The platform – it must have a proper name – the platform provides information to the Wii including sending it your weight, how well you are balanced and how you move as you play the game. Initially, you have to tell the Wii Fit some information about yourself – your age, height, the heaviness of your clothes – and then it customizes your Mii avatar to look like you.

Mind you I am saying customized, not personalized, because there is a difference.

My Mii is chubby. No shock there. I have lived with myself for years now so I know how I look (although I am up for a powerful denial pill if someone out there has one). The thing that disturbed my daughter is not that my Mii is husky, but that Nintendo designed the fat Mii to wear clothes that don’t fit. I hadn’t noticed and I am too old to be bothered, but Katie was mortified. I suppose a younger person would feel the same. Just because we are fat doesn’t mean we would wear clothes that don’t fit!

And this gets to my point. There is a different between interactivity – which the Wii delivers – and personalization. We all want personalization. I absolutely, positively believe that to be true. It’s what our Lab Members tell us over and over again. And as I made my way through the Wii Fit experience, I realized that once again, Nintendo missed the point and delivered half a great product (for the again part, you can read my other Wii review.

Here’s what I mean.

Interactivity: My Mii reflects the information about me like height and weight.

Personalization: I can choose how I want my Mii to look.

Interactivity: The step exercise tells me if I am stepping on the platform properly while I follow their routine, listening to their music.

Personalization: The step exercise lets me set the tempo, choose the music and create the setting for my session.

Interactivity: The Wii Fit tracks my progress every day as I move through the exercises and do the “Body Test” to see if my balance, BMI or weight has changed.

Personalization: I set the schedule for my progress including “weigh in days,” a training schedule with exercise sets I want to do across different days and more.

Interactivity: I feel the burn as I go down the slalom on my skis (über fun bytheway) and look at Nintendo “doll house” billboards that surround my mock sporting event.

Personalization: I choose my ski equipment (I can choose which brands) while looking at billboards for things that I think are important (Diet Pepsi, The Office) in my pretend ski world (Ikea is doing it in Sims2 right now).

I look forward to the games that will soon come out that exploit the Wii Fit. The smart game makers will understand the difference between simple interactivity and personalization and guess what? They are going to make some money! The platform in the Wii Fit is absolutely amazing. The information it provides – the steady feedback – rocks. But making that more that just data is the answer and when that happens, the fun will begin!

Originally Published June 2008

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