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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?"
I think it would be good to have more unbiased reviews. But I only think they did this because the wii fit is touching on the arena of exercise equipment.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
I used one to come back from physical therapy after a fighting injury (i do mixed martial arts).
It is a HELL of a workout of your leg muscles, and VERY effective. The workout I get fromt hat is comprable to doing wall sits which are a staple of my boxing class every night.... and your quads get a tremendous burn.
Unless the wii balancing board is somehow deficient, you'd sure as hell get a nice workout.
after i went through therapy with a balancing board, i bought one for home traning the next month.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Why do you feel the need to mention it, out of curiosity?
Wii Fit is a completely reasonable "workout" of balance and flexibility, and even for very moderate workouts for people who are otherwise sedentary (and there are a lot of those people, though they're probably sitting at their computer writing about how Wii Fit isn't a real workout because they see everything as a binary full-on-workout, or nothing).
Steps and other basic activities aren't going to replace the gym for someone who is actually into fitness, but it's better than nothing for people who have limited activity.
And one of the best elements of the Wii is the simplest element of all -- weigh-ins with time plotted tracking. It's simplistic, relying upon the lame BMI scale, not taking into account muscularity and other variables, however again for a normal everyday person seeing an accurate graph of their weight when they occasionally weigh into their Wii can be a very powerful input.
Analogies are like a dog with a tail growing out of its nose. Kind of like the planet Mars with annuity insurance.
Nintendo's whole angle with the Wii has been whole-body gameplay that is their "gimmick" instead of the traditional thumbs only. This is an obvious continuation of that. Like Wii Sports, the included game (Wii Fit) isn't the most incredible demonstration of the board, but it gets the units out there.
There are over a dozen balance-board-using games in development, and of course it launched with Wii Ski. It's another input controller (one with amazing potential...and it's bluetooth, and could be used with a compatible PC bluetooth stack), and Wii Fit is one use of it. I certainly don't think very many people are going to stick with their Wii Fit regiment
Since your post makes it painfully obvious that you haven't used Wii Fit at all, I'll post about my actual experience, and then people can comment.
After 30 minutes of actual activity on Wii Fit, I am sore. I am also pretty fat (32.xx BMI, and I'm not an athlete, so that's pretty accurate). The game charts your progress (based on BMI, and as a relative percentage) every day, which is quite useful.
The game places an emphasis (peculiar, at first, I have to admit) on balance. This is for a few reasons. The Balance Board is the game's only input, but it can tell where your center of balance is (and what your weight is) very well. The game doesn't come with any weights for additional resistance, so any resistance your muscles would work against is directly related to your body position.
Finally, the emphasis on balance seems to be firmly rooted in eastern culture. I mean, I can't really think of why it's so important to have *exactly* 50.0% of my weight on my left foot, and 50.0% of my weight on my right foot, and right now, that goal seems impossible.
Where the game succeeds best is, as is noted in the CR review, is in the balance games. Some people can exercise without the additional benefit of visual stimulation -- they enjoy varying degrees of pain or short-term uncomfortability for the hope of long-term progress. I am not one of them. So this is a big boon to me. And these exercises are not of the Wii Sports variety, either; whereas that game would just give you tennis elbow, in Wii Fit you're fighting yourself while trying to head soccer balls or being the human Super Monkey Ball. (Fighting yourself. How very eastern.)
Most importantly, the game makes sense to anyone who hasn't touched a controller. It's straightforward in the way Nintendo has made all of their games in the Wii generation, so that everyone can use it. This alone will be why Wii Fit should outsell Gran Turismo by at least a factor of 2-3 : 1.
I don't exercise nearly as often as I should. I also don't think this game will be the start of a sweeping change in our culture (where everyone walks swinging their arms as much as possible to improve their posture). But it's a big step forward in getting the interactive part of exercise to the home, without having to resort to video tapes or DVDs (no feedback in terms of balance), Bally's (image conscious?) or personal trainers (far more expensive than $90).
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility