[a href="vny!://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003785401_ethree12.html"]vny!://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003785401_ethree12.html[/a]
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Nintendo is sticking with its so-far successful strategy for expanding the audience of video gamers through new, simpler controls for its Wii console and, soon, a fitness game.
Nintendo is preparing a program — tentatively called "Wii Fit," and due out in the first half of 2008 — designed to build on the sweat-inducing success of "Wii Sports." The sports games are controlled by moving a motion-sensing remote control, rather than manipulating buttons and joysticks.[/p] The fitness game will employ a new peripheral device — a weight-sensing Wii Balance Board — that players stand on while on-screen instructions provide exercise routines, including yoga, step aerobics and hula-hooping.[/p] The "Wii Fit" software is designed to calculate and track each player's body-mass index — a weight-to-height ratio that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls a "reliable indicator of body fatness for most people ... used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems."[/p] " 'Wii Fit' ... is the only thing that I saw that was game changing," said Billy Pidgeon, program manager for consumer-gaming markets with IDC. "Everything else [so far at the conference] was pretty much as expected."[/p][hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]Sweet.
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