So what if everyone who bought Wii Fit and its Balance Board peripheral has long since gone back to sitting around and eating pies? So many people bought the board and had a go, it's picked up a Guinness World Record. Well, it's more like it set a Guinness World Record as the 'best-selling personal scale' category isn't famous for its hot competition. But cynicism aside, guess how many units it's sold to claim such an accolade...
Try 32,114,428 units. Gulp. Let's just take a moment to put that into perspective, shall we? That's more than three times the number of Sega Saturn consoles ever sold, worldwide. And three times the number of copies of Super Mario 64 sold on N64. In fact, it's as-near-as-dammit the exact same number of Nintendo 64 consoles (32.9 million) sold worldwide. Ever.
Above: Ever seen the bottom of a fitness freak's shoe? Well BAM!
But what's even more scary is that these figures were only counted between the balance board's launch and - wait for it - November 2010. No, we don't know why that date in particular either, especially as it was launched in April/May 2008. So, in theory, there could be another million or three on top of that.
By comparison, Microsoft's Kinect add-on has sold 18 million to date (not to mention the prospect of a PC version coming in February) and Sony's PlayStation Move peripheral has reported sales of 8.8 million units as of June last year.
So balance board is teh winzorz, so to speak. It's testament to the incredible foresight Nintendo had when designing the Wii and tapping into the casual market like no-one else.
It's doubtful the success of Wii Fit will ever be matched again. Just as doubtful as the likelihood of any of those millions of boards still being in daily use. Now where did we put those pies...?
___________________________________________________________________________
Nintendo Gamer – the new ultimate guide to the World of Nintendo is now on-sale in store, online and on Apple Newsstand from £2.99
