Wii Fit
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Wii games have superior resale value
Once the current economic crisis really takes hold and you have to sell your Wii collection* just to afford this month's supply of baked beans and ramen, be thankful that Wii games officially attract the highest resale prices. See, things aren't so glum!A poll conducted by the stat-tastic VideoGamePriceCharts.com has discovered that Wii software carries the lowest margin of loss when resold, losing on average 25.4% of its original MSRP. At the other end of the table, Xbox 360 owners typically lose 37.2% of their initial outlay whenever they resell a brown and gray futuristic shooter. Not only that, but Nintendo-published games are also high in resale value -- out of 45 publishers, only Bethesda's games are sold on for more. We suspect Wii Fit may have skewed the results somewhat, but all the same: yay!Make the jump for the publisher charts!* You did sell all of the family first, right?
3 million copies of Wii Fit sold in Japan
The Japanese love themselves some Wii Fit, as the game has managed to sell 3 million copies in just a year of being available over there. Of course, selling 3 million copies of anything is incredibly impressive, but, for Nintendo, it's just another drop in the company's bottomless money well. Must be nice!How many of you ended up snagging a copy of Wii Fit? Does it still get used in the house? Or is it gathering dust in some dark closet somewhere?%Gallery-23928%[Via Kotaku]
Wii Fit helps amputees adjust in the UK
Despite some saying that Wii Fit is only gathering dust in the closet, UK amputees are using the software and bundled Balance Board to help them with their treatment. This isn't the first we've heard about a Nintendo product helping folks out with their physical therapy, but this is definitely one of the most interesting. Rather than just getting people to be more active by playing Wii Sports or something, the Balance Board and Wii Fit software are helping people adapt to their new prosthetic limbs. From walking to simply leaning, it's helping them adapt to their new, albeit very unfortunate, way of life.%Gallery-23454%[Via Joystiq]
Wii Fit helping UK amputees lead a balanced life
Say what you will about the efficacy of Wii Fit as a fitness tool, but at least one UK hospital has found a perfect use for its balance-centric design: helping amputees adapt to walking on their new prosthetic limbs. Nintendo World Report has a piece on Seacroft Hospital in Leeds, which is using Wii Fit's mini-games in addition to traditional physical therapy.According to Seacroft senior physiotherapist, Lynn Hirst, the key usefulness of the Balance Board and games is enabling patients to tell "where they are taking their weight" in real time. Hirst credits the mini-games with helping "[patients improve] their core stability and their balance." Hey -- that sounds like a great use for a Balance Board.
'Would you like a subscription to Cosmo with your Wii Fit today?'
We've all likely been accosted by a Gamestop employee, at one time or another, about a subscription to Game Informer or a strategy guide to go along with the title we were planning to pick up or something. Well, it would seem that Gamestop is perfecting their craft, targeting folks with a need for exergaming with subscriptions to mags such as Cosmo and Redbook.Unlike other solicitations from the retail giant, this is actually free, though, which is a big improvement for them. Upon purchasing select exergaming items of $35 or more (semi-full list of qualifying items can be found past the break), Gamestop will toss in a 12-month subscription to either Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Redbook, Good Housekeeping or O Magazine. Head past the break for the products that were mentioned to be part of this promotion.%Gallery-4745%
GameStop offering Cosmo, O Mag subscriptions to fitness game buyers
Is the female or effeminate male in your life looking a bit chub after the holidays? Then stop on in at GameStop and get them a fitness game and a free 12-month trial subscription to either Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Redbook, Good Housekeeping or O Magazine. GameStop's "Sharpen the Mind, Shape the Body" promotion emphasizes fitness games and offers magazine trials on select purchases of over $35 until Feb. 22. We've listed a few of the "designated" products that are part of the promotion after the break.If this casual gaming movement continues to explode, It's only a matter of time before GameStop starts offering scented candles, bath oils and potpourri. Hmm, but that means the stores will smell better. Curses, we're so torn about this trend.
Wii's winners and losers in Japan
We can't exactly trust the validity of the numbers used to create this list of best-selling games across the three home platforms, since it's just some guy on Geocities doing it (and he claims that he might alter numbers to deter copying) but they're close enough to our expectations for most games. These numbers are purportedly derived from Enterbrain and Famitsu sales data. Kotaku reproduced the top and bottom-selling games on each platform, and we think that's a nice way to organize it.The top ten Wii games are not too surprising, including stuff like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Brawl, and other big Nintendo franchises. The only third-party game on the list is Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which, of course, is a Mario game!But the bottom ten is a lot more entertaining, revealing, for example, that poor Opoona sold only 5,000 copies, as did Dewy's Adventure. D3's motivation for putting their Simple games on WiiWare is made clear by the fact that their disc-based releases totally bombed. Though not as badly as Hudson's Puzzle Series Vol. 1 Sudoku, which apparently sold 482 copies total.It's hard to pick interesting tidbits out of the middle of the list (which we won't reproduce after the break in the interest of brevity) but apparently No More Heroes sold just 27,873 copies -- much less than the 84,224 copies of Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 3 that went out!
Nintendo (mostly) owned Japan in 2008
While Nintendo couldn't boast the biggest-selling game in Japan in 2008 -- that honor went to Monster Hunter Portable -- but the company dominated ASCII Media Works' list of the top 30 games of the year. In fact, the entire rest of the top ten is split between DS and Wii titles, as does most of the rest of the list. A few PSP, PS3, and PS2 games pepper the top thirty, but they're the sparse, skinny trees in the grand forest of Nintendo. Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii took the top spots for Nintendo (2 and 3, respectively), while the DS game Rhythm Tengoku Gold snagged the sixth slot, tops for the handheld. Perhaps the best news is that many of the non-Nintendo games have Nintendo versions coming out soon, so next year, the Wii and DS may be even more dominant.At #30? New Super Mario Bros. Yes, still. For the full list, check after the break.
Wii Fit ... into Wal-Mart's clothing department?
Nintendo, evidently desperate to sell Wii Fit to every person on Earth who owns a television, has started installing Wii Fit ads in the women's clothing department of Wal-Mart stores. Well, actually, all we know is that it looks like they've installed a Wii Fit ad in one Wal-Mart women's clothing department. We just have the one picture, really, with little context. It could just be that one Wal-Mart ran out of space in the electronics department, or that an employee was setting up a display and misread "L'Eggs" as "Wii Fit video advertising kiosk".Regardless of whether this specific initiative is the work of Nintendo or Wal-Mart, there's no doubt in our minds of Nintendo's corporate response to the stereotypical dressing-room question "Do I look fat in this?" Yes, the video says. Stand on this and pretend you have a hula hoop.%Gallery-4745%
Nintendo dominates Amazon in 2008
The Nintendo Wii has been a hit since it released over two years ago. For popular retail site Amazon.com, Nintendo's latest console has been a big cash generator for Amazon during its time on the market, especially in 2008, as the site has released its 2008 best-of lists and guess what was the top-selling video game in 2008? You guess it: Wii.Aside from being the top video game, Wii Fit enjoyed the best reviews through 2008, as well as being the product most wished for by users. Last, but certainly not least, was Mario Kart Wii (with Wii Wheel), which was the item gifted the most by Amazon users throughout this year. In the end, Nintendo ended up being
Nintendo sweeps Japanese sales charts
According to the latest Media Create charts, Nintendo platforms completely dominated the market last week in Japan, with all of the top ten games being Wii or DS releases. It may not have been the busiest week in terms of sales -- the best-selling game was the newly-released Taiko no Tatsujin Wii at 106,000 copies -- but that's still a pretty wacky achievement. Of the ten games on the list, seven were published by Nintendo, and an eighth, Professor Layton and the Final Time Travel, is from a series published by Nintendo outside of Japan. The full top ten, including four Wii games, is after the break.%Gallery-33435%
W Fit: The ugly, functional cousin of Wii Fit
You had to expect as much. Soon after the Wii released, we were up to our eyeballs in knockoffs. Now that Wii Fit has been in existence for a year (and incredibly popular during the entirety of that time), the knockoffs are emerging onto the marketplace. Enter the Wü Fit. The crazy thing about this is that the included board is apparently compatible with Wii Fit. And that's really all you'll get with this package, a board and some odd packaging, by the way. Check out a video of the unboxing after the break.%Gallery-23865%
Rumor: Wii Fit 2, Wii Rhythm Heaven on the way
Japanese game magazine Game Labo is sometimes hilariously off base with their wild rumors (like when they had Dragon Quest IX heading to PSP or when they teased a redesigned Wiimote with a rechargeable battery), but sometimes they hit the nail on the head (in the very same issue as the Dragon Quest thing, they scooped everyone on the imminent release of the DS TV Tuner). 1up shared the latest rumors from the magazine, which include a couple of rather half-heartedly masked Nintendo rumors. One, about "Game Company 'N'" and a sequel to "its fitness game 'W'" is pretty clearly about Wii Fit. According to the magazine, a sequel to the megahit exercise game is on the way, adding stretching and massage to the directed activities, and potentially featuring endorsement from a "certain former U.S. Army instructor." Considering that Wii Fit is, like, a cultural institution, we are not surprised at all to hear about a sequel.Also unsurprising, but about five million times more awesome if true, is the rumor that the same Game Company N is working on a Wii version of the DS "Rhythm game 'R'," or Rhythm Tengoku. Since the DS rhythm minigame collection turned out to be a big hit in Japan (and had better be a hit in the US, people), this makes total sense.Also rumored is that Bandai Namco is going to make a ton of Tales games for every platform. Wow, such insider information. We also heard somewhere that EA is working on some games about playing sports. Don't go preordering just yet -- these rumors are just that, rumors, and may just be junk some guy made up. But it's plausible junk!%Gallery-4745%
Keepin' it real fake, part CLXXII: Wu Fit -- it's Wii Fit, without the supply chain issues
So far as we can tell, the Wü Fit (see what they did there?) doesn't actually come with the Wii Fit software. But unless we're being badly deceived, the knockoff balance board should operate just fine with the official game (seriously!) -- assuming that you can find it by its lonesome, which you can't. The best (er, "only good") part? It's actually in stock for $92.95, which is more than the Big N can say about its genuine counterpart in much of the world. It's okay, we know you're seriously considering this over that eBay auction -- we promise not to tell.[Thanks, anonymouse]
In the UK? Get Wii Fit for 50 this Friday
You can file this one in the "almost too good to be true" pile -- in fact, while you read this post, we advise repeatedly pinching yourself. If you're a Brit searching for a copy of Wii Fit in time for Christmas, you'll already know that nowhere has it. As we see it, you have three options: You can buy your loved ones something that isn't Wii Fit and ruin Christmas for everybody like a big jerk. You can fork out obscene amounts of cash for a copy from some eBay scalper who bought the last 25 units at GameStation in November. You can visit BuyItPlayIt this Friday and press F5 a lot. The site has a big old pile of Wii Fits that will be on sale from 1:00pm GMT, with the first fifty going for the unbelievable price of £50 (in probably less than fifty seconds). That's £20 lower than the standard price. We are quite certain that the site could charge twice that and clear its inventory in minutes, but there you go. We've never used BuyItPlayIt ourselves, incidentally, so can't pass comment on its standard of service. Have any readers shopped there before?%Gallery-23454%[Via press release]
Wii Fit helps improve balance in seniors
As though demand for the Wii and Wii Fit wasn't going to be high enough during this year's holiday, another practical use for Nintendo's console has been discovered: helping to rehabilitate people, particularly seniors, after falls, and helping to improve balance in order to avoid falls. Brett Sears, a physical therapist with Capital Region Physical Therapy in New York, has been using Wii Fit in this way over the past four months, and his patients seem to enjoy the new method of training.It's not the first time we've seen the Wii used in this way, nor the first time we've heard about using Wii Fit for rehabilitation, and we're going to guess it's not going to be the last, either.[Via GoNintendo]
SwiitBoard: the sweeter way to get fit on the Wii
The Wii Fit's slab of a peripheral is called a Balance Board for good reason: it's fine if a little yoga and pilates action is all you need to keep in shape, but, sturdy as it is, jumping up and down is liable to form cracks before toned thighs. If you need some high impact aerobics to be rid of that spare tire you'll have to go custom, like the SwiitBoard from a cardio-loving Wii aficionado called frits. It's just a durable wooden plank propped up by foam blocks on either end and a Wiimote zip tied to the front. The magic happens in the software, converting the up/down impacts of jogging in place into forward motion, with left or right roll turning the avatar in the simple game he worked out (video below). It's perhaps a bit crude, but would you rather have a board that looks good or a bod that looks good? Yeah, we'd pick gadget aesthetics too. If you want your own, frits will sell you the software for €10 -- money that will fund another of his projects: a site that fights global warming via pictures of scantily clad, eco-minded ladies.[Via Hack A Day]
Looking for a Wii? Try Walmart.com
If you're on the hunt for a Wii this holiday season, then Walmart.com just might have you covered. The retail giant will supposedly be selling "tens of thousands" of Wiis starting now. If you're looking for just the console, or a bundle package, Walmart will have several different options available to consumers, starting with the console alone ($250) on up to a bundle package featuring Wii Fit ($460). Of course, now that the word is out, there might not be much time for you to nab one of your own. So we suggest you get to it.[Via Joystiq]
Unsurprisingly, Wii Fit sells big on Black Friday
Even though the Wii reigned supreme on eBay, other retailer sites saw crazy demand for Nintendo's fitness package, Wii Fit. For major retail site Amazon.com, the Wii and Wii Fit were the top-selling video game items throughout the day on Friday. On eBay-owned Shopping.com, the top searches were for Wii Fit and the Nintendo Wii. And during a season that is expected to generate $29 billion, that's a lot of green for Nintendo.Any of you snag a Wii or Wii Fit to gift someone this holiday season?%Gallery-4745%[Via Gamasutra]
Black Friday: Wii crowned, economy still down
Black Friday 2008 will be remembered as a slight, but pleasant bump in a rocky road for retail this holiday. Fitting, then, that Wii and its equally scarce sidekick, Wii Fit, were the top search items on the day. As it turns out, folks wanted to shop (172 million to be exact!), they just couldn't always buy what they were searching for. With Wii in short supply at retail, eBay merchants continued to turn profits on resales of the console with an average selling price of $349. Overall, online shopping totals grew modestly relative to last year. Meanwhile, a stack of Xbox 360s caused a brawl at Walmart, and, in a macabre turn of events, an employee was trampled to death by a frenzied mob at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York. In California, two men killed each other in a gunfight that erupted at the Palm Desert Toys R Us. All convincing examples of why we prefer to pay it safe from our keyboards: Hellooo Cyber Monday![Image credit: Bruce On Games, Dec. 2007 -- same tune again this year, eh?]
