workout. It’s a very neat idea and I hope someone can exploit it with a great game - what I played and saw (the mini-games like going left or right to head a ball, etc.) so far left me underwhelmed compared to what I thought I should have been. Hopefully, Nintendo have included cardio to satisify a western audience who have set ideas about what fitness is to them,