Consumer Reports Gets Its Game On

Itninja writes "A few days ago Consumer Reports posted their first report on a specific video game: Wii Fit. From the article: 'Our testers ranged in age from 24 to 69 and included 10 women and five men. Users ran the gamut from regular exercisers to mostly sedentary folks.' Will this be a harbinger of things to come? Will CR be reviewing the next installment of Gran Turismo?"

Comments

Re:n = 15

[Kingrames]

When was the last time you saw 15 people testing a game to write a review, rather than just one?

Re:n = 15

[HiVizDiver]

I agree 100% with your sentiment - people need to get their asses off the couch and exercise. However, a gym membership can bring a lot of unwanted baggage. They can be full of inconsiderate dickheads (wipe your sweat off the equipment, jackass), let alone the fact that a lot of people just starting out in a gym probably don't feel comfortable showing off their (lack of) prowess/fitness/ability/whatever to complete strangers. Add to that the often brutal membership requirements of most name-brand gyms, and its pretty off-putting to all but the most hardcore fitness buffs.

So two things come to mind when I think about this situation: a) the Wii might fit a nice gap in at least getting people off the couch and moving around. For some true couch potatoes, this might be enough and sufficient for at least a little while. b) Find a small local gym that isn't full of morons and doesn't charge brutal contract fees. They're all over, they want your business, and you're doing yourself and "the little guy" a favor.

Re:n = 15

[KillerBob]

Most of the people posting on this thread don't seem to have actually played the game.... I actually have it. Bought it on Wednesday of last week, and I've been playing it between 30-45 minutes a day. In the last week, I've also attended 10 hours of classes at Jiu Jitsu, and I biked to work on Friday, at 1h15 each way (about 27km each way). I also went swimming on Saturday, about 2km in lengths.

Not everybody who's buying this game is somebody who's overweight and never gets any exercise. Even those who *are* overweight and never get any exercise... I'd rather they play the games that come with Wii Fit than sitting on their ass playing Halo... the games that come with Wii Fit will actually have them getting up and possibly even working up a sweat. I know that I usually work up a sweat by the time I get to the step aerobics in my routine the sweat's usually streaming off (that's about 25 minutes in).

It's better than nothing. But as with any exercise routine, you'll get out of it what you put into it. If you're serious about losing weight then you'll need more than a video game. It's a good start, but it'll require some serious lifestyle changes for any weight loss to take.

There's a couple of major advantages to Wii Fit over going to the gym. You've touched on them yourself... you don't have to deal with asses at the gym, you don't have to deal with grimy sweaty equipment, you can do it in the privacy of your own home... and the personal trainer is actually pretty good. Well voiced, gives realtime encouragement based on your current position, which is limited by the fact that it can only detect your center of balance and not your actual position, but it is still fairly accurate for most situations.

Finally, I'd like to second the comment that using BMI as a measure of anything is approaching idiotic... It's good to keep track of your weight, and how it changes... and that's actually the idea behind Wii Fit: track your weight on a day to day basis so that you're more conscious of what you put into your mouth. There was an interview available on the Nintendo channel that explained this..... Anyway. BMI itself is a fairly useless measurement, because it doesn't keep track of anomalies. There is somebody at my dojo, for example, who weighs 260lbs. This person is 6' tall, giving him a BMI of over 35. Well into the "obese" category. There's just one thing wrong with this definition: This person wears a 32" waist, and has body fat of 13%. Tracking your BMI over time will give you an indication of how much weight you've lost, but it won't actually give anything approaching an indication of how much you still need to lose. :)