Ever had a game console tell you you’re overweight and unbalanced (physically I presume)? Mine just did, after I connected the Wii Fit. After a phone call yesterday from a local gaming shop that it just came in, and if I was still interested in buying one (Yes!), we went to pick it up today. Cool new gadget, that certainly appeals to me, even if it was brutally honest after I created a profile.

Elmine standing on the Wii Fit plate, and callibrating it.

The Wii Fit is a pressure sensitive plate that you stand on, and connects to the Wii gaming console. It senses changes in your posture by changes in the pressure your feet (or hands when doing push ups) give to the plate. For running excercises you do not use the plate, but put a Wiimote in your pocket. The sensors in it are used to determine your running rhythm and pace. What the Wii Fit and the software it includes do is bring back play into moving and excercizing. Just a it was when you were a little kid. You weren’t running because you needed to run, you ran because you were playing.

In general I think these type of interfaces such as the Wii offers are a very interesting development, helping digital information to break out of the laptop screen and key board and become a more integral part of our physical surroundings. Other branches of the same tree in that respect are certain mobile applications, ambient devices, ‘roomware’ and internet 0 nodes as well as RFID applications. It makes me wonder what Johnny Chung Lee will do with this Wii Fit, having seen what uses he puts the Wiimote to.