Miyamoto-san, when you first started work on Wii Fit, did you foresee the way in which it would be embraced by so many people around the world?

Well no, you can't predict these things. But what I would say is that once its popularity started to gather momentum, I remember feeling that no one had any idea how big this might get. At the start, it was you who were most strongly behind it! (laughs)

Sure enough, I remember when we discussed how many of those specialised Wii Balance Board components that would entail a long wait for delivery we should purchase. I came out with a figure which left a lot of people asking nervously: "Are you sure it's okay to buy that many?" (laughs)

I remember saying: "Well, if we're just talking about components, we'll be able to use them in some other product anyway!" (laughs)

How did the development of Wii Fit Plus come about?

We began developing Wii Fit Plus with a kind of typical game developer's way of thinking: since the first one has sold well, we should come up with a sequel. It was at that point that you brought up the idea of having multi-levelled exercises which would also train the brain…

Ah yes, you're talking about the Stroop Effect¹.

1

The Stroop Effect refers to the phenomenon reported by the psychologist John Stroop in 1935 concerning the way that if you display two types of information at the same time, such as the name of a colour printed in a different colour, these types of information interfere with each other when the brain tries to process them.

The idea was that by working on Wii Fit a little more, we might be able to train users' brains as well as their bodies.

The Stroop Effect was actually used in Brain Training² where there was one challenge where the names of the colours didn't match the colour they were written in and the user was instructed to ignore the word and pay attention to the colour. The effect that comes into play at times like that, when you are struggling with two contradictory levels of awareness in order to choose one option, is known as the Stroop Effect.

2	Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? is a software title released for Nintendo DS in May 2005 in Japan and June 2006 in Europe.

Now when you try to do that kind of thing using the body, the example that's easiest to grasp is that of drumming, when the arms and legs are each moving independently.

But you did that already in Wii Music³, didn’t you? (laughs)

3	Wii Music was a music-based software title released for Wii in October 2008 in Japan. It was released one month later in Europe.

We already did it! (laughs) That's when I thought that by combining information taken in visually along with holding the controller and the body's balance, we could come up with a lot of fun games. So we began at that point to work on a variety of games separately.

I see.

As things progressed with the development of these games, it came to my attention that there were people who had actually stopped using Wii Fit. They knew they should really be using it, but there was a reason why they had stopped…

And what was that reason?

As you may be able to guess, it was the convenience factor. With Wii Fit, there was a certain amount of inconvenience the user had to contend with. That's why I thought that if we could just improve the ease of use, we could get people to keep using it. I can well imagine there will be those who say: "Well, you should have made it like that in the first place!" (laughs)

You just stated that perhaps you should have made it like that in the first place. There are actually two different scenarios where you would conceivably say that. In the first instance, while you were working on the game, you might think: "Ideally, what I really want to do is make it this way but..."

There were plenty of cases like that.

The other instance would be where, once the game has been released, there are elements about which you think: "If only we’d done it like that!"

I’d say that out of the two of those cases, there were many more where I felt during development: "I really want to do it this way but…"

So as a game developer, there were those things that you had originally wanted to do but which you weren’t able to.

Exactly. For instance, when you go to a fitness club, you'll do a half-hour session or a 40-minute session or whatever. If you do that, the instructor will be alongside you giving you more and more advice which means you’ll get through it almost in spite of yourself. So while you were conscious of time passing for maybe the first ten minutes, before you realise it, you've been exercising for 40 minutes.

That's right. When you exercise, you'll lose track of the passage of time without even knowing it…

I thought that this kind of element should be included in Wii Fit and wanted to somehow get it into the software but was at a loss as to how to do it. As we weren't able to successfully include this first time around, with Wii Fit Plus, we made it so that you could tailor-make your own personal training routine. In any case, that's where we directed a lot of our efforts.

So we're talking about the personalised menu, My Wii Fit Plus.

We went back and remade that one about four times.

Really? You remade it four times?

As game designers, the thing which we spent the most time on was making the interface as accessible as possible so that we'd create a menu for the customisable workout routine that was very simple to use. We wanted to make it so that even those users who find doing things like that irritating can simply press a few buttons to make their selections.

And you remade it four times?

If you're including changes to the specification documents, we may have remade it more times than that. Each time the team came up with a new version, I would get them to make a presentation at which I would keep saying: "No, that's wrong. That won't work." I imagine the director was pretty nervous, because even when the software was more or less in its final state, I requested that it be reworked once more.

So that would have been the fourth time? (laughs)

Right. But I think I can say that we've come up with a model of an accessible interface. Also, towards the end of the development period, we were fortunate enough to have the cooperation of Dr Miyachi⁴, though by that stage we had more or less finalised the features and development was proceeding steadily.

Well, unless the training exercises had been finalised to a certain extent, it wouldn’t be possible to do calculations in the metabolic chamber⁵.

Yes, which is why it turned out to be really fortunate timing. We had in fact done a lot of research into METs⁶ at the time of the original Wii Fit.

4

Dr Miyachi, the Exercise Guideline Project Director of the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan, acted as an adviser during the development of Wii Fit Plus. Dr Miyachi's overarching goal is "to construct the guidelines for physical exercise needed to improve the health of the nation". He conducts his own research, as well as using research gathered from around the world, in order to put together exercise guidelines for Japanese people. The National Institute of Health and Nutrition was established by Japan's Ministry of Home Affairs in 1920. It was an official body charged with improving standards of public health by conducting research and carrying out surveys concerning the health of the Japanese population, their diet and general levels of nutrition.

5

Resembling an airtight hotel room, a metabolic chamber is a ground-breaking piece of apparatus which allows long-term measurements to be taken of the amount of energy used by people in an environment close to everyday life. It is also known as a Human Calorie Meter. The METs values of the exercises in Wii Fit were calculated using the metabolic chamber under the supervision of Dr Miyachi.

6	METs (Metabolic equivalents) are a unit that puts a numerical value on the level of physical exertion we feel when doing exercise.

Right.

It's a catchy term that's easy to remember even for Japanese people, and I had said something along the lines of: "Let’s go ahead and use METs!" But in fact, there wasn't the scientific evidence that would have enabled us to use it as part of a product. If Nintendo, as a manufacturer in the entertainment industry, had used physiological statistics without any guarantee as to their accuracy, it really wouldn’t have been very desirable…

We can't use figures if the measurements aren't based on solid evidence.

Right. That's why in the original Wii Fit, we had FitCash which was a system where you gave your own rough estimate of how much exercise you had done. We left it so that it was always just an estimate that would act as a guide which could be saved in your records. But once we realised that we could include the scientific basis needed to calculate METs figures, we were able to enhance that feature in the second half of the development process.

Thanks to the assistance of Dr Miyachi, you were also able to include the Wii Fit Plus Routines which advise users what sort of training to do in order to prevent conditions like stiff shoulders and back pain.

That's actually something that I had wanted to do in the original Wii Fit, but again we lacked the scientific basis to do it. So we discussed things like workouts to build upper arm strength with Matsui-san⁷ and his team of trainers who were advising us, and had to some degree come up with a framework for that idea. Encountering Dr Miyachi at just the right time then worked out really well.

7	The pro sports trainer Kaoru Matsui is the director of the Japanese branch of the National Exercise & Sports Trainers Association (NESTA) which oversees personal trainers' qualifications. He acted as the training adviser on Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus.

The focus of Dr Miyachi's research really gelled well with what we were doing, which I believe added a great deal of value to the software.

That’s why it's called "Plus"!

(laughs)

As we'd managed to come up with such a solid core, I personally felt that we should get this on the market quickly with the intention of saying to Wii Fit users: "Use this to get an enhanced version of Wii Fit!"

So that's why it's not Wii Fit 2.

Right! It's not number two! It's not what you'd call a sequel with a regular game - it's actually an enhanced version of the software.

Speaking of enhancements to this version, you're now able to weigh your dog, aren't you?

When we originally made Wii Fit, we did have the notion that we'd like to allow users to weigh their pets. My pet dog is a member of my family, after all.

But you abandoned that idea, didn't you?

Yes, we did. Then after we'd completed Wii Fit, when we sent the final product to Tsunekazu Ishihara⁸ of The Pokémon Company, I said to him: "I’m really sorry but you won’t be able to weigh your dogs!" He really enjoyed that one! (laughs)

8	Tsunekazu Ishihara is the producer of the Pokémon series. He is currently the President and CEO of The Pokémon Company.

Ishihara-san has got two pet dogs, hasn't he?

So I did go through a period when I regretted the fact that users couldn’t weigh their dogs. Dogs are the classic pet, after all. On the title screen for the original Wii Fit, all of the Mii characters from the users' family gather together briefly. I thought of this scene as somehow being the Wii "home", so of course it was somewhat sad not to have any pets included.

There are many households where pets are seen as members of the family, aren't there?

That's why at the time of Wii Fit, I made a Mii dog in my own home. Well, it was a short person with a dog-like face! (laughs)

(laughs)

When I told the Wii Fit team about that, they were kind enough to come up with actual dogs for this version. I kept telling them not to worry about being too elaborate, but at the same time, I was saying things like: "We'll need short tails and long tails!" and "We need to have droopy ears as well as pointy ears!" (laughs)

So the demands kept piling up… (laughs)

Then once they'd allowed the user to make a decent dog, I said: "Now we should have a cat too!" Well, I had just got a pet cat.

Hold on a minute! That's some breaking news! (laughs)

(laughs)

There are apparently a fair few people out there who think: "Miyamoto-san always gives dogs preferential treatment. He just doesn't understand the feelings of cat lovers."

From now on, I will also be showing consideration for cat lovers.

(laughs)

That's why there isn’t just a dog, but also a cat character this time around.

You weigh pets by holding them and then weighing yourself, right?

At first, the user is asked: "Who is weighing the pet?" Then it will subtract that person's weight and display the pet's weight.

There is of course no way that you could get a pet to remain still on the Wii Balance Board, so weighing the user while holding the pet is much more effective. At the same time, it also gives that really nice feeling that the pet is a member of the family.

You can well imagine the whole family gathering round to watch the pets getting weighed.

So you have both the fact that it's efficient along with the fact that it gives that sense of togetherness, that feeling that the pet is another member of the family. From both perspectives, I think it was a really well-judged idea. And you could also say the same about a baby...

Somehow I get the feeling that saying: "We could weigh babies as well!" right after a discussion of dogs and cats might make some people angry! But as it's really enjoyable to watch babies develop, the fact that their weights can be saved will be welcomed by many users.

Yes, babies are constantly growing, each and every day.

But if all the old data from before they entered kindergarten were to disappear, that would be a real shame. That's why this time we've made it so that you can save ten years' worth of data.

Ten years?

With Wii Fit, you could save three years' worth of data. But this time round, you can see the physical changes you have gone through over a period of ten years.

I wasn't aware of that.

This was something that I was really determined to do. The actual exercise data is saved for three years, but we have expanded it so that weight and BMI stats are saved for ten years. So for that reason, with just one copy of Wii Fit Plus in each house...

…You can leave the health management of your family to us! And for ten years too! (laughs)

And what's more, it isn't just pets. You can also weigh the objects around you and have a lot of fun that way…

…?

I've always enjoyed guessing the lengths of objects, which is why I carry a measuring tape around with me.

Really? That one's new to me too!

For instance, I might guess that the table in front of us is about 1.2 metres long. Then I'd actually measure it with the measuring tape to check. If I got it right, I'd think: "I’m on form today!" But if I missed the mark by a long way, I'd think: "I've been slipping a bit recently!"

So it’s a kind of barometer for what sort of form you're in? (laughs)

And it's not just length: I also really enjoy predicting the weight and other measurements of things. So for instance, I'd pick up a chair and think: "I wonder how many kilos this weighs." Or I’d wonder how many grams a weekly manga magazine weighs.

But for weights, you'd need a set of scales though, wouldn't you?

You can walk around with a measuring tape but you don't find scales all that commonly, which makes it very difficult to check the weights of objects. That's why I've always thought that using the Wii Balance Board to play a weight-guessing game would be great. For instance, we could make it like a school sports day. Get ten people together and hand out cards to each person. Then for instance, Iwata-san, you might get a card that reads "12 kilos" and I might get a card that reads "3 kilos". Then we’d all split up and go around the school…

…And we’d each have to bring back something which weighed that much.

We'd each put the object on the scales and the person who got closest to their target weight would be the winner! (laughs) Doing something like that would be great fun, wouldn't it? You don't think it would be fun?

Um… Sure! (laughs)

I thought you could play that kind of game together as a family using the Wii Balance Board. So while it's not precisely the same, there is a somewhat similar game we've included this time round in Wii Fit Plus. Even aside from dogs, I think it's quite a lot of fun to pick up various objects and weigh them.

What do you most want to say to our customers concerning the new Wii Fit Plus?

As I mentioned, I want them to enjoy it in a more relaxed way. Just switch on the power and you’ll be able to enjoy everything after that with the minimum of hassle! Getting the user to switch on the power in the first place is a huge hurdle to overcome, but once the power is switched on, the degree of satisfaction the user will feel with the software has increased significantly. So this means that all I really want is for the user to switch the console on. With the original Wii Fit, a fair proportion of users felt that it was all too much hassle and gave up on it halfway through. But once you've started, I am sure your body will let you know the way in which you should continue using the software in your daily life.

So what you're saying is that you've strived to remove all of those elements of the software which previously had customers feeling: "This is kind of a pain…"

Yes, we've really enhanced a lot of elements, so I want everyone to…

…Basically once you've switched on the power, all the things you'll need to do will appear one after the other and before you're even aware of it, you'll have been exercising for, let's say, 30 minutes or 40 minutes...

Yes, that's right. The Wii Fit Plus Routines option is the easiest place to get started. So you might think, for example, today I want to do a routine for 30 minutes or for 40 minutes, and then simple training exercises will appear straight away. In the original Wii Fit, it would always give you an explanation before each separate type of training exercise and when you'd finished an exercise, it would evaluate your performance. But when you actually train in a gym, you'll go from one exercise to the next in a smooth way. So while you might be told: "Drink a little water now", you'll keep on going through the programme of exercises, one after the other. With Wii Fit Plus this time round, it has that same kind of flow, and you'll be exercising for 30 or 40 minutes. For that reason, I would like people to use the software with the sense that they are actually doing a session at the gym.

You've added new training exercises on top of the 48 different varieties that appeared in the original Wii Fit, haven't you?

We've added another 21 types of training exercise… But I don't actually want to make too much of this here. I feel that if I emphasise this feature, there may be people out there who get the mistaken impression that this is a sequel to Wii Fit. A sequel is when users who were basically satisfied with the original software have the chance to purchase additional data that follows on from the original.

Yes, that's right.

But in the case of Wii Fit Plus, we didn't want it to be taken in that way by the consumer. As I said at the start of this interview, I want everyone to use this to get an enhanced version of Wii Fit. I want to say: "With this, you'll transform your Wii Balance Board into something even better!"

"Convert your Wii Balance Board into the latest model!"

Exactly. If we just state that the number of training exercises has increased, users who were not fully satisfied with the previous title aren't going to be interested no matter how many new exercises there might be. That's why when we made Wii Fit Plus, our highest priority was to get those users who might have drifted away from Wii Fit to regain interest in it. At the same time, the number of training exercises has actually increased which has added hugely to the fun.

So while it's obvious that by increasing the number of types of training exercise, it's become more enjoyable, no matter how much we might repeat this fact, it wouldn't spark any interest with the people we most want to reach.

Precisely. That's why, as one of the people who created and sold the previous title, I would actually like to go door-to-door to each and every user who bought Wii Fit and say: "Please exchange your old copy for this new one!"

Though that would entail going round more than 3.5 million homes in Japan alone, wouldn't it?

It wouldn't really be feasible to go round to every user in Japan, let alone worldwide. But what I want to emphasise is that I really have the desire to do that. Well in any case, whatever I may have said, it's still a lot of fun, even if you view it as being a sequel to Wii Fit. It's packed full of great new ways to play, including the golf swing analysis that measures the movement of your centre of gravity and the exercise where you flap your wings and take flight. We happen not to have advertised it in that way, but once people come to try it out, they'll find it’s also enjoyable to treat it as if it were Wii Fit 2. It's an unusual product in the sense that it contains all of the training exercises from Wii Fit. You wouldn't normally make a sequel that contained the entire prequel, but if it didn't have that, it would be rather inconvenient…

Well, it is the enhanced version, after all! (laughs)

Yes, it is! (laughs)

But the more I heard you talk about it, the more I felt that it was an enhanced version which was the same as new versions of operating systems or business software. That's why, if I'm being perfectly honest, I was rather worried at the start about how Nintendo would handle this kind of software, as it's not something we've ever dealt with before.

You were, weren't you? (laughs)

As it's an enhanced version, now every retailer will get rid of Wii Fit from the store front displays and will replace it with Wii Fit Plus. The sales strategy which we decided on was to target the product at all of those customers who are already enjoying Wii Fit, by doing all we could to make Wii Fit Plus available at an affordable price.

As for me, I want as many people as possible to continue to use this software as I believe that they are bound to see beneficial results if they do.

What's more, we hope that when any customer who has used the original Wii Fit gives Wii Fit Plus a try, they will be able to see its value. With advice on issues such as how to avoid stiff shoulders and backache, how to relieve stress or over-sensitivity to cold, how to work on your stomach muscles and how to build your upper arm strength, you will see results if you follow this advice. Moreover, you can say: "I have a free half-hour today, so I want to exercise for that long" and the training exercises will pop up one after the other…

It's something you can enjoy in a very simple, accessible way - just like going to a fitness club.

Now, Miyamoto-san, I believe I'm right in saying that you were working on three titles at the same time: Wii Sports Resort⁹, Wii Fit Plus which we have been discussing today and, in addition, New Super Mario Bros. Wii¹⁰.

9

Wii Sports Resort is a sports title released on Wii in June 2009 in Japan and July 2009 in Europe. In the game, the user can enjoy 12 different sports on a tropical island resort. The jogging, cycling and flying activities in Wii Fit Plus also take place on the same tropical island, known as Wuhu Island.

10	New Super Mario Bros. Wii is the latest title in the Super Mario Bros. series, offering four-player simultaneous play. It is scheduled to be released on Wii this winter.

Out of those three titles, the one which went most smoothly was Wii Fit Plus.

I suppose that would be because you had a clear vision from the start of what needed to be done to improve the software.

Yes, that's right. I could see what I wanted to do right from the start, and thanks to that, I was able to devote my energy to New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Right! (laughs) As someone who has worked with you closely over the years and spoken with you many times, I've realised today how much I still don't know about you!

…?

I'm talking about the fact that you walk around with a tape measure! (laughs)

Ah, that! Well, I love measuring things.

(laughs) So the measurement-obsessed Miyamoto-san created Wii Fit because he thought it would be fun to plot daily weight measurements on a graph. Then, in order to get people to continue doing that every day, he made Wii Fit Plus!

Iwata-san, why don't you try carrying a tape measure around with you?

I'm the type of person who'd prefer to have machines automatically measuring and recording things, so I don't think I'm cut out to be a fellow measurement-obsessive! (laughs)

You're missing out! It's a lot of fun, I'm telling you! (laughs)