The Wii Balance Board is shaped like a household body scale, with a plain white top and light gray bottom.

In an interview conducted by gaming web site IGN, Shigeru Miyamoto stated that the Balance Board's ability to measure weight is probably more accurate than that of a typical bathroom scale.

[5] Due to the similarities between the two products, the Wii Balance Board has been compared to the Joyboard, a peripheral released for the Atari VCS in 1982 by Amiga Corporation.

Novelty Wii Fit non-skid socks, which have small rubber pads on the sole that do not slide easily, were provided to members of Club Nintendo.

[7] The effects of this are seen in the released balance board, which acts as a Wii remote with the front button mapped to "A" and all load cells on an "extension controller".

Shortly after Wii Fit's release, Shigeru Miyamoto noted the potential for other uses, stating that "probably the simplest and most straightforward [idea] would be a snowboarding game".

Due to these two limitations, there is no ability to use multiple Balance Boards simultaneously[12] and the maximum number of players who can play a non-hotseat multiplayer mode involving it is reduced to 3.

Throughout these tests the center of pressure path length was measured and compared to data from an identical study on a laboratory-grade force platform.

[15] The Wii Balance Board sold 32 million units worldwide between its launch and November 2010, and set a new Guinness World Record for "best-selling personal weighing device".