The boxart for the US Wii Fit Bundle has been revealed. It shows four Wii Fit users from of various ages posing on their balance boards to demonstrate just some of the various activities. The box art is clean and appealing so it should definetly appeal to the mass market that Nintendo is aiming for.
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 
Toys R Us began accepting online pre-orders for Wii Fit this week at a price of $89.99. They list the release date as May 19th. Wii Fi has been available in Japan since December of last year and has sold over 1 million units. Nintendo are hoping to see the same success in Europe and North America.
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
In the name of not having to take ourselves too seriously we've added a wallpaper section to Wii Fit Guide. It's just something that came about after some playing around with photoshop and seemed like it could be a bit of fun.
Vinnk, the owner of www.4colorrebellion.com is undertaking a Wii Fit experiment in order to try and lose weight for his upcoming wedding. As part of the experiment he will attempt to use Wii Fit every day for a minimum of 30 minutes doing a variety of different exercises. He is going to keep his diet as it currently is, 3 daily meals with snacks once or twice a day.
He is three days into the experiment and you can follow his progress here.
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
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!
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:
Software:
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.