I’ll start with the Wii Board itself (it was never referred to as the Wii Balance Board). It’s a very slim design and certainly looks like your average bathroom scales, even underneath. Nintendo have again gone for a Bluetooth connection that syncs via the battery pack, and although battery life wasn’t mentioned I’d expect it to be slightly less than the Wii Remote, so look out for plenty of “recharge packs” available in April! It seems very sturdy and the surface isn’t as slippery as I’d expected, although a certain high-street retailer is bundling it with a non-slip cover to prevent strains and sprains. It’s strange to describe something like this as “ergonomic”, but it did feel very comfortable whilst I was stood on it.

As for the software, it’s surprisingly in-depth. Using a colour and menu scheme that’ll be extremely familiar to Wii Sports veterans, you create a profile linked to your Mii and enter some basic information. Your first experience of the board is to let it weigh you, and Nintendo claim it’s five times more accurate than a normal pair of electronic scales, which certainly accounts for the £69.99 it’ll cost at retail. After a minute or two it calculates your BMI or Body Mass Index, which is intended as an indication of whether your body shape is suitable for your height. The poor chap before me had a BMI somewhere in the top “obese” section, so after this humiliation the game asked him to set a target and deadline. The idea is that every day the game will recommend three tasks for you to do that will help you work towards your goal. If you exercise outside of your living room you can also enter details, so if you swim three times a week the game will factor that into its calculations. After that, you can check your progress through various graphs and charts, but if you’re ashamed you can lock your profile from your family’s prying eyes!

As a tool, then, it’s actually quite accomplished. But how do its gameplay elements stack up? Well, with limited time I could only play the ski jump game, but I was extremely impressed with its sensitivity and fun factor. Hunching down you have to balance so that a red dot overlaps a blue dot, which will gain you speed, then at the end red zone you step onto your tiptoes and soar gracefully through the air. Or, as I did, fall right off the board and slump to a miserable 49m jump – the board could do with being a tad longer to accommodate the larger-footed players! I soon got the hang of things though, and with some grace and balance I flew to a respectable 149m jump. Like Wii Sports, one of its strong points is the way it immerses you in the game without your realisation – down the ramp you slink from side to side to find the sweet spot, hearing your skis carve through the snow, and once you spring onto your toes to jump it goes silent, and you hold out your arms to balance. It’s really quite exhilarating in a way I hadn’t expected.

Unfortunately that was all the Wii Board time I could manage, but it’s certainly a package that suits the Wii down to the ground. My first try was reminiscent of using the Wii Remote itself, with uncertainty giving way to elation once I’d made some progress, and it certainly feels enough like a game to make it enjoyable, which should hopefully stave off some of the repetitive elements that will no doubt creep in after a while. I would have loved to have tried out the jogging, where you and a partner hold a Remote each in your pocket and go for a virtual jog, or one of the yoga exercises, although I don’t know if Nintendo’s insurance would have covered it.

With a huge advertising and sampling campaign behind Wii Fit, it really is Nintendo’s big white hope for this year, seeking to do what Brain Training did for the DS. The question is this: would you spend £250 for a set of expensive scales and two discs of sports games?