Nintendo apologises for Wii Fit
Nintendo has apologised to players who may have been offended by inaccurate results in Wii Fit.
Wii Fit is a fitness game for the Wii which uses a new balance board peripheral to weight players, gauge fitness and balance and to monitor the BMI of players. Players are then given a schedule of work outs to help improve their results.
The system hasn't been entirely well received however and the Daily Mail has published reports from distraught parents whose supposedly fit and athletic children have been labelled fat by the game.
Members of the National Obesity Forum quickly hopped on the bandwagon too, saying that the BMI system is far from perfect and "simply should not be used with children" as the results could prove to be potentially misleading.
Nintendo has issued a full apology to all customers of the game, but has pointed out that the manual does say that younger children may not get accurate results.
"As stated in the Wii Fit manual, BMI is essentially a measure of body fat, based on an adult height and weight. Wii Fit is still capable of measuring the BMI for people aged between 2 and 20 but the resulting figures may not be entirely accurate for younger age groups due to varying levels of development.
"People with more muscle mass than normal will also have a higher BMI rating due to the heavy weight of muscle tissue, so the resulting figures should be used for reference purposes only," added the statement.
It is also possible to bypass the BMI measuring aspect of the game and simply play the games and exercises themselves. Check out our Wii Fit review for more details, or simply tell us your results in the forums.
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26 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyHowever the notion of people being distraught over this, come on get real!!! Some folk need a good bitch slap over some of the this things they come out with.
I just made everyone in the office look at me strangely when I let out a really loud involuntary laugh at that!
BMI really isn't suitable for this sort of thing as it is a statistical measurement for dealing with large sample sizes (whole populations). I don't know of any other way they could get Wii Fit to work but this was always gonna be the big problem. BMI isn't suitable for people with stockier builds because it doesn't take frame size into account so they'll be considered overweight even if they don't have a lot of body fat. As it was designed for average adults (and it doesn't even suit most races/cultures) leading sedentary lifestyles, it's unsuitable for children and teens, athletes and bodybuilders,pregnant or nursing women, people over 65, people who exercise regularly.... the list goes on and on.
The number of people who can play the game and get an accurate fitness measurement based on BMI is going to be a small fraction of the people who actually use Wii Fit. Besides, Body Fat ( and thus 'additional' Weight) and Fitness are two separate issues so maybe the game should have been called Wii Fat?
its blatently obvious that a well built (mussely) person isnt goin to be obese, same as a skinny peson the same height as a well built person of the same height is obviously not going to be the same weight
% bodyfat is more accurate as far as i know
Didn't this start because some 11 year old girl was told she was fat and had a hissy fit? Well there's two things wrong here 1) children do not fit into the normal BMI limits, 2) a lot of children these days ARE fat, this girl was probably no exception. Having said all that, this is a computer game that tells you you're fat almost as soon as you turn it on - nice move Nintendo.
that gave me a weird idea... maybe require to not be fat so it lets you play, basically have the game tell you to go out and do sports until your not fat anymore:D
(no, I'm not really being serious)
But for the majority of the British public, who have not done weights, if you have a high BMI, it's because you are fat, period.
Pretty retarded of the gamers really, surely there are disclaimers?
You know, it's really not that bad of an idea.
isn't it kind of a given that if you are buying this game (and care if you are fat or not) that you would be overweight?
" i work out 5 hours a day, and am totally fit, i am going to buy wii fit, to make me fitter"
yeah.....right.
sooo scarrmrcc, plenty of people
Its a game and toy, not fitness.
Please excuse me while i put on a fitness video and jump up and down on my bathroom scales untill they break and tell me im 5 stone. :)
QFT
Although I will say that some of the yoga poses are quite tricky and the advanced ones can be quite challenging.
Anyway: idiot should think before they moan, Wii fit is ONLY A GAME - at least, it's a game according to Nintendo
I really didnt think people could be fooled enough to buy into such a gimmick of an item...i guess i was wrong =/
Almost all Mario games tend to ignore the laws of physics too, so why not complain about that? Oh yeah, that's right, IT'S A COMPUTER GAME.
Give those kids a brownie already, I think there blood sugar is getting low... ;)