Working out with Fitness and Exercise games on the Sony Playstation 3

Well, I’ve been talking about Adidas MiCoach for it seems like an eternity now, but at LONG last the pre-order link is available on Amazon. The pricing will be $49.99 and the original list of athletes that were promised to be part of the game will be there: Kaka, Dwight Howard, Manuel Neuer, Jessica Ennis, Jose Mourinho, Ana Ivanovic, Will Genia and Eric Berry. The athletes aren’t just generic computer animations with their faces painted on–word has it that the athletes actually did the exercises and skills challenges themselves, and it’s their actual performance that’s part of the game.

Early reports of the game had said it’ll come with additional hardware, but since the game is priced at $49.99 I doubt that hardware will be the MiCoach pacer nor even the speed cell. Perhaps there’ll be a heart rate monitor such as the one that came with EA Sports Active. We’ll see about that.

One thing the MiCoach will definitely come with is an already active online community where you can track your progress online and compete in challenges against friends or even strangers. Again, early news reports said that you can earn points that you can exchange for discounts on Adidas products.

In other words, early indications are that this will for all intents and purposes be the next progression forward for EA Sports Active 2 (we all know by now that from all appearance EA Sports has abandoned that product). Time will tell, of course, but I for one plan to be one of the first in line for this.

More information as it comes, as always.

Back in 2010 when I reviewed EA Sports Active 2 for PS3, I loved it. It was a fairly good port of the Wii version which at the time was far and away the best video game workout for any system.

Daskreeh and Alexey both asked a very good question in the comments section of the post. With EA’s recent pulling of online support, is the game still worth having?

I’m a little torn on this one. For one thing, at a street price of Around $155, this is a great price for a game that works (as long as you stick with it, of course). Remember that for the $15, you not only get the game, you get the resistance band and the heart rate monitor. That’s a deal and a half considering that the game originally retailed for close to $100.

On the other hand, EA’s pulling of support for its online community is troublesome. The online features were never earth-shatteringly good (you could view your progress online and participate in group workouts which helped motivate you, but the signup process and the user interface were both very clunky). But what troubles me is that EA Sports had every chance in the world to improve it (unlike the video game, their online features could have been improved continuously) and they never did. I expected them to continue to evolve their online features to last through EA Sports Active 3, 4, and beyond. Instead, the recent actions of EA Sports lead me to believe that it was just a gimmick all along to get us to buy the game and that they never intended to build it into anything more.

The fact that they treat online support of EA Sports Active 2 no differently, say, than online support for outdated versions of their other sports games leads me to conclude that they just don’t understand the fitness gaming community. They treat us like “gamers”, but as anyone who’s sweated out a 9-week routine, that’s not what we are.

Worse, there is not a peep from EA Sports about a sequel like EA Sports Active 3, which makes me wonder if they’re abandoning the fitness gaming genre altogether. Which is a shame, because there is so much more they could have done by doing more “simulation” type games that combined their traditional sports games with Move.

So my recommendation–at the price it’s at now, I’d definitely still recommend it as a game you can play and completely benefit from “offline” — there was never any dependency on the online features to do things like the 9-week workout.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for something that’ll be supported for the future and a company that will continue to grow its online features, I’d suggest holding out for Adidas MiCoach instead. Because Adidas’s cloud-based online features are already established (for people using MiCoach with their PCs, iPhones, etc.), those aren’t going to be abandoned like EA did. Of course, we’ll have to see if the workout routines for MiCoach improve upon EA Sports’.

Back when the Playstation 3D monitor was released, I was a big fan. I drove to my local Gamestop and picked it up. Even though I paid the full retail price $499 I was pretty happy with it. My thought at the time was that Sony was brilliant for introducing 3D at such a “low” price point to try to get us to adopt it just like they got us to adopt BluRay.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem like the 3D Monitor has quite taken off. I’ll chalk it up to the general state of the economy, not to mention some poor decisions by Sony (not including a TV tuner or a remote control with the unit, for example). Don’t get me wrong–I still love my 3D monitor. It serves as a terrific HDMI monitor for my computer, and I love the option of watching 3D Blu-Rays and 3D cable TV, even if it is on a smaller screen.

If you’ve been on the fence about this one, I very strongly recommend you check out a deal that Best Buy has going on now.

Sony Computer Entertainment America PlayStation 3D Display Bundle at Best Buy

For $249.99, this unit is a steal. Let’s do the math. Here’s everything that’s bundled with the unit.

Motorstorm Apocalypse (decent game with street price of about $35)
3D Glasses ($60 retail value)
HDMI Cable (about $10)

So, factoring all these things in you end up getting the monitor for about $155! Especially if you have a home gym or fitness room. While things are a little slow on the PS3 gaming front, expect that to change in the summer when Adidas MiCoach is finally released!

I’ve been a little slow on posting reviews, but I’ll be posting a review of MLB 12: The Show soon, and of course I’ll cover gameplay on the 3D monitor. Stay tuned!

Happily, it looks like Adidas MiCoach is back on track, set to be launched in summer 2012. Those who have been following this game know that it was originally slated to be released earlier this year but it was unceremoniously pulled by its original publisher, THQ. This resulted in lawsuits between Adidas and THQ which happily have been resolved.

It turns out that 505 Games will now be releasing Adidas MiCoach for the Xbox and the PS3. 505 Games has previously published games such as Michael Phelps: Push the Limit and Grease Dance.

Something I learned that I didn’t realize before was that the developer behind this game is none other than Lightning Fish Games (now known as Chromativity) , who was behind other excellent fitness games such as NewU Fitness First Personal Trainer (a great Wii game whose distribution in the US was royally screwed up by Ubisoft) and Get Fit with Mel B (the first decent exercise title for the PS3). So you can be sure to expect a solid title.

Among other things, MiCoach will make use of existing Adidas MiCoach Fitness Technology, currently used by athletes and fitness buffs around the world to track real-time data such as heartrate and exercise time. Furthermore, the game will make use of the Kinect on the Xbox and the Move on the PS3 to run players through over 400 exercises. Actual athletes such as Kaka, Dwight Howard, Manuel Neuer, Jessica Ennis, Jose Mourinho, Ana Ivanovic, Will Genia and Eric Berry will provide “Master classes” for their sport.

I’ve been bullish on this game ever since it was first announced a year ago. Early indications are that it seems poised to pick up where EA Sports Active 2 left off. Of course, much will depend on how interactive and enjoyable the game ends up being. Stay tuned!