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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?"
Obviously a 1-15 person gamut. Anything else would require more gamut-runners.
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
When was the last time you saw 15 people testing a game to write a review, rather than just one?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
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
For $200, I'll provide you with a map so you too can find your way "outside" and view it in all its glory.
t
I have had the opportunity to play with the Wii Fit for a few days now. I like it. The style is very much like Brain Age and other training games on the Nintendo platforms. Some of the Aerobics and Balance games are fun to play with other people. It isn't setup to be competitive, but if you rotate profiles it works fine. Unfortunately many of the games don't have enormous amounts of replay-ability. It isn't long before you master each one and need to move up in difficulty. After you've perfected each one they are kind of repetitive and it doesn't take many days to get very good. As for the workout aspect, some of the exercises can get you to break a sweat, but most of them won't. The running in place exercises definitely can if you really put yourself into it. Rhythm boxing is also pretty good. I didn't do much of the yoga and strength training exercises, but it looks like they would be effective if you actually followed along with them.
The use of BMI without any warnings about the flaws of BMI is a little disappointing, but generally it is accurate enough for average people. Still, it is good to be aware of what BMI is, and they don't do anything to help you understand that.
Overall, I like it. I'd give it a 7 out of 10. You can really use it to work on your fitness. It probably won't guide you to being a top tier athlete, but just to stay in a reasonable shape I have little doubt it could work. Like most things at first it will be great, and then you will likely grow tired of it. You have to keep using it to get results, and there is no magic there. Like anything else you only get out of it what you put in. It nicely tracks your weight and BMI over time and provides graphs so you can see your progress over time. At first the games are lots of fun, but after the novelty has worn off (like with Wii Sports) the fitness stuff will remain for those willing to take it seriously.
I'm looking forward to future games using the Wii balance board. There is a lot of potential there for some incredible gameplay.
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.
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.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb