There was a lot of buzz on the floor of E3 this year after Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, and rightly so. The potential to have a game system that can track your movements so precisely that it can actually recognize who you are when you walk into the room is pretty amazing (and, admittedly, pretty creepy at the same time). While attaching a camera to a console to use in a video game is nothing new, the level of interactivity that Project Natal is promising is going to be a huge leap forward if it ever actually makes it out of development. Needless to say, this kind of tool could totally revolutionize the fitness gaming industry.
Ubisoft, however, isn’t waiting around for Microsoft to finish development of Project Natal. This Christmas they are bringing the hands-free fitness gaming concept to the Nintendo Wii.
Your Shape is a new exergame that will be released this Fall just in time for the Holiday season. It comes bundled with a video camera that will evaluate your body composition and track your movements while you are exercising in order to provide you with a fully interactive workout session. Instead of estimating whether or not you are doing your exercises properly based on the distribution of weight on the Wii Balance Board or the position of the Wii Nunchuck and remote, Your Shape will actually watch you exercise and evaluate you accordingly. You’ll even see yourself working out on the screen next to the guide (which, in some cases, may actually be more demoralizing than helpful. I wonder if you can turn that feature off?).
As far as the actual exercises and workouts Your Shape doesn’t seem to be offering anything that we haven’t seen before. You’ll be able to choose your workout length and daily focus, as well as track your progress and occasionally test your fitness level. The Your Shape workouts include Yoga, cardiovascular, strength training, flexibility, and weight loss routines. In fact, the exercise portion of the game sounds amazingly similar to games like Yourself! Fitness and My Fitness Coach (the port of Yourself! Fitness to the Nintendo Wii), but that isn’t much of a surprise when you consider the fact that Ubisoft is the company that purchased the rights to Yourself! Fitness and ported it to the Wii in the first place. Your Shape would appear to be spiritual successor to Yourself! Fitness that many of us have been wanting for a long time now.
Your Shape is available for pre-order now and is slated for release on November 24th, 2009. To learn more visit the official Your Shape web site.
Hmm I’d be interested in testing its “body composition” accuracy (since I know my numbers and track them), I would be concerned that it might only be calculated by body circumference measurements which seem to be mainly accurate/effective for extremely overweight or obese folks.
That being said, the basic idea of matching the forms demonstrated on the screen is pretty compelling. I find that many times people have problems with regular exercise videos because it is hard to translate what someone on the screen (with a completely different body type usually) to their own movements. People who are very kinesthetically aware can usually get past this, but even then, it is tricky. I’ll keep my eye on this one – its a neat concept.