Fitness game
[14] By June 2009, health games were generating revenues of $2 billion, largely due to Wii Fit's 18.22 million sales at the time.
Smaller trials have yielded mixed results and have shown that the respective traditional methods of exercise are superior to their video game equivalents.
The machine was nearly ready for production with several games (Tumbleweeds and Jungle River Cruise) when Atari declared bankruptcy and the Puffer project was abandoned.
In Japan, Bandai dabbled in this space with the Family Trainer pad, released in 1986 for the Famicom (the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System).
Designed as a training aid and motivational tool, the CompuTrainer system allowed users to interactively ride on their own bicycle through a virtual landscape generated on an NES or Commodore 64 by connecting their bike trainer unit directly to an external port on the game cartridge.
Two trainer units could be connected at a time for 2 players to race virtually on screen while also displaying data such as speed, power, pedaling cadence, heart rate, and distance.
As riders raced virtually, the cartridge sent a signal back to the CompuTrainer unit to dynamically change the bicycle's actual resistance based on what was happening on screen in real time with incline, wind, and drafting.
RacerMate made the CompuTrainer until 2017, where its latest version runs using Microsoft Windows compatible software with extensive graphic and physiological capabilities.
As high-performance game console capabilities improved and prices fell, manufacturers once more started to explore the fitness market.
One reason Ring Fit Adventure (2019) did not have enough supply to meet demand was that China was hit early by the pandemic, leading to manufacturing shortages.
[36] Fitness games also proved to be especially helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they were a great motivator for physical activity, which fought the sedentary lifestyle lockdowns caused.
[37] Physical fitness is known to aid in disease prognosis, as it boosts the immune system, shortened the recovery period from COVID-19, and reduced the negative effects of stress from living in isolation.
[37][38] Overwhelmed medical centers also turned to therapeutic fitness games during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they proved to be more socially distant, required less direct supervision, and used less personal protective equipment.
[44] A 2021 systematic review found that exercise games could reduce BMI, and improve body fat percentage and cardiorespiratory fitness.
[45] A 2020 systematic review found that fitness games can be utilized to augment treatment for a variety of patient populations such as geriatrics, and those with Parkinson's disease, cerebral palsy, and spinal cord injuries.
The review also suggested that fitness games may be more effective at improving dynamic balance control and preventing falls in subacute and chronic stroke patients when compared to current treatment methods.
[48] Another 2018 systematic review of 10 randomised controlled trials of fitness games in overweight children found that they can produce a small reduction in body mass index.
[49] As of 2016, fitness games for those with neurological disabilities had been studied in around 140 small clinical trials in people of all ages, to see if it can help this group get enough physical exercise to maintain their health.
[50] Fitness games have the potential to provide moderate intensity exercises in this population, but the evidence was too weak on long-term follow-up to draw strong conclusions.
[51] In addition, studies investigated if fitness games can lead to improvements in cognitive performance in clinical and non-clinical populations such as those who have ADHD and depression.
Fitness games help lower anxiety levels in various clinical populations such as patients with Parkinson's disease, enrolled in cardiac rehabilitation, with fibromyalgia, and with systemic lupus erythematosus by introducing more permanent positive physiological changes than methods that do not involve exercise do.
A stroke patient with compromised balance, for example, could practice crossing the street in a simulated environment, something that would be risky and unsafe in real time.
A specifically designed exercise game Kinect, superimposes animated objects to be punched, kicked, or otherwise interacted with over a video image of the user.
The Wii and PlayStation 3 both incorporate motion sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes into the hand-held controllers that are used to direct behaviors within the game.
Research projects such as exertion interfaces[57] that investigate the design aspects of these games[58] explore how the technological augmentation that comes with the digital gameplay component can be nurtured for additional benefits, such as utilizing the social power of exercising together even though players are connected only over a network[59] or scaling the number of players,[60] enabling novel exercise experiences not available without the technological augmentation.
