Wii Want to Play. Do you?: Trey Holland, left, a senior in marketing, and Parker Morris, a junior in civil engineering, play Nintendo Wii. A new game for the popular console, Wii Fit, is set to hit stores next month. Pete Riley / PHOTO EDITOR“Sweatin’ to the Oldies” and the infinite number of weight-loss and workout DVDs at electronics stores will soon have some new competition from an unexpected place: the video game industry.
A new product for Nintendo’s Wii gaming console will offer owners the opportunity to keep track of and, like Fergie, work on their fitness.
The device, to be released in the United States May 19, is called “Wii Fit,” and consists of a game disc and a Balance Board capable of weighing the user and locating their center of gravity for the game’s different activities.
When the user inputs information like their height and age, the game combines this with the weight information and calculates the player’s body mass index rating. Throughout the player’s use of the game, the game will keep track of the user’s weight loss or gain.
Activities the game allows the user to do include a ball-rolling mini-game, which uses the Balance Board to let the player act as if they’re standing on top of a ball and must roll it towards a target, like multi-directional log rolling.
Other games include ski jumping, snowboarding, tightrope walking, and hula hooping.
The game also includes activities users could do without the game, like push-ups, jogging, step aerobics and yoga exercises, but the game tries to present them in a manner that is viewed as more fun than work.
Shane McDonald, an employee at a local games retailer, said his store has been accepting preorders for the game for several months.
“It’s selling like crazy in Japan, something like 1.5 million units, and if it sells like that over here at the $89.99 price point, it’s going to be huge,” McDonald said.
The game has been out in Japan since Dec. 1 and has been selling very well with more than 1.83 million copies in 19 weeks.
“People on the Internet have been loving it,” McDonald said. “I think it’s going to be like when the Wii came out with the new controller, it’s a new gimmick and people are going to hop on this pretty quick.”
One of the “people on the Internet” is blogger Vinnk at video game blog 4 Color Rebellion. Vinnk used the game for 7 weeks and lost ten pounds in the process, all the while documenting his use of the game with daily updates on the Web site. The updates consisted of pictures and detailed descriptions of his workout.
“I could have achieved the same results simply by doing sit-ups and push-ups everyday, and going for a run,” Vinnk wrote. “In fact, that may have let me obtain even better results. However, I don’t realistically believe that I would have had enough motivation to do that. ‘Wii Fit’ works because it shows me everyday how much I weigh, how much time I’ve invested and how well I am doing on my exercises.”
