In NES days, most games were in English only, didn't prevent kids from playing!!

Now assume 10% increase in sales with local language, is it really worth it? (I think 10% is overestimating)

English is UK,US,IRE,AUS so translation is guaranteed.

France is 2 mil Wii plus Belgium, Luxembourg, and 1/3 of Switzerland, so also a worthy translation.

Germany is 1 mil plus Austria.

Spanish is needed for south America on top of the 400K Wiis

Italian is only 300K...

Now that gives you at least 30K bonus sales.

Look at what is left:

Wii is .4 mil in scandinavia (that is norway, sweden, finland, danmark and maybe some others I dunno).
The TV shows and movies over there are often only subtitled so people are pretty good in English, so translating would probably give less of an edge.
not worth translating into 4+ languages for

@Hephaestos: I look at it a bit differently. I know (and have said) that many people in those small countries know a second language, but look at this:

- Portugal - 10 million people
- Scandinavia (including Finland) - 25 million people
- Greece - 10 million people
- Netherlands - 16 million people

In the EEA area alone (apologies if I forgot any country), that's at least 61 million potential customers who would be better served by having Wii Fit translated into their language. That's almost the same population as France, not insignificant at all. It would give Nintendo access to new demographics, and increase mindshare, which is the whole point of launching Wii Fit.

I know that kids played NES games in English, but that has nothing to do with it. Wii Fit isn't even for kids. Given the very low price of subtitling a game, I think Wii Fit is a game which should be translated no matter what.

However, we have known for some time that NOE (Nintendo of Europe) isn't the best representation Nintendo could have here... Let's hope that with Nintendo's success this generation, they get stimulated to do better next time.

Well you can count Greece out of the above list NJ5. Gaming is really really small here, i mean the Wii sold 12k units between it's launch and December 2007, so it wouldn't be worth it when combined with the huge piracy levels.

I totally agree. Why shouldn't I get a Greek voice over or subtitle? Living in a country with 11.000.000 people makes me automatically unworthy of having a video game product in my language?

That's one more reason to try and make the Wii more successful, not the opposite.

Dark Prince, piracy in Greece is indeed a problem. I am afraid I have to admit it, although I've been informed the wii does actually sell a lot. On the other hand I went to the Virgin Store and asked for Wii Fit and had to repeat it 3 times in order to understand me. They finally presented me a wii console!

I thought Wii fit was primarily visual in how it told you what to do anyway. Wii sports used diagrams all over the freaking place, I don't even remember reading anything and I had though wii fit was much the same.

Wii Fit has a lot to do with talking and giving you advice. Furthermore, the moment you exercise it gives you instant encouragement, it tells you if it notices a problem with your posture, if you've cheated or it tells you what you do right the moment you do the moment you do it in order to keep it like this for the rest of the exercise. A lot of times it even explains what an exercise do for ypur body usually using more scientific words, difficult to fully understand if you don't full the English language 100%. Immersion is the key word.

@Clapiotis

Lol tell me about it, when i went to buy the Wii at launch i went to Germanos (arguably the biggest electronics store in Greece) and i ask if they have the Wii and the guy there asked his boss saying "Do we have this Wiik thing?".

It's all Playstation here :P

Just like Wii in Sweden, it's selling great but not selling out. My comment about selling all the Wii Fits they can produce was about global sales. After the US launch, I think Wii Fit will see the same pattern as Wii:

US: sells out instantly

Japan and most of Europe: great sales, but not selling out.

As for the translation thing, I feel that even if I have no problem playing a game in english, it feels more familiar and more targeted at myself if it's translated (and done well). I feel more "at home" if it's in my first language, and emmerse myself more into the world.

Subtitling should be a lot cheaper than dubbing. I think I've only played one game dubbed to swedish, Black&White. But then I got an extra copy (at around $10) just to get it in swedish.