Walmart.com pushing exercising program ahead of May 19 launch...
This weekend, the Walmart.com homepage will be dominated by the Wii Fit — a physical exercise program that uses a pressure-sensing board as a controller — including a link to order the product now, ahead of its May 19 U.S. launch.
Through May 11, shoppers who "pre-order" the $89.74 game, or pay in advance to guarantee delivery when the game launches, will also get a $10 online gift card to use for a future order at Walmart.com.
The Currys retail chain, consisting of Currys, PC World and Dixons brands, has revealed that it sold a copy of Wii Fit every four seconds across the release weekend, making it the chain's fastest-selling game ever.
@Heloise10, I follow the Amazon charts pretty closely, and I can tell you that it is not as representative of NPD as you might think. For instance, neither Wii Fit nor Mario Kart has for one moment since they started taking preorders ranked below either version of GTA4. No one really believes that Mario Kart is going to outsell GTA out the gate.
The PS3 versions of games for some reason also do much better at Amazon that NPD. For example, the PS3 version of DMC4 was ahead of 360 the entire time before the game launched.
@DrMarioKart, In theory, you could do manual calcuation like you described, but that is a hassle.
If they system can also keep track (history) of your pets weight, isn't that also nice ? (I know that it can keep track of user weight history in Japan version, but not sure about the pet weight).
Does that really require a separate mode? You should be able to do that in the Japanese version simply by weighing yourself twice and doing the math yourself.
Nintendo design boss Shigeru Miyamoto had wanted to include a mode that would allow players to weigh their pets. He wasn't able to include it in the Japanese version, but in the North American version, available May 19th, players will receive a message informing them that if they weigh themselves while holding their pets, then weigh themselves again separately and subtract the two, the difference will tell them how much their pet weighs.
@apujanata, Other interesting tidbits : - in Japan, you might notice on the Wii Fit box that the Balance Board is rated to 136 kilograms, or 300 pounds, whereas here in North America if you look at the Wii Fit box it is rated to 330 pounds, which is 150 kilograms, despite the fact that the boards are exactly the same in the two countries. - One thing that we found in Japan is that people were coming to the store hoping to buy Wii Fit but didn’t necessarily understand that it’s part of an existing video-game system that they can purchase alongside it. So one thing that we found is that we don’t really know who’s going to come and buy it. That was one of the things that surprised me. - We’ve been getting inquiries about Wii Fit, not just from fitness centers but from hospitals, elderly-care centers and other places that are really interested in trying to find ways to not only use Wii Fit but use the technology and the interfaces introduced in Wii Fit and apply those to other applications. - in sports training there are devices that are very similar to what the Balance Board does that are used for coaching athletes on their golf swing or while they’re pitching, and what we’ve learned is that these devices are running around $20,000, even though their technical capability is pretty much on par with what the Balance Board can do. - I haven’t heard about thing suffering in sales because of Wii Fit. However, scale manufacturers in Japan were very shocked to see the sales of Wii Fit, because I can’t say that in the history of Japan has there ever been a three-month period where anybody’s sold 2 million scales. I have heard rumors that the presidents of those companies were very unhappy with their development teams. - with the Balance Board, your body becomes the joystick, and you’re controlling the game. So in that sense, we are going out to third parties as well, not to mention we’re having the discussions we’re having internally about how we can continue to use it.
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