Wii Balance Board - Development

Development

The balance board's development was tightly coupled with the development of the Wii Fit game. Nintendo initially contacted manufacturers of normal bathroom scales, but ended up building the board without their help in an effort to keep down costs. In early development models, the balance board was a simple scale with one load cell. However, the developers realized that a simple scale was not useful as a game accessory and expanded the number of load cells to two, then four. The idea to use multiple sensors was partly inspired by how sumo wrestlers weigh themselves (using two scales). The shape of the balance board was initially a square, but it was decided that it was too hard to use for the exercises.

For a large part of the development process, the board was an extension controller to a normal Wii remote. The effects of this are seen in the released balance board, which acts as a Wii remote with the front button mapped to "A" and all load cells on an "extension controller".