Wii Fit Reaches 20 Million Copies Sold Milestone

The best-selling Wii Fit has reached an unprecedented milestone. The Nintendo Wii exclusive title has sold more than 20 million copies. Only a handful of video games in the history of the gaming industry have sold at least 20 million copies. The number is even smaller for a standalone product like Wii Fit. For a product to achieve this milestone, several stars needed to be aligned perfectly.

One of them is the system for which the game appeared on. The Nintendo Wii was released in late 2006 and is the fastest-selling video game system ever. There are more than 50 million Nintendo Wiis in household, which is more than enough for Wii Fit to reach the 20 million units sold milestone.

The consumer who bought the Nintendo Wii also played a big part. A vast majority of Nintendo Wii players don't typically play video games. However, the revolutionary motion controls made the system hard to resist for millions. Since playing Wii Sports, which was bundled with every system, forced many casual players to break out a sweat, many considered playing the Nintendo Wii as a workout.

The market-savvy Nintendo saw this as a business opportunity and decided to release Wii Fit for the Nintendo Wii starting in late 2007 in Japan. The game comes bundled with the Wii Balance Board, which reads your weight in addition to your balance. It also features dozens of mini-games to help the players workout while having fun at the same time. Although Nintendo admits that Wii Fit isn't really a good way for a person to lose weight, consumers still bought the Nintendo Wii exclusive game in droves.

To further add to the impressive sales performance, the entire Wii Fit package costs $89.99. Most games on the same system only retails for $49.99. Even after a year since launch, it is still outselling cheaper and newer titles at the same price point. Convincing more than 20 million Nintendo Wii players to spend the extra cash is an incredible achievement for Nintendo.

Then again, Nintendo is used to the success of their software sales. After all, they pretty much developed and published all of the best-selling game in the history of the gaming industry. Aside from Wii Fit, Nintendo also produced seven more games that sold over 20 million copies: Nintendogs, Pokémon, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, Tetris, Wii Play and Wii Sports. Needless to say, Nintendo has more popular games than any other company in the history of the gaming industry.

Nintendo hoped to continue the success of the Wii Fit with a new expansion, Wii Fit Plus, set for release for the Nintendo Wii on September 15, 2009.