I went to a Wii Fit launch event this morning, designed to show off Nintendo's fitness game and its  pressure-sensitive floor pad. It was a slightly surreal event, with all the Nintendo folk dressed in white tracksuits with big marketing smiles. I felt a bit like I had stumbled upon a technologically advanced cult. Thankfully, there was no fruit punch offered and we were soon set loose with the games.

To get started, a colleague of mine went through the few steps to work out his Wii Fitness age ' a measure of physical wellbeing ' by entering his age and height and trying to stand stock still on the balance board. He wavered and came out with a fitness age of 69. Being in his early 30s, he wasn't overly impressed. He did, however, laugh at the number, suggesting he has a mental age half his actual years, so it probably balances out.

We moved on to skiing and hula-hooping, which were fun but didn't seem to require much exertion. Nor do the other balance and Yoga exercises seem to burn off many calories, though doing headers was a bit more energetic. There are some more aerobic exercises available, like jogging, but they just aren't the games I felt were the most appealing. The game's strength is the graphical appearance, which is very appealing in a cute and slightly weird way, with funny animations popping up as you get hit by a football boot or a disembodied panda head while trying to do headers.

The problem as I see it is that the game provides little motivation to keep playing. You can see your Wii Fitness age ' and hopefully see it falling ' but is that enough to get you using it a few times a week? The motivation for visiting a gym often comes from peers, or because it costs you money every month whether you go or not. Even with the ??70 price tag, I'm not sure that these motivational factors are there in big enough proportions to keep me using the Wii Fit.

The balance board's sensitivity is impressive and works really well as a control system, so it will be interesting to see what other titles come out using it as an input device. If the fitness regime had more of a level-based system, like Super Mario Galaxy, I would probably be more inclined to play it regularly.

I don't want to give the impression it's not good. I did like it, and even though I'm probably not in the target market, I am tempted to get one once it has been released. I just feel that it could fall into the same trap as Wii Play, effectively being little more than a good way of showing off the capabilities of the hardware.

My colleague and I agreed that we probably used up more energy walking there from the Tube than we did while playing Wii Fit, but any game that features panda heads being kicked at you is alright by me.