The Gym Arcade

theodp writes "Cross Halo with an exercise bike, and you get Expresso Fitness' S3, which lets you blow away dragons by squeezing handlebar-mounted triggers as you pedal hard through the Chinese countryside. Portfolio notes that a new generation of Wii-like workouts is hitting gyms and homes, with companies like GameRunner incorporating treadmills into First Person Shooters and Kickstart offering mini steppers and cycles for popular game systems."

Comments

Cue the "where are MY games" whining

[philspear]

The crowd that has labeled themselves the "hardcore" gamers is going to be upset about this. Innovation in games and getting new people interested in gaming drives the improvement of games directly and indirectly, both because as the market gets bigger, people start taking games more seriously and putting more effort into them and directly because more money from wider releases means more development money for future projects. There are people upset gaming moved out of 16 bit, people who still think final fantasy sold out when they made the leap to the 3rd dimension. Not sure why they don't realize there are still games being made for them, there are just additional games now. I guess they'd prefer to have all games released explicitly for them even if it meant they never got any better.

Just a few observations. "Casual" gamer interest is improving games, not degrading them.

Re:Cue the "where are MY games" whining

[blahplusplus]

"The crowd that has labeled themselves the "hardcore" gamers is going to be upset about this."

Cue "hardcore are the sux" troll. No one is going to be upset about this, the hardcore is not "upset" about gaming becoming more mainstream. In fact MANY hardcore gamers are behind the push of "exer-gaming", many hardcore gamers have had the thought about combining gaming with their exercise. I know because I used to do it, it's the whole reason many of us got a DS or gameboy advance - you can sit on a exercise bike and game while keeping your mind from going insane from boredom. I also used to take my gameboy advance and played classics like Final fantasy 2 and FF tactics while I walked. This is NOT new to the hardcore let me assure you, if anything the hardcore are the ones leading the pack. Many of us have had similar thoughts of combining racing/gaming with exercising, other gamers who wanted to develop such things knew the time wasn't ready for it in terms of 1) Cost and 2) Market readyness to be profitable. Now that gaming is much more mainstream, we're really seeing the fulfillment of a lot of ideas the hardcore have had ALL along.

This false idea that the hardcore are all anti-casual gamer is a bunch of bullshit pedalled by internet trolls.

Re:lmao

[owlnation]

I hope these fail, because this only makes the art of "fun exercise" less social.

Nonsense. This is a great step forward. There's plenty of people who like to exercise socially, and need that. There probably a much larger number who are overweight and embarrassed to do so. This starts them on the path to fitness, where they then may have the confidence to try social exercise.

Plus, while most games cater for the teenage male market successfully, the Wii started including a much larger audience of new gamers. This is a logical next step. There are many of us out there who would like to be gamers, but really don't want to shoot things, nor play driving games. Historically we have been excluded from most games (or have not been marketed to, if other games exist that we might find interesting). This kind of game is interesting. We need more lateral thought in gaming to include a much larger number of people.

selfish much?

[Layth]

some of us have a desire to leave the world in better condition than we found it.

This involves life outside of simulation, even if games are a great escape in moderation.