Fitness game

Fitness game, exergame, and gamercise (portmanteaus of "exercise" and "game") are terms used for video games that are also a form of exercise. Fitness games rely on technology that tracks body movement or reaction. The genre has been used to challenge the stereotype of gaming as a sedentary activity, and promoting an active lifestyle. Fitness games are seen as evolving from technology aimed at making exercise more fun. The genre's roots can be found in game peripherals released in the eighties, including the Joyboard, a Atari 2600 peripheral developed by Amiga and released in 1982, the Power Pad (or Family Trainer) a peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), originally released by Bandai in 1986, and the Foot Craz released for the Atari 2600 in 1987, although all three had limited success. Konami's Dance Dance Revolution (1998) was cited as one of the first major fitness games; when it was ported from the arcade to PlayStation, it sold over three million copies. In the 2000s, a number of devices and games have used the exergame style to much success: the EyeToy camera has sold over ten million units, while Nintendo's Wii Fit has sold in excess of 21 million copies. By June 2009, health games were generating revenues of $2 billion, largely due to Wii Fit's 18.22 million sales at the time. The term exergaming entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2007. The genre has been promoted as a way to improve users' health through exercise, but few studies have been undertaken to measure the health benefits. Smaller trials have yielded mixed results and have shown that the respective traditional methods of exercise are superior to their video game equivalents. Design considerations for fitness games include the need to balance the physical effectiveness of the exercise with the attractiveness of the gameplay, with both factors needed to be adapted to the abilities of the player, referred to as 'dual flow' Fitness games contain elements that were developed in the virtual reality community during the 1980s.