Can I really be the only person in the UK not to have had a go on a Nintendo Wii? Everyone seems to have one except me and frankly I’m jealous. But now I have the perfect excuse to treat myself: I can justify a purchase as part of my campaign to get fit.

This month sees the launch of Wii Fit, a $90 game that Nintendo hopes will help all the young adults who got obese playing the company’s vast repertoire of video games to lose a few pounds (both physically and financially, one assumes). Wii Fit comes with a “balance board” which, according to a Time interview with the developer, Shigeru Miyamoto, can be used to do yoga, aerobics, and hula hoop.

The World Health Organisation estimates that over 1 billion people are overweight and that at least 300 million people are clinically obese, so the potential market for Wii Fit is huge. But somehow I doubt these figures will change much as a result of Wii-induced exercise campaigns.

This isn’t the first time that Nintendo has tapped into our desire to keep healthy and improve ourselves. Brain Age, which claims to improve users’ cognitive performance with repeated use, has sold tens of millions of units, primarily to older users who are concerned about staving off the onset of dementia.

There is very little evidence that computer games like Brain Age prevent cognitive decline, however (for further information see this news feature that I wrote recently for the BMJ). But of course absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence and the general consensus among the clinicians that I interviewed for the BMJ article was that games like Brain Age almost certainly do no harm; indeed some neurologists actively encourage their patients to use programs like Brain Age as part of a mental exercise routine.

I wonder whether primary-care physicians will follow suit and recommend Wii Fit to their overweight patients. I’m sure the people working in Nintendo’s marketing department will be hoping so.