As of yesterday, Wii Fit Plus is available for purchase wherever Wii games are sold. The standalone version of the game retails for $20 while the game and balance board (required) together go for $100. If you bought the first version of Wii Fit with the balance board, you only need to purchase the standalone version of Wii Fit Plus.

You’ll have access to all the original exercises from Wii Fit, along with the following:

“Experienced users and newcomers alike will look forward to every Wii Fit Plus session, thanks to a host of new features and enhancements. In addition to all of the original Wii Fit aerobic, yoga, strength training and balance activities, Wii Fit Plus features more than 20 new activities to step up the fun, including skateboarding and a Segway course. To suit each user’s schedule, workouts can be set to any duration in five-minute intervals up to an hour, and users can choose from specialized routines that focus on specific fitness goals or target areas. Also, players can now see an estimated amount of calories burned during each workout while tracking their overall progress. Another new feature even incorporates animals by letting players track their pets’ weight and create custom Mii characters for them.”

Wow, pets? That’s very weird. Now you and your 13 cats can compete to see who loses the most weight – coughing up hairballs is cheating, though.

Full press release:

Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus Takes Fun and Fitness to the Next Level

Enhanced At-Home Fitness Game Features New Activities and Customization Options

REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Because no two people are exactly alike, shouldn’t each person’s fitness routine be just as unique? With the Oct. 4 launch of Wii Fit Plus™, Nintendo introduces a revolutionary way for consumers to create their own customized workout, delivering new levels of personalization, convenience and enjoyment to at-home fitness. Designed exclusively for the top-selling Wii™ console, Wii Fit Plus invites all members of the household to make individualized workout routines according to their own unique schedules, activity preferences and fitness goals. For people of any age, background or lifestyle, Wii Fit Plus helps take the “work” out of your workout.

Experienced users and newcomers alike will look forward to every Wii Fit Plus session, thanks to a host of new features and enhancements. In addition to all of the original Wii Fit™ aerobic, yoga, strength training and balance activities, Wii Fit Plus features more than 20 new activities to step up the fun, including skateboarding and a Segway® course. To suit each user’s schedule, workouts can be set to any duration in five-minute intervals up to an hour, and users can choose from specialized routines that focus on specific fitness goals or target areas. Also, players can now see an estimated amount of calories burned during each workout while tracking their overall progress. Another new feature even incorporates animals by letting players track their pets’ weight and create custom Mii™ characters for them.

“As the fast pace of the holiday season kicks in, Wii Fit Plus delivers an unbeatable at-home fitness option,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Whether people have specific fitness goals or just want a fun way to stay active, they can create a personalized, productive workout routine that they’ll actually look forward to each day.”

Wii Fit Plus makes use of the innovative Wii Balance Board™ accessory, an easy-to-use device that detects players’ movements as they enjoy games like Obstacle Course and Perfect 10. Players can also incorporate the Nunchuk™ controller in activities such as Kung Fu. Wii Fit Plus and the Wii Balance Board are available in a single product package at a suggested retail price of $99.99. Wii users who already own the original Wii Fit can purchase the Wii Fit Plus software separately at a suggested retail price of $19.99. Also, Wii Fit Plus automatically reads and incorporates existing Wii Fit user data, providing a seamless transition for experienced players.

Wii Fit Plus expands on the popularity of the original Wii Fit, which has sold nearly 8 million copies in the United States alone since its release in May 2008, according to the NPD Group. Along with titles like Wii Sports™ and Wii Sports Resort™, the Wii Fit franchise has attracted millions of new and veteran gamers with its easy-to-learn wireless controls and entertaining active-play activities.

Remember that Wii features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com.

For more information about Wii Fit Plus, visit www.WiiFit.com.

Nintendo has officially announced Wii Fit Plus, a somewhat incremental upgrade to its wildly-popular Wii Fit exercise program. The price of the Wii Fit bundle, which will include the new Wii Fit Plus along with the Balance Board apparatus, will remain at $99 while the standalone version of the game will cost $19.99. It’s set to release here in the US on October 4th.

According to Nintendo:

Wii Fit Plus: This enhanced version of the top-selling game offers a range of new features, along with new exercises, yoga activities and balance games designed to keep workouts fun. For the first time, users can customize their workouts to target specific areas of their bodies or to fill specific intervals of time. Wii Fit Plus will replace the current Wii Fit configuration at retail, and will be bundled with the Wii Balance Board accessory at a suggested retail price of $99.99. For people who currently own Wii Fit and want to add the expanded options to their fitness regimen, the Wii Fit Plus disc will be available on its own at a suggested retail price of $19.99.

That’s actually not a bad price for the standalone version. It’d be nice to see some downloadable content this time around — maybe some new exercises and games to keep us coming back, eh Nintendo?

[via GoNintendo.com]

The free shipping on Wii Fit is for when it’s bundled with the Wii — otherwise it’s $13 if you buy Wii Fit on its own. Might make a nice way to get in shape for the summer. Oh, and play video games all day long too.

Wii Gaming Console [Dell]
Wii Fit [Dell]

via dealnews

Let’s not dwell on this for too long, since it’s largely a non-issue. President Obama, speaking to the American Medical Association (mostly about health care, such as it is), listed “video games” as a potential bad guy… for your health. You know, sitting on a couch all day long trying to rack up Achievements.

Here’s what the president said:

The second step that we can all agree on is to invest more in preventive care so that we can avoid illness and disease in the first place. That starts with each of us taking more responsibility for our health and the health of our children. It means quitting smoking, going in for that mammogram or colon cancer screening. It means going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.

As I see it, there’s nothing too controversial about that statement. Kids should exercise, right? (Unless you’re a paranoid parent, afraid to let the kids play outside because there’s Unknown Unknowns out there.)

Score one for the Wii, then.

via Kotaku

You guys down with Wii Fit or what? Loose talk around the internet seems to indicate that we’ll all be hearing about something called Wii Fit Plus at E3 next week.

Back in April, Nintendo apparently filed a Japanese patent for Wii Fit Plus along with the above logo. Certain financial analysts are speculating that the game will be targeted towards existing Wii Fit users and will be sold both as a standalone title and as part of a bundle — presumably with the Balance Board.

I’d say it all makes sense. There aren’t a huge amount of exercises in Wii Fit and there hasn’t been any downloadable content as far as being able to purchase new exercises, so some sort of expansion pack that adds a bunch of new strength training, yoga poses, and mini games seems perfectly logical.

Also, stay tuned for our upcoming Fitness Week here at CrunchGear. I’ll be comparing Wii Fit to EA SPORTS Active for those of you trying to decide on a fitness game for the Wii.

[via Kotaku]

Looking for a Wii Balance Board but don’t want to have to buy Wii Fit just to get one? Well you, my friend, are in luck.

While haphazardly stumbling around Chinavasion.com, I happened upon this knockoff Balance Board that looks an awful lot like the regular Balance Board except that this one has handsome blue non-slip grip pads and thoughtful blue corners.

It’s priced at $68 versus the actual Wii Fit bundle at $90, so if you want to be able to use the Balance Board without all the hassle of losing weight that Wii Fit would provide and you don’t mind using a knockoff that may or may not be legal, have at it!

Balance Board for Wii Fit [Chinavasion.com]

Just a quick heads up that EA’s Wii Fit killer has been dated for May 19th. Nintendo better watch out because Active is only $60 compared to $90 for the Wii Fit. Is anyone going to get this? Pre-order now!

EA Sports Active

Hitachi, NEC, and Panasonic Medical Solution are teaming up with Nintendo to support sending your Wii Fit data to a health care professional who can give you advice. This seems like a pretty nice idea for an opt-in service. It’ll be interesting to see if this makes folks use Wii Fit even more.

Via Akihabara News

Wii Fit [Amazon.com via dealnews]

Looks like EA Sports is getting into the Wii-based fitness arena with EA Sports Active. It’ll be launching next spring, right about the time you grab hold of your ever-lingering holiday gut with both hands, look skyward, and scream "Whaaaeeeyyyyy?"

While somewhat similar to Wii Fit, EA Sports Active will eschew a balance board-type apparatus in favor of "two specially-designed leg straps that hold the Wii’s Nunchuk controller to track lower body movements, as well as a resistance band to support a number of upper body strength training exercises." Sounds kinky.

If you already have Wii Fit and the Wii Balance Board, EA Sports Active is designed to work in tandem with the board by using it to "add functionality to many exercises."

Not one to forgo the leverage of celebrity endorsement, EA has enlisted the help of trainer-to-the-stars Bob Greene to design some of the exercise routines. He’s the guy that yells at Oprah for her non-stop yo-yoing. Seriously, pick a body girlfriend!

EA Sports Active will be available for $59.99. That’s for the straps and resistance band and some sort of software title to get you up and running.

Target is selling the Nintendo Wii console along with Wii Fit, balance board, and carrying case for $349.99 (online only, free shipping). It’s maybe not a “deal” deal per se, but the bundle appears to be in stock, so there’s that. I’d hurry, though.

Wii Fit with Hardware and Bag Bundle for Nintendo Wii [Target.com via dealnews]

The difference between a casual gamer and hardcore gamer seems to be one big grey area these days. The terminology doesn’t exactly convey the same message it used to, but that’s an argument/post for a later time.

We all know the Wii epitomizes casual gaming and it looks like EA wants to change that with a slight variation to the Wii Fit. It won’t make it hardcore, but you won’t be standing on the Wii Fit board looking like a doofus. They actually want folks to be active if they’re going to play the Wii for hours, which I’m all for. Who knows if and when this will make it into consumer’s living rooms, but it’s good to know that EA has acknowledged this huge gap in the market place.

EA Sports executive producer Dave McCarthy told Gamespot this tidbit of news the other day.

“We [at EA] think we can take a more Western approach to fitness, something a little more active that gets you moving,” he said. McCarthy then described how EA is planning a new peripheral for an unnamed fitness game which will fasten Wii Remotes to players’ bodies. Besides position, the add-on will help the Wii Remote “measure intensity, how strong your thrusts are, [and] how high you jump.”

Everyone loves a good Wii Fit hack. This guy hooked up his Wii Fit to Google’s street view so he could walk around town. It’s kind of neat idea, but I really don’t know how fun it is to march in place. I rather just sit in my chair and click a mouse.

via Makezine Blog

That total is derived from in-home destruction over the past year due to “over-enthusiastic work-outs,” even though Wii Fit has only been available in the UK for about a month. It could be argued that the title of the article states that Wii Fit women, as in, the types of women who would play Wii Fit, have caused that much damage, not the Wii Fit explicitly. But then the very first paragraph of the article says,

It was meant to get the nation back in shape in the comfort of our own homes – but women working out on the Nintendo Wii Fit video game have helped cause £20 million of damage to their living rooms.

That makes it sound even more like the Wii Fit is to blame. So there are some clumsy women, yes, and of the 1,000 polled for this particular article “As many as 86 per cent” said that they already owned a Wii Fit or were planning to get one soon. Come on, which one is it? And what is “as many as 86 per cent” supposed to mean?

Anyway, apply those numbers to the entire UK population coupled with an average of “£6.55 worth of damage to their homes in the last year” and you get what seems like £20.1 million worth of damage caused by the Wii Fit (or women who own or might someday own the Wii Fit if you read the article closely).

Don’t blame Wii Fit, in other words. But just to be on the safe side, if you’ve caused damage in your home by working out in the past year, be careful. That Balance Board can be like an odd-shaped torpedo underneath the wrong pair of feet.

The same German nerds who hacked the Wii Balance Board to work in Google Earth have managed to make it work in WoW. Be amazed. Nerds.

Now, of course, she’s something of a micro-celebrity, enjoying the 15 minutes of fame that only a perfect ass like that can generate. The Mail caught up with Lauren and has a nice little personality piece on her. Have a read, you should know more about the girl you’re dreaming about than the color of her underwear. Or maybe I’m just old fashioned.

Our favorite former CrunchGearer, VV, now works for GearFuse and put together this semi-excellent video of things to do instead of looking like a moron on the Wii Fit. Warning! There’s some salty language in there. Oh, those kids.

It’s no secret that Nintendo loves to play the ‘we never anticipated this much demand, so we’re fresh out of stock’ bull honky, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Wii Fit is sold out across the country. Nintendo is playing it smart here in the US. We all want what we can’t have, though that argument could be said about our species and not our place of residence. That’s an entirely different argument that has no place here, but I think you get my point. These people could don’t give a rat’s ass about the Wii Fit. That much is for sure.

Nintendo is shorting the US and redirecting units of Wii Fit to Europe to capitalize on the strength of the Euro.

It also is shrewdly maximizing its profit by sending four times as many units to Europe, reaping the benefits of the strong euro, said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities.

“The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We’re seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere,” Pachter said.

“They know that Americans will be just as fat a few months from now” when Nintendo will have more units available, he said.

That last one is a killer because it’s true.

But the Wii’s runaway success could backfire if Nintendo is unable to manage consumer expectations, said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with research firm IDC.

“That’s a tough line to tread,” Pidgeon said. “When does the consumer get frustrated and move on?

“So far, the Wii still has cachet,” he said. “But the fact that consumers can’t find a Wii or a Wii Fit is definitely a missed opportunity.”

I don’t agree with this statement because it’s been almost two years since the Wii launched and people are still scrambling around to find one and some are paying above retail. Kids, especially, want what they can’t have and a lot of parents give in to their shrill little voices and don’t know how to say no.

Of course, the only reason I ‘d want a Wii and Wii Fit is so that I can watch my girlfriend, if I had one, do this.

UPDATE: Oh man, you guys missed it. It was pretty awesome.

UPDATE 2: Three cheers for Jonny U!

To whom it may concern,

I watched the video you uploaded to YouTube titled “Why every guy should buy their girlfriend Wii Fit” with great interest. Aside from the riveting and engaging content contained within the video itself, I thought your camera work was some of the best I’ve seen — it’s right up there with movies like Citizen Kane, GoodFellas, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and The Graduate.

I’m sure you’re quite busy with other equally stunning projects, but I’d just like to say thanks for your moving and enchanting addition to the short film community. I also found it refreshing that you made a small cameo in your own film, a la Todd Phillips’ appearance in Old School. There’s no shame in doing that and I think more directors should consider appearing in their own films.

Anyway, great work and we’re all looking forward to your future projects!

Sincerely,

Doug Aamoth, on behalf of the entire CrunchGear family

The Vee Balance Board, finally put to good use. A couple of German researchers hacked the Wii Fit input device to work with Google Earth and other oddball applications. This here video explains the lot of it, complete with early 1990s Hackers-sounding, proto-trance background music.

via Nowhere Else