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

As most of you have probably heard by now, Sony recently announced the PlayStation 4, to be released this holiday season. It’s already available for pre-order at Amazon and other stores.

Here are the impressive specs:

• AMD 8-Core x86-64 Jaguar CPU
• AMD Radeon 1.84 Teraflop GPU
• 8GB GDDR5 Memory
• 500GB Built-in Hard Drive
• Blu-Ray / DVD Drive
• Super-Speed USB 3.0
• Wi-Fi
• Ethernet
• Bluetooth 2.1
• HDMI, Analog AV Out, or Digital Optical Output

The good news for PlayStation Fitness fans is that your current Playstation Move controllers will continue to be supported. As for the PlayStation Eye, they’re designing a new one with much higher resolution than the old one, meaning that your motions will be much more precise, recognize depth of space precisely, and detect sound and face recognition. In other words, they’ll be trying to out-Kinect the Kinect.

The bad news is that it doesn’t sound like there are a whole lot of developers lining up to develop motion control games for the Ps4. The one I’ve heard for sure so far is (as you might have guessed) Just Dance 5 (named Just Dance 2013) for the Ps4. Still, with the improvements they’re making to the Playstation Eye, I’d be shocked (and disappointed) if developers didn’t find new and amazing things to do with the improved resolution.

But bottom line, we probably won’t see a whole lot of active gaming titles for the PS4. That said, hopefully some publishers will invest some time into building one. I still contend that the technology is there to create amazingly accurate virtual reality (games like Sports Champions and The Fight: Light Out were good examples of where games should have evolved to), but sadly, very few companies have the vision nor the talent to build these experiences right.

By most accounts, Microsoft will be positioning the Xbox One as both an entertainment center and a gaming console, while Sony will be going full steam ahead in building a gaming system that appeals most to hard-core gamers. So after years of these two companies duking it out for supremacy, it’ll be interesting to see which one is making the better strategic decision.

Microsoft has already made a few boneheaded decisions that are drawing ire among the gaming community. Its worst offense: essentially trying to end the sales of used games. Sony, for its part, declared that you’ll still be free to share and resell games however you like.

Time will tell which console to get, but at $400 for the PS3 and $500 for the Xbox One, not even mentioning the cost of games, it’s going to be a hefty investment.  If I had to make a prediction, it’s that you’ll see the same patterns for both systems you saw with the Wii U: early sellouts due to large amounts of sales to early-adopter fanatics and hoarders hoping to make money, followed by a period where all the manufacturers have to cut their projections.

As I mentioned in my review of MiCoach, one thing they don’t mention very prominently on the game packaging or in online advertisements is that the game does require some extra equipment that doesn’t come bundled with it. You can still use the game without this equipment, but you’ll have to skip lots of exercises that use the equipment. You’ll know whether you have to use the additional equipment in any given exercises by looking at the icons next to each exercise. Also, your on-screen instructor will show you exactly how to use the equipment, either verbally or clearly in the demonstration of the exercise.

In order to have a full experience, you’ll need to invest into buying some additional equipment. I’ve put some of my suggestions below.

• Towel – Any old hand towel should do here. In some games you’ll fold the towel and use it as a pad to make exercises more comfortable.
• Bench – This is another piece of “equipment” mentioned. You’ll need this from time to time to rest a hand or foot on it for support. You should be okay with a folding chair or a kitchen chair here, just keep it handy near your workout area.
• Stability Balls – The manual suggests you use an “Adidas Core Stability Gym Ball”, but as luck would have it that’s not available in the United States. You should be okay getting any brand of Exercise Balls. I just decided to go by the highest Amazon ratings and go for the one with the highest ratings, the Body Sport Exercise Ball. The Isokinetics Balance Ball Chairis a pricer option but also one I considered, as that could also double for your “bench”. To choose the right exercise ball for your height, use this as a guide:
  • 34-inch (85 cm): For users 6′ 7″ in height and taller
  • 30-inch (75 cm): For users between 6′ 2″ and 6′ 6″
  • 26-inch (65 cm): For users between 5′ 8″ and 6′ 1″
  • 22-inch (55 cm): For users between 5′ 1″ and 5′ 7″
  • 18-inch (45 cm): For users between 4′ 6″ and 5′ 0″
• Dumbbells – Dumbbells are used in some exercises to introduce resistance and help with strength and muscle conditioning. Again, brands of dumbbells will work, but I like these Valeo Hand Weights because of their rating and the ease of holding them with the PS3 Move controller. The game will advise you on what weight to get, so I’d suggest playing it a couple times without the weight to get a sense of what the exercise entails. One bit of advice–don’t go too high too fast in your weight selection. Even the lightest handweights get very, very heavy as you get longer into a workout.

• Heart Rate monitors - The game integrates with heart rate monitors. Obviously, the one Adidas wants you to buy is the Adidas MiCoach Pacer Bundle Heart Rate Monitor. But I like the fact that they didn’t make it so that you had to use their own proprietary heart rate monitor (like EA Sports did), but will support any third party heart rate monitor or USB dongle that supports the ANT+ standard. Here’s a list of some at Amazon that range in price from $30 to $300. When you have this equipment set up, your heartrate will be displayed on screen throughout your workout.

At first, I wasn’t happy that I had to buy all this extra equipment to use this game. Then again, I figured these are all pieces of equipment you should have anyway in your home gym or when doing your workouts on and off the PS3. Plus, I’d rather choose my own equipment than have a flimsy resistance band or non-standard heart rate monitor like EA Sports did. Bottom line is, MiCoach is not just another game–it’s a system that will require a bit of an investment to get the full value out of. Shop around and try to find the highest quality, lowest price equipment to use.

UPDATE: we’re a week from launch and the Web sites of both GameStop and Best Buy still reports that MiCoach is not available for pre-order and in-store pickup. But happily I walked into my local GameStop and they let me pre-order it. I’ll be trying it out and will provide my review here as soon as I can

After what seems like a drought that’s lasted forever, we have a bunch of new PS3 fitness games coming down the pike.

The most imminent is Adidas MiCoach which at long last is being released on July 24. It’s available for preorder at Amazon for $49.99 or for $10 less at GameStop. Oddly there doesn’t seem to be an in-store pickup option for the PS3 version at GameStop…I emailed them to ask why and they first responded with a form response that had nothing to do with my questio. when I replied to that a person responded and said, “yes, micoach for ps3 is available for pre-order.” which of course didn’t answer my question. I’ll keep trying. :p

One of the burning questions I had about MiCoach was whether there’ll be any interaction with existing MiCoach peripherals. Simon Drabble was kind enough to respond on Twitter saying yes, the heart rate monitor will be able to be used in the same by plugging the USB MiCoach Connect to the PS3. He added that all game data will be able to be accessed online at MiCoach’s site so that any workouts done at home on the PS3 will be integrated with workout data done outside the home. In other words, MiCosere seems to be offering many of the features that EA offered and abandoned in Sports Active.

The recent E3 conference brought showed some exciting news for the other platforms with Nike collaborating with Microsoft and Nintendo planning a new version of Wii Fit that includes a pedometer. While it seems at first blush that PS3 owners may be getting the short end of the stick, bottom line is, if 505 Games and Adidas do a good job with MiCoach, chances are they’ll be more successful on the PS3 than on other platforms, being the only (fitness) game in town, which hopefully means there’s a good chance they may take over the helm of the best PS3 fitness game. Time will tell, of course.

The only other potential fitness game I saw come out of E3 for this fall was Sports Champions 2. Seems that they’ve added a lot of sports from the original Wii Sports, including tennis, boxing, golf, and bowling, sports which actually make a lot more sense on the PS3 than on the Kinect because of the importance of precision (Kinect bowling and tennis, for example, can easily be played by monkeys).

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’.

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!

One of the game I was most looking forward to was Adidas MiCoach for the PS3. The release date was supposed to have been March 12, 2012. Then it was pushed back to March 31, 2012 on some site. And now, we get official word that the title has been cancelled.

The announcement came during THQ’s quarterly analyst call today. THQ announced it would focus once again on “hardcore gamers” versus casual gamers, likely a reaction to their disastrous marketing of their uDraw tablets, resulting in $33 million in losses. In only a few weeks, their stock price plummeted from around $1.75 to around $0.50 today.

It’s definitely a shame. The title was announced with a lot of fanfare, including celebrity endorsements from folks like Dwight Howard. It was exciting to hear that the Adidas MiCoach system would be integrated.

Hopefully another developer will pick up the slack (we’re talking to you, EA–are you working on EA Sports 3??) I think the market is still ripe for people who want to get a *real* exercise game that is both fun and provides great fitness.

Back in August we shared that Move Fitness from Sony was coming. And sure enough, it arrived in the UK just before Christmas on November 25, 2011.

Strangely, though, the US version still is “TBA” according to Sony’s official sources, and isn’t even showing up for pre-order on Amazon. One wonders whether the marketing folks at Sony are holding off until THQ does what will sure to be a massive PR campaign for MiCoach in the Spring which should increase awareness for PS3 Fitness in general.

Surfing around UK message boards, I’m finding that the UK version received tepid responses from critics. The consensus seems to be that while motion controls are excellent (not surprisingly), the routines themselves are repetitive and uninspired. Worst of all, they’re reporting that the game is simply not entertaining, a surprising assertion given that it’s developed by the same folks who developed The Fight: Lights Out.

However, in what I see as a trend for fitness games, user reviews seem to be giving it much higher reviews. This is where the perspective of a magazine reviewer playing the game for five minutes will differ from someone who’s committed to doing an exercise regimen and is looking for any tool available to spice up her or his routine.

Hopefully the delay in getting it to the US will be used to fine-tune it based on reviews in the UK. In the meantime, if you’re really looking forward to this game and can’t wait, you can buy the UK version of Move Fitness on eBay. As with all PS3 games, the UK version will play on US Playstations, but of course things like narration, spelling, and units of measurement will be British. Not a bad thing if you’re looking for a sophisticated workout

One thing I’m very excited about is the release of the new Playstation 3D Display. So excited, in fact, that I’ve started a new blog called 3DPlaystation.Net.

I won’t be updating it as often nor as fastidiously as PS3Fitness.Com, but I figured it was a good place to share my thoughts on the new 3D hardware with those of you who might be interested. Feel free to swing by and share your comments.

I did get a chance to play Medieval Moves: Deadmun’s Quest and the demo for Happy Feet 2 in 3D, and I have to say that it is a phenomenal experience. If you’re planning to install a PS3 for fitness in your workout room/den, that monitor is just about the perfect size for it.

Okay, enough 3D talk…back to the fitness games

While this isn’t directly related to fitness on the PS3, something I’m definitely very excited about is the imminent release of the Playstation 3D display.

I admit, since  firmware release 3.30 in March 2010 which brought the ability to play 3D games, and firmware release 3.50 in September 2010 which allowed for playback of 3D Blu-Ray discs, I’ve been seriously contemplating replacing my LCD screen for a new 3D one. Problem is, the economy being what it is, I don’t happen to have $2000 lying around. Still, being able to “immerse” yourself in games, particularly Playstation Move games like Medieval Moves, should really enhance game play.

The PlayStation 3D display is finally getting released on November 13, 2011. It’s not $2500 or $2000 or $1500. You can get it for under $500 (okay, four pennies under, but that’s still under). For that price, you’ll get a very high quality 24″ monitor (if that seems small, remember that just 15 years ago a 25″ inch TV in your living room was considered gargantuan) which boasts active 3D (meaning the crispest, cleanest picture you can get), incredible sound, and a pair of 3D glasses.

What’s more, it’ll play 3D Blu-Ray discs right from your PS3 and can be attached to your cable box for watching TV with crisp digital picture and sound. And if you have a home gym, it’s the perfect size for you to use while working out, whether to a PS3 Fitness Game, or just walking on a treadmill watching the latest 3D movie or your favorite TV show.

Rumor has it that sometime in November, Sony will start selling a “3D Starter Kit” which will include two pairs of 3D glasses and the last two Harry Potter movies in 3D.  This is perfect for someone like me who bought the Harry Potter Years 1-6 Blu-rays. Not only will this complete the collection, the last two movies will be in glorious 3D. You might recall that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 was supposed to be in 3D, but was released to the theaters in 2D only because they couldn’t finish the 3D process in time. Well, they did now, so you can be the first to see the last two movies in full 3D.

After a disastrous year which included the PSN security debacle, the Japan earthquake, and other things that sent Sony stock plummeting, I have a good feeling that this is going to start to turn their fortunes around. While most TV manufacturers have assumed people want bigger and bigger TVs and would be willing to spend the money for them, I like Sony’s bet that people will be able to shell out $500 to experience 3D on a smaller screen (which ultimately will be crisper than a huge TV because the pixels are closer together AND you’re sitting closer to it). My guess is that they’re not making a ton of money off of it, but like they did with spending the extra money to provide a Blu-Ray drive inside each Playstation, hopefully their gamble that getting 3D in more people’s hands relatively cheaply now will pay off huge for them in the future.

I’ve ordered one myself and will be documenting the unboxing and my thoughts on it as I try new 3D games and demos and new 3D movies and Blu-rays. We’ll be keeping this site focused on PS3 Fitness, so those thoughts will go onto our sister site about the Playstation 3d Display, 3dplaystation.net.

Well, it took them long enough, but it looks like Sony is officially throwing its hat into the fitness gaming arena with “Move Fitness”. They announced it at the recent GamesCon conference. Here’s the official trailer.

Right now, it looks like the game is going to be largely derivative of previous games available on the Wii. From the video, it looks like everything from using basketball simulations to encourage squat jumps, jumping jacks, sparring, heavy bag punching, and sword fighting will be included (things we’ve seen already in EA Sports Active 2, UFC Fitness Trainer, Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout, Wii Fit, and Wii Sports Resort). It looks like there are a few things that will be original (the exercise with the lady breaking the glass windows looks promising).

While such obviously derivative games are usually not destined to do well, I think Move Fitness will have a few things going for it. First, it’ll use the resources of Sony to ensure that the Move Controller accuracy is spot-on (as much as I enjoy EA Sports Active 2 for the PS3, at the end it feels like a direct port of the Wii version, rather than something that really uses the Move to take it to new heights). For example, using brightly lit “targets” to hit when doing jumping jacks and jump squats looks like a promising way to discourage “cheating” (which is easy to do on both the Wii and Xbox). Second, since the title is by Sony, it’s going to have a very high quality standard to meet.

Anyway, I’ll post more here when the release date is set, and when it’s ready for pre-order.