GDC 08: Wii Fit's Interface Challenges
By Ray Barnholt
February 20, 2008

Putting two scales together is harder than it looks. When you look at Wii Fit's Balance Board, do you think it looks like it and the Wii were made for each other? Designer Takao Sawano does, but it took a while to reach that point. As the man in charge of producing the Balance Board, Sawano and his team found that making a game centered around your health took as much trial-and-error as any project at Nintendo. In a presentation at GDC, Sawano outlined the making of Wii Fit as how the Board and the game itself came to work in harmony.

It all started before the Wii was even finished, when producer Shigeru Miyamoto drew up a diagram of different "packs" of games that Nintendo could develop. Aside from the "Party Pack" (Wii Play) and "Sports Pack" (Wii Sports), there was the "Health Pack," which described features like calorite control and body management. Since Miyamoto had enjoyed keeping records of his weight and health progress, he thought it would make a good game. Sawano had to make sure it actually would.

Sawano's team inspected the innards of everyday bathroom scales, which are manufactured for cost-effectiveness. Adapting that for a game controller, though, left Sawano unsure if they could replicate that efficiency. When Miyamoto liked the direction the project was going, Sawano's worries of cost-effectiveness turned into a drive to simply make a good scale.

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