Tags: Consumer Electronics, Games and Hobbies
by Alexander Villafania
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA — Since the advent of the Nintendo Wii, there seems to have been a move towards making video games a rather healthy proposition – by encouraging couch potatoes to stand up and exercise.
Nintendo’s gaming console features motion detection hardware that allows players to move the Wii controller, or Wii-mote, to play games. In fact, the Wii has even outsold both the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3.
The higher sales percentage of the Wii is largely due to its motion-sensitive controller, a unique feature that essentially encourages people to stand up and use bodily motion to control their characters in their chosen game.
Nintendo also introduced a fitness training game called Wii Fit , which simulates physical exercises. The Wii Fit is basically a balance board similar to a gym step board. Its main use is to take the weight of the player and checking his or her center of balance. The player then follows the exercises on the screen while the board measures the center of balance of the player, thereby, monitoring if the player is doing the exercise correctly.
There are at least two dozen exercises in the Wii Fit, split into four groups: yoga, strength training, aerobics and balance games. The Wii Fit has its own in-game trainer, which measures the progress of the player on a daily basis. Simply missing out on an exercise will have the Wii Fit remind you of this concern and perhaps provide a make up session.
Incidentally, the Wii Fit is not the first home console video game that uses the player’s body.
A device called the EyeToy was released by Sony for the PlayStation 2 in 2003. It is essentially a USB camera with LEDs to follow movement in front of it. Several games were released for the EyeToy and two of these, called EyeToy Kinetic and EyeToy Kinetic Combat, were co-developed by Sony and sports equipment manufacturer Nike.
Both games are strongly similar to Fit except the EyeToy does not use a balance board. These are the first serious games that focused on home-based fitness, providing basically all types of exercises offered by the Wii Fit. The EyeToy Kinetic Combat is a 2006 follow up and focuses more on combat exercises, such as karate, taekwondo and even capoeira, a popular dance-exercise that originated in Brazil.
A few entrepreneurs have bought the idea that the Wii can become a hot sell. Just like shops in the past that rents out the Playstation 2, new companies like FriiSpirit in Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City and in Scout Castor also in Quezon City offer in-house rentals of Wii.
While they have available Wii Fit units in both shops, the most popular game is Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which simulates musical instruments. Even if these games do not require strenuous physical activity they still beat sitting down when playing games.
Just the same, future is going towards using video games to improve one’s health. Microsoft announced its own version of a motion-sensitive platform codenamed Natal while Sony also plans to release a motion controller for the PS3 this year. Hopefully, both the Xbox 360 and PS3 would also have fitness-related games.
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