NHS praises Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus
By Nicole Kobie in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
The era of video games being seen as something you do alone in your parent’s basement, bum on the couch surrounded by junk food, could soon be over, as the NHS has praised Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus for health reasons.
A Department for Health spokesman told the Telegraph the government was not endorsing video games themselves, but liked the jumping around bits featured in the new version of Wii Fit.
“Active video games, where kids need to jump up and down or dance about as part of the game, are a great way to get kids moving,” he told the newspaper.
Nintendo and the DoH have linked up as part of the Change4Life, which has seen the health body previously partner with Pepsi and Cadbury, so take that as you will. Nintendo will kick in some cash to promote the obesity-fighting campaign, and get to use the logo on the game.
The game comes out this week for £19.99, and includes new features such as tailoring exercises to fight flab in specific areas, as well as new games.
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Comment by - October 27, 2009 on 5:22 am
I would also welcome the decision by the Department of Health to endorse Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus and raising the profile of active gaming, but I would only do that had that decision actually been made. It has not.
Gamercize is a Change4Life partner and I can tell you no such endorsements are on offer under that campaign and the government has no accreditation scheme for commercial products (which is a major omission in my opinion).
I’ll reserve my welcoming praise until the government actually does endorse active gaming products. I am sure this is on the cards, but I suspect it will be not for a single product or service but for an implementation of a genre. Such is the way these things work.
In the meantime it would be very forward looking of the ELSPA to lobby the government towards an active gaming accreditation scheme so the consumer and health professional alike can make informed decisioned about quality, energy expenditure and sustainability of active gaming products.
Comment by sceptic - October 27, 2009 on 9:44 am
When it comes to encouraging sedentary behaviour, why are computer games singled out? It is almost taboo to point out that reading a book is a sedentary activity and yet kids are constantly badgered to do more of that. I suspect the motivation to criticise games in this way does not originate in worries about sedentary behaviour, but rather from a prejudice that computer games are somehow “bad”. From that premise critics fling anything they can thing of, no matter how tenuous, specious or inconsistent. The debate around these issues is muddled and disingenuous.
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