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Feb 15 2008, 13:46
Shigeru Miyamoto was recently interviewed by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata about the Wii Fit project. Miyamoto revealed among others things that Wii Fit actually isn't supposed to make you fit.
In the newest "Iwata Asks" column on Wii.com, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata interviews Nintendo's legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto about his inspiration for designing Wii Fit and how the unique project came together.
While the application initially was inspired by Miyamoto's own obsession with his weight (he actually enjoyed tracking it with charts), eventually the decision was made to turn the balance board into much more than a glorified scale.
"I just thought having relationships like that within the family would be ideal. I know this may sound a bit extreme, but measuring your weight is fun, and there are ways to keep fit when thinking along those lines," Miyamoto said. "Though we were trying to move in that direction, we couldn't decide on what the next step would be and work came to a virtual standstill – until, that is, a staff member bought two scales, and found that it was pretty good fun to step on both of them at once and try to balance on them evenly. At that point, I asked the programmer to connect two scales to a computer and set it up so that your balance would be displayed on-screen numerically in a way that would be understandable even at a glance. When we did so, we decided to attempt to make measuring one's balance a theme for the software. We were sure there were methods of keeping fit involving balance, and when we looked into it, they did indeed exist."
He continued, "I thought this project perfectly suited the Wii concept of involving the whole family. That's why I felt it was my mission to make it into a full-blown product somehow, and went to all the necessary lengths to eliminate the negative elements connected with it. However, just when development got underway, the scale manufacturers we had talks with didn't show much interest in the idea. We subsequently decided that we'd just have to go ahead and make it ourselves, fully aware that if we just made it like an ordinary scale you could buy anywhere, it'd be just plain boring. That's when, after a process of trial and error, we settled on the idea of making it so that you could balance on four points: front, back, left and right, and this in turn lead us to the idea that we could also use it as an interface for a game. While we were busy working on that, the Wii Balance Board gradually took a form that was more than just an ordinary scale."
Interestingly, although many in the mainstream have talked about the benefits of "exercise" on the Wii, later on in the interview Miyamoto confessed that he doesn't believe the real purpose of Wii Fit is to make you fit.
"I forgot to mention something important earlier: I don't think Wii Fit's purpose is to make you fit; what it's actually aiming to do is make you aware of your body," he said. "That's why we wanted people to talk with their families about Wii Fit, and become aware of these things together as a group. If you're standing still, and it tells you "Your body is swaying", you can see on the training results screen that your body has been shaking. But I think you'd never realize that your body is shaking in day-to-day life. I think becoming aware of things like this about yourself is quite interesting."
Source: Game Daily
Sure, sell a million in Japan and THEN say that, honestly
