Why do people spend $1500 on a Bow Flex when that can buy them 3 to 5 years worth of gym memberships with access to better equipment and (potentially) some personal instruction?

I personally don't know ...

With the exception of Surgical Tubing and a Jump Rope, Wii Fit will come in at the lower end of fitness equipment purchases ... If you go to Garage Sales you can set up a really nice gym for less but besides that you can only buy the worst version of the awful excercise equipment that is sold in Walmart for that price.

OK, perhaps I should explain what Yourself!Fitness does, and why I'd rather do that than go to the gym. It's an app for consoles and PC where you get a virtual personal trainer showing you the moves and talking back at you. There are some possibilities for feedback, between segments the instructor asks how the last segment felt and adjusts the level in the future and you can enter manually your pulse.

You have quite simple interaction, but it feels a lot more advanced than it is technically. Of course I know it's just computer code, but when she says some sarcastic remark about me missing the time for my workout, it feels real in a way. I guess it's related to the way people told "Eliza" their innermost secrets, even though it was just a program doing mostly simple word replacement.

So it feels "cool" and a lot more personal than a DVD. Doing a normal, say aerobics class, can be embarassing and people sometimes are annoying. Also, you can't really stop in the middle of class and look at the moves in slow motion from another angle.

This also applies to the balance board. At least it has potential to do so. I'm also hoping WiiFit will be a whole concept with a range of products. Technically it would be simple to do wireless pulse meters etc to interface with WiiFit and other applications.

Traditional home excercise equipment often doesn't get used because using it was not as fun as you first thought. I took my excercise bike to her house, hoping she's use it once in a while. I think she's used it twice in a year. Or you could say she uses it every day, as a clothes hanger...

We're not total couch potatoes though. We get around on our bikes (no cars at all) and I work six days a week as a paperboy. She goes to Friskis & Svettis (it's sort of aerobics etc for people on a budget who don't want or need the fancy stuff)  once a week.

(sorry if it's incoherent, it's getting late)

wiifit appeals to a demographic even bigger than casual gamers. Fat people.

the biggest problems faced by people wanting to lose weight is the high costs of a personal trainer, gym fees or home equipment and the fact that a dvd, book or plan gets incredibly boring very quickly. Wiifit will not only accuratly calculate your weight changes, but will advise you consistantly and most of all, it will be fun.

Its things like this that will see a boom in hardware sales becasue the typical person who is going to buy this isnt going to want to play metroid or mario, they may have had slight motivation with wii sports and the whole motion sensing concept, but this give them real motivation to buy a wii.

Once the wii is in the household, be it for the kids, the adults or whoever, theyre all probably going to take an interest in it, even if it was only bought for the fat sister to shed her spare tyres.

The Wii won't be at $250US forever. Nintendo could probably reduce it in price to $149 now if they really wanted - but that would be insane as long as (supply < demamd)

So imagine WiiFit (+Wii) for $199. Its still a bit, but when you consider that the core functionality alone includes Yoga, tutorials, balance, step arobics, digital scales, BMI measure (etc..) - it actually turns into good value.

And there is a general buzz around the Wii as well - throw in WiiSports, news/weather/other channels, plus web browsing (and a lot more) - and it becomes a very attractive bundle proposition at that price.

WiiFit is going to drive the next 20-30m of Wii sales - once either current demand slows, or Ninty get that 2nd/3rd Wii factory up and running. I do expect them to be able to manufacture 1.5m-2.0m Wiis/m in '08 (probably close to 1.5m now).

That's 25m Wiis shipped for fiscal year '08-'09 - and it may well be even higher. That would be around 47m Wiis shipped/sold by March '09. If they can manage this, the generation falls into their lap (regardless of what happens after that).

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Once WiiFit launches (once there is a reasonably priced bundle) - I'll be buying it for my parents. My partner may well be buying one for her mother as well.

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re: sensor zones: I don't think it works like that. Think one (or more?) accelerometers built into a very accurate set of digital scales - possibly with multiple weight detection points (no idea really).

Its more about detecting changes in the distibution of weight - and as a result, can detect various body motions, leans, postures, etc.

Be interesting if Ninty can use the BalanceBoard to improve the accuracy of Wiimote gestures (i.e. play a lightsabre game, and make the gestures more accurate by using data from the BalancBoard?).

 I feel the same way, every frikkin person I bring over to play Wii is like "OMG I have to buy me one of these." Everybody.....its just rediculous. We had a giel that never played a videogame in her life(she was probably lying) that walked away wanting to buy the thing.

THe bubble butts will toss out the exercise bikes and replace it with a Wii Fitness gizmo. Then they will call over their lard assed friends an play tanks all day.

Shhh! Don't spoil the surprise.

John Lucas