Nintendo has another hit on its hands judging by the sold-out signs on Amazon.com and Walmart.com for its Wii Balance Board accessory, released in the US on Monday.

The company’s big launch event for the $90 board, which resembles a set of bathroom scales, was a demonstration in New York’s Central Park where passers-by including businessmen (pictured) were invited to try a workout with the included Wii Fit software.

My own family demo’d it at the weekend. The software allowed us to build individual profiles and avatars and have our Body Mass Index calculated. We were given a fitness age that was around 12-15 years older than our actual ages and then were able to set targets to lose weight, increase fitness and achieve a more youthful rating.

Wii Fit has plenty of activities to help, including yoga, aerobics, tightrope-walking, hula-hoop twirling, jogging, soccer and snowboarding as users shift their balance to control the games.

It is fun to use, healthier activity than most other video games and is likely to widen the demographic of gamers, just as the Wii itself has done with its motion-sensing controller.

Owners of the PlayStation 3 can exercise their larynxes from Tuesday with the US release of the Sony SingStar karaoke software and microphone accessories.

Sony is promising Blu-Ray HD music videos with this version and the ability to download hundreds of songs from the PS3 store.

Both Wii Fit and SingStar are coming to potentially their biggest market six months later than releases elsewhere. The balance board and Wii Fit were developed in Japan, introduced there in December and have already sold more than 2m copies. SingStar was developed at Sony’s London Studio and was released in the UK in December, although the US version has minor upgrades such as a new Harmony Duet mode - a particularly difficult challenge for caterwauling karaoke couples.

May 20th, 2008 in Games | Permalink