14 DAY TRIAL // As the Wii Fit is making history in Japan, where it is fast becoming the title that has sold the most in any given period since its launch, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Wii Fit and its accompanying Balance Board, has been talking to the "Times" about the way gaming needs to change and about how this one game is at the forefront of that change.
Shigeru Miyamoto sees that the traditional videogame, be it strategy or FPS, on the PC or on a gaming console, is limited in its spread by consumer demographics. Most of the traditional gamer demographic is already playing games, getting new hardware and buying new videogames when they are launched. But there's a whole universe of potential gamers that are not interested in shooting down aliens or in taking over the world. These people need to be tempted with something different. The Nintendo creator says that: "We [Nintendo] want to broaden the definition of what a video game is, to create games for people whether they are five or 95, whether they are men or women."
Shigeru Miyamoto adds that "I want to show that computer games can be good for you, can enrich your life." And what better place to start enriching someone's life than promoting exercise and tackling one of the biggest issues of today's advanced societies, our tendency to be more sedentary? As most videogames have been accused of making people sedentary, it's also a videogame, the Wii Fit, that aims to make them more active by promoting exercise, offering advice on what to eat and drink and by easily inducing peer pressure. As the Wii Fit sells more and more copies, users will get an option to connect to a Wii Central application that can rank them and their fitness level when compared to their friends, their city or the entire Wii using population.
Miyamoto is not of the opinion that using the Nintendo Wii is in any way superior to going out and exercising, but he thinks they make very good companions. He stated that "Spending too long [sic], staying in and playing any video game is not good. I always tell my children to get out on a sunny day and I, myself, went jogging in Central Park yesterday. But I do my stretching on Wii Fit. They work together".
As the game launches worldwide we'll see what gamers think of the Wii Fit and Shigeru Miyamoto's new vision of gaming.