It looks like the Beijing Olympics have given Wii Fit another jolt in popularity. The title has returned to the top of the videogames sales chart in the United Kingdom, 14 weeks after it was first released. Wii Fit has occupied the number one position in the UK games chart on four occasions since its launch. In fact, it is still difficult to get a copy of the game in some areas.

Other titles that have recieved a boost from the Olympics include Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and Big Beach Sports.

So the question remains, have any of you guys been driven to do more on Wii Fit since Olympic fever kicked in? Your comments are welcome.

Here's something that might be of interest to competitive Wii Fit users out there. Wii Records is a great site for recording your Wii highscores and comparing them with other wii users. They've got sections of all the games in the Wii Catalog including Wii Fit which you can check out here.

Below is a youtube video demonstrating how you can submit your records to the site.

It looks like Nintendo may be adding downloadable content to Wii Fit at some stage in the near future. Game Designer Shigeru Miyamoto made the indication in an interview with PC World recently.

The only content that seems to be confirmed so far is Nutritional Information but there will surely be plenty more to follow given the massive success that Wii Fit has been so far this year. Expect to see the Wii Fit Bundle flying off the shelves across Europe and America these coming weeks!

Following on from yesterdays news on the Wii Fit Price in the states today the european prices have come to light. Nintendo has confirmed that the bundle which includes the balance board will be available in the UK for £69.99 and in the rest of europe at a price point of €89.99.

Its now only a matter of time before we have the opportunity to start flailing around like some crazy fools on our balance boards trying to keep our Mii on a tightrope

There is an insightful interview over at wii.com in which Nintendo President Satoru Iwata talks with legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto about Wii Fit.

It seems that early in the development Miyamoto and his team considered the DS as a portible diary for recording food intake.

"We even thought about making it so that you could take your DS out with you and store data on what you ate. With health as part of the Wii catalogue, we also saw the subject of food ahead of u"

When talking about how they wanted Wii Fit to do things that the many fitness DVD's out there couldn't do Miyamoto commented

"Many DVDs related to exercise are already on the market, so when we started thinking about what couldn’t be done with DVD, we hit on the fact that we could check whether or not you were actually exercising. So we continued the experiments while using radio exercise music, and by measuring balance we found out we were able to do a lot of things quite accurately."

"if you’re in the middle of exercising by standing on one leg, and lose your balance and put your foot down, they’ll tell you, “Did I see you put your foot down during the exercise?” You couldn't do that on DVD."

You can read more over at wii.com

Wii Fit has been been given its official rating for its Australian release by the OFLC ( Office of Film and Literature Classification ). The title will be rated G, meaning that its for general consumption. Its pretty much what you would expect for a game like Wii Fit, if it had been rated anything else it would have been a bit of a shocker... or perhaps a rockstar like publicity stunt.

Wii Fit has earned its fourth week as the number one selling console game in Japan. Thats a total of 1,283,000 units sold since it was released back in December of last year. It's going to be very interesting to see if it matches this level of success when it hits general release worldwide.

Here's a full breakdown of the Top 10 selling console games for the week ending January 27th.

1. Wii Fit (Nintendo) – Wii

2. World Soccer Winning Eleven: Ubiquitous Evolution 2008 (Konami) – PSP

3. Lucky Star: Misasagi Sakura Gakuen Sakura Fuji Festival (Kadakawa Shoten) – PS2

4. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Nintendo) – Wii

5. Wii Sports (Nintendo) – Wii

6. Mario Party DS (Nintendo) – DS

7. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd (Capcom) – PSP

8. Doraemon Baseball: Dramatic Stadium (Bandai Namco) – DS

9. Yggdra Union (Sting) – PSP

10. Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (Level 5) – DS

Source

Possibly to be taken with a large grain of salt, there is a rumor today that the balance board to be shipped with the European and North American copies of Wii Fit will feature an LCD screen displaying your weight. In some ways it makes sense but aesthetically it might take away from the clean look of current model. Then again giving Nintendo's track record of hardware decisions in this console generation If they did choose to do it i'm sure they would do it well.

It looks like we finally have a release date for Wii Fit in Europe & North America. Those of you living in North America will be getting your hands on that shiny balance board in April with Europeans having to wait until June. Well I guess those of you with new years resolutions ready and waiting to be put into action will have an excuse to put it off for that bit longer now!

Source

Nintendo Wii Fanboy is reporting that Wii Fit outsold the Nintendo DS in Japan last week. Wii Fit sold 108,000 units compared to the Nintendo DS's 91,000. Although software and hardware are not directly comparible this is still no small feat given the outstanding sales figures that the DS has been producing week after week.

Here's a breakdown of those numbers

Hardware:

• DS: 91,000
• Wii: 76,000
• PSP: 65,000
• PS3: 32,000
• PS2: 13,000
• Xbox 360: 4,400

Software:

1. Wii Fit (Wii) --- 108,000 (1,114,000)
2. Mario & Sonic at the Olympics DS (DS) --- 91,000
3. Mario Party DS (DS) --- 38,000 (1,531,000)
4. Wii Sports (Wii) --- 31,000 (2,664,000)
5. Wii Play (Wii) --- 19,000 (2,139,000)
6. Monster Hunter Portable 2 (PSP) --- 18,000 (1,569,000)
7. Professor Layton 2 (DS) --- 17,000 (714,000)
8. Mario & Sonic at the Olympics (Wii) --- 17,000 (474,000)
9. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) --- 17,000 (844,000)
10. Mario Party 8 (Wii) --- 15,000 (1,154,000)
11. Mario Kart DS (DS) --- 14,000 (2,796,000)
12. Final Fantasy IV (DS) --- 11,000 (559,000)
13. School Days LxH (PS2) --- 11,000
14. Dragon Quest IV (DS) --- 10,000 (1,150,000)
15. Professor Layton (DS) --- 10,000 (813,000)
16. New Super Mario Bros. (DS) --- 10,000 (5,0651,000)
17. Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) --- 10,000 (4,564,000)
18. Winning Eleven (PS2) --- 9,600 (605,000)
19. Unreported
20. Rune Factory 2 (DS) --- 8,800 (83,000)

Nintendo is set to increase the weight limit on its Wii balance board for its western release in Q2 of this year. The original balance board which is currently in use in Japan supports 300lbs but the "western edition" is to have that limit increased to 330lbs. Will a 30lbs increase be enough though? Or is it still going to exclude some of those that could benefit from the device.

It remains to be seen as to whether furthur changes will occur before Nintendo's slated release date.