"Canadian Students Test Nintendo Wii Workout"

"Canadian Students Test Nintendo Wii workout: Canadian students have given each other a Wii workout to see if the top-selling video game console can get couch potatoes to work up a sweat"
By Reuters
Published: January 23,2008
http://www.news.com/Canadian-students-test-Nintendo-Wii-workout/2100-1043_3-6227307.html?tag=cd.hed

The latest video game craze is Nintendo's Wii. The system provides an interactive, almost virtual experience of its games. For example, in order to bowl in WiiSports, the player actually has to mimic the motions that one would perform in an actual bowling ally. A device that attaches to the television screen senses the players movement of the Wii Remote which dictates the player's on-screen Mii. (A Mii is a personalized character on the game system).

In this news article, a Wii player, Justin White, who is also a fourth-year kinesiology student, while playing the Wii boxing game, he "'noticed how exerting it was.'" As a result, he convinced his colleagues to help him perform an experiment to discover if playing Wii could qualify as a cardiovascular workout. They "tested the impact of playing the Wii boxing game for thirty minutes against a thirty-minute walk in a local park and an equal amount of time doing a 'boxercise' video." For each activity, the participants' heart-rates were monitored for comparison.

The results were surprising: playing Wii does not qualify as a cardiovascular workout. The reporter quotes White saying, "If they're looking for cardiovascular fitness, I'd advise them to do something else because it's really not intense enough." Although the participants who played Wii boxing did not experience as much as exertion as those doing the "boxercise" video, they did experience more than those who were walking in the park.

Whatever the level of exertion, at least it is some. I own a Wii, and frequently find myself out of breath or with an elevated heart-rate after playing long sessions with friends. Although this activity may not be considered a cardiovascular workout, it is definately better than sitting on the couch sans movement at all.

The article also revealed that later this year, Nintendo intends to release "Wii Fit, an exercise game that allows the user to perform a variety of exercises" and even tracks their body-mass index. In Japan, Wii Fit has already sold over one million copies and I expect that it will be just as popular in the US -- I can't wait to purchase it myself.