It’s not just Marky Mark who considers the Wii to be a bit of a novelty. Xbox VP (and former CEO of Nintendo Europe) David Gosen has slammed Wii for its gimmicky approach when it comes to controllers – notably Wii Fit’s balance board as being little more than a set of “digital bathroom scales”.

Asked about Microsoft’s concerns when it came to creating new peripherals, he praised Nintendo’s success with Wii, but warned they were treading a fine line. Read more…

The Wii Balance Board covers shown above are the work of Amr Racing, and have been in the spotlight as of late, due to their racey nature — which clashes with the overall “family” brand of Nintendo — the company their product is made to skin.

Gameindustry.biz obtained a comment from Nintendo regarding the skins, and the response they recieved was one most of us could have predicted:

“These are not officially licensed products, we always recommend the use of official first or third party Nintendo products to ensure 100 per cent compatibility and reliability with our hardware … We always closely monitor new products entering the market to ensure that they do not infringe on any of our IP.”

Apple has been dealing with third party content on for their iPod (and most recently their iPhone) for some time now. Cell phones in general have been the target of third party skins for as long as I can remember.

Generally speaking, most manufactures seem to take the hands-off, “we can only recommend products stamped with our official approval” approach regarding their existence. However, those products still remain on the market, and many of them do very well. Why is that? Read more…

It’s time to get up out of the couch and put the controller down – well not exactly. Rather than use the controller, connect the Wii Balance Board and take time to get your work out on. Read more…