NEW YORK — Ernest Roesner never played a video game in his life. And yoga? Forget about it.

But the 53-year-old auto union representative from Swartz Creek, Mich., got a taste of both on Monday as Nintendo kicked off the U.S. launch of the hotly anticipated Wii Fit game with a demonstration in Manhattan's Central Park.

David Ho/Cox Newspapers (ENLARGE)

Ernest Roesner, 53, an auto union representative from Swartz Creek, Mich.,tries some yoga at a launch event for Nintendo's 'Wii Fit' exercise game in New York's Central Park last year.

David Ho/Cox Newspapers (ENLARGE)

Keisha Davenport, 41, a college administrator and mother of two young children, tries out the balance board during the event.

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Scheduled for nationwide release Wednesday, the $90 add-on for the hugely popular Nintendo Wii game console offers a wireless "balance board" and on-screen yoga, strength training and aerobics, along with balance games such as snowboarding and tightrope walking.

"I'm a big guy and I never, ever thought I would do yoga or anything like that, but getting on there was great and easy to follow with the virtual person," said Roesner, who moments before had been stretching left and right in front of an LCD screen.

Roesner said his wife also would enjoy the exercise features, and he might buy his first video game system to use Wii Fit.

"I thought it was just entertainment, but it's more than entertainment. I never would have thought that of a video game," Roesner said. He added: "I did really well!"

Nintendo Co. is counting on reactions like his as it attempts to extend the success of the Wii, which has shaken up its industry with motion-sensing controllers and play intended for a broad audience beyond hard-core gamers.

"It's the first video game system that's truly intergenerational," said Chris Byrne, an independent toy and game industry analyst. "Whether it's seniors doing bowling or 5-year-olds doing Mario Kart racing, they all can relate to it."

Byrne said that with Wii Fit, Nintendo has another sell-out, hard-to-find hit in the making. While there are increasing numbers of fitness-oriented games, most are "a bunch of nonsense" and don't compare to the Wii Fit experience, he said.

Pre-launch sales of Wii Fit sold out on Amazon.com and on the Web sites of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and GameStop Corp.

The game has already sold about 2 million units in Japan, where there are 6 million Wii console owners.

Based on that, Nintendo may initially sell about 3 million Wii Fit games in the United States and boost monthly sales of the original Wii console by hundreds of thousands, said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Nintendo's strategy with Wii Fit is marketing it as both game and at-home fitness tool. In particular, the company is looking beyond the traditional gaming audience of boys and young men to a largely unexplored video game market: women.

Before the games begin, the pressure-sensitive Wii Fit balance board calculates a user's body mass index -- a measure of body fat based on weight and height. It also tests balance and works out a "Wii Fit Age" to help craft a fitness program.

The measurement system recently stirred some unintended publicity after British news reports described how a Wii Fit upset a 10-year-old girl by calling her fat.

Nintendo says the BMI measure, which reports four fitness categories - underweight, normal, overweight and obese - should not be considered a definitive measure of health, and parents concerned about how their kids may react should use Wii Fit without the BMI tracker.

The Wii Fit exercises start in one- or two-minute bursts and come with instructions and demonstrations from male or female virtual instructors.

Keisha Davenport, 41, said she was surprised how much she enjoyed Wii Fit yoga at the Central Park event, where more than 2,000 people stopped to use about 40 Wii Fit stations.

Davenport, a college administrator and mother of two from Baldwin, N.Y., said her two kids would love the balance games such as the ski jump or blocking soccer balls with a virtual head.

"If there are games that get them up and moving around, I think that would be fun," she said, noting that she originally bought the Wii for "the whole family."