LITTLE ROCK — Spurred by the success of Nintendo's Wii Fit, video games are suddenly more and more about fitness.
Wii Fit guides players through yoga moves, basic strength training and aerobics. Since its U.S. release in May 2008, the game has sold more than 6 million copies.
Nintendo's success has attracted the attention not only of its competitors (a slew of next-generation fitness-theme games such as "EA Sports Active" are on store shelves or will be by Christmas) but also health professionals. Such institutions as the University of Mississippi and Indiana University are looking into whether interactive video games are viable tools to promote health and combat obesity or just another fitness fad. But research is still slight and inconclusive.
"Your body doesn't care if you're going out on the street riding a bicycle or pedaling in front of a Wii screen," says Lew Lyon, vice president of MedStar Sports Health at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore and a sports psychologist.
Fewer than 40 percent of Americans are getting enough exercise, he says. "If we can get 10 percent more active [with video games] that's a good thing."
Fitness-theme games can be useful even for avid exercisers. But once the novelty wears off, will the Wii Fit balance board end up in the back of the closet?
Pilot studies suggest there are things that can be done to help people stick with the routines, such as using multiplayer games, says Elizabeth Lyons, a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lyons was one of the speakers at the annual Games for Health conference in June in Boston. While the conference looked at the broader role of video games in health and health care, one of the five topics covered was exercise-theme games.
As for the criticism that interest could wane, Lyons doesn't think fitness video games should be compared with other kinds of exercise in regards to staying power. She suggests looking at what keeps people playing games. Novelty is important. If that's true, it's good there are so many choices.
Lyons sees fitness games as a way to lure kids and adults away from sitting in front of the TV and similar behavior. People have plenty of excuses - she uses the more polite word "barriers" - for not exercising: They don't have time.They have a poor body image and don't want to work out around other, fitter people at the gym. Or, most simply, they don't know how.
A fitness game could be the answer to all of those. And as more video-game developers roll out exercise-theme games,customers will have a range of options.
"Far more big players are jumping into the fray," says Adam Sessler, host of X-Play, a cable TV show about video games.
Although some games are simply Wii Fit knockoffs, others are raising to a new level aerobic conditioning, strength training and stretching regimens that are actually fun.
Released in May, EA Sports Active sought to distance itself from Wii Fit by promising a more high-impact, Westernstyle workout. Another new release, Gold's Gym Cardio Workout, promotes itself by saying it "offers a more intense cardio workout than most Wii Fitness games."
Not to be outdone, Nintendo announced plans at the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in July for a sensor that would track a player's pulse, to be used with the more strenuous Wii Fit sequel, Wii Fit Plus.
ActiveStyle, Pages 28 on 08/24/2009