Iwata Asks: How the Wii Fit began from a DS experiment

Nintendo’s Wii Fit became a surprise smash hit. With this, Iwata turns to the minds behind the development of the program, Hiroshi Matsunaga and Tadashi Sugiyama.

The two talk about the Wii Fit how they were able to fully develop this game when it only started as a DS experiment. Find out more in the interview after the jump!

It’s time again for another session with the Iwata Asks segment. This time around, he focuses on the two people mainly responsible for developing such a smash hit program, the Wii Fit, Hiroshi Matsunaga and Tadashi Sugiyama from the Software Development Department.

Sugiyama was the producer of the game’s software making him responsible for the development of the game. On the other hand, Matsunaga was the chief director for the program, in which he was responsible for handling the overall production of the game.

Matsunaga was actually developing a similar program much like Wii Fit for the Nintendo DS. It was given to him as an assignment early on. He wanted to know more on how they can develop the game and started reading diet books. He then shifted to approaching the game from a nutritional angle.

The main focus of the experimental program was on the concept of dieting. When it was determined what time of diet was easiest for most people to being with, work began as to how to develop it even more.

People could input their weight into the program and then continue on by letting them input what they ate. They wanted people to get the idea that their weight is affected by whatever they eat. Through this connection of weight and food, people could actually take the next step and start dieting.

This prototype then shifted from the DS to the Wii because Nintendo wanted to release different sets of software packages – the Sports Pack became the Wii Sports, the Party Pack became the Wii Play, and the Health Pack finally became the Wii Fit.

Via Iwata Asks