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Session: WiiFit: Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console

  • Article

Speaker: Takao Sawano

WiiFit Examples

  • Family weighing themselves and tracking health
  • Father doing push ups on balance board
  • Mother doing yoga on the board
  • Games: Kid taking headers playing soccer goalie
  • Games: Grandfather using ski-jump
  • Games: Mother walking on a tightrope

 

- Sold over 1.4 million units

  • Europe: April 25th
  • US: May 19th

 

Wii Fit Package Contents

- Balance Board and software

 

Not born of strategic process,

Please don't post photos (women right next to me took a picture)

Party Play

Wii Sports -

In the center is a section called "Health Pack"

- Became Wiifit, was at the center of the slide, plans for original Wii

-  body management, health, calorie control, scale

My Miyamoto: "I have fun just weighing myself and collecting my weight data, so this idea is bound to lead to something interesting"

- "Developers must always approach their projects with the belief they are developing a million seller"

- Develop a cost-effective scale

  • Start from scratch rather than reuse existing (needs to be more than a scale)
  • rotary encoder stick from N-64 controller, minimal friction and great precision

Something wasn't quite right, fear/doubt of project

Japan's National Sport: Sumo

  • Sumo wrestler's need two scales to measure "aha moment"
  • Sample 60x per second
  • Part of the body test was balance
  • Show how to visually show how weight is transferred from left/right side
  • Heart of the weight detector is a rotary encoder
  • Rumble: Rumble for your legs - just not enough power and would kill battery
  • Foot controller: Should it detect forward and backward shifts? Devs said left/right was fine, but still wanted.

Checked Nintendo Service Center (returns)

  • How do you keep costs low and keep it simple so that you don't balloon servicing cost

 

Strain gauge to measure difference and force. Wiifit ships with 4 sensors

Multiple revisions to incorporate a number of factors

  • Make it wider, shoulder width
  • larger also means higher cost
  • build it so that tall/short people can play and have it work worldwide

 

  • President review feedback: It's clumsy to plug in a wiimote
  • Radio interference,

 

WiiFit - Body test features

  • BMI, balance test,
  • WiiFit Channel - Add Wiifit bodytest as a channel (so you don't need the disk)
  • Training: Yoga (15) , strength (15), aerobics (9), balance games (9)
  • Use remote to measure balance and players body movements
  • Trainer can give advice based on their movements (video of European version)
    • Dynamic coach and ratings (Couch potato)
  • Wii Fit Island - Running course, doesn't use balance board, just wii remote
  • Allows players to switch to broadcast so that you can watch regular TV and use wiimote as a speaker for aerobics
    • Workout while watching TV
  • Fit Credits - The time you spend exercising is automatically counted, you can also count external

 

Balance Board Specs

  • 60 samples/second
  • measurable weight 330 lbs, max 660
  • Weight 7.7 lbs
  • 4 batteries = 60 hours
  • Sync to register bluetooth
  • LED display - flashes when BT is syncing
  • software can check the battery life
  • always registered as Wii Remote 4

 

As a foot controller

  • Control from 360 degrees, wave of a hand arm movement detectable
  • how much force
  • can even detect when a small weight is picked up or put down

Highest selling title that requires a peripheral (1.4 million sell through)

Bandai Namco Games - Family Ski

  • video of Japanese comedian playing
  • Swishing legs
  • Play to Nintendo's strengths - easy to show

Purchasers

  • Families
  • 72% of other family/friends play game

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