Five Wrongs of Exergaming

Exergaming is the 2010 Fitness Trend News!

Exergaming has been in the spotlight a lot in the last four or five days and it's not surprising. Make fitness accessible to all, make it fun and put that idea in front of people at a time New Year's Resolutions, exercise and diet are foremost in the mind - it's a winner. Mainstream media though has a few misconceptions of exergaming. Time to right the wrongs.

1. Exergaming isn't good exercise - We, in the exergaming industry, tend to see this from a lot of mainstream media outlets. There's really no excuse for this "con" as many exergames are based on full body movements or genuine fitness machines.
2. Exergaming is just a craze - This common statement does make me smile, exergaming may be news to the unwitting reporter, but it's been around in one form or another for 25 years, with the last five years being the most exciting. There's many more years left for the premier fitness option.
3. Exergaming won't get you fit - This is a concerning statement that you often read from unresearched articles of the big news outlets. What they are looking at here are a few studies that show one single exergame failing, it's not the majority experience, but I guess it makes news.
4. Exergaming is just for Seniors - Again and again we see stories of exergaming helping seniors with unstrenuous movements. Isn't this great? Don't forget that there's exergames out there that really kick out the numbers in calories, up to 650 calories an hour!
5. Exergaming means Wii - The worst misconception, and the company that's responsible for all of the above shortcomings, and branding exergaming with the failings. If authors want to write about Wii and point out how it fails, call it Wii - if you want to write about exergaming, look a little deeper and you'll find answers to all the concerns in other products.

For a balanced view of exergaming take a look at The Exergame Network, a non-profit, non-affiliated collective of exergaming industry experts, industry captains, researchers and today's students forming the next generation of educators. Join this network and get answer to your questions on LinkedIn.

With my own experience with Gamercize I can personally dispel the misconceptions with genuine exercise from real fitness machines, genuine sustainability from the latest and future game releases , genuine enjoyment from ability to play any game and appeal to all ages from the support of all consoles and all genres of video game.

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