EA has announced EA Sports Active as their first entry in the growing “fitness training” Wii genre. An EA Wii Fitness Balance Board game was rumored earlier in the year, so looks like EA has made good on that.
Aimed primarily at the female market, EA Sports Active will differentiate itself from other fitness training Wii games already on the market by focusing on Western-style fitness instead of Eastern style such as Yoga as in games like Wii Fit. It will include over 20 different sports (including tennis, boxing and running) as well as additional fitness tools that include a calorie counter, a “virtual personal trainer”, a 30-day weight loss program and customizable workouts.
EA Sport Active will not require the Wii Balance Board (but will support it) so gamers without one can play entirely by using just a Wii Remote and Nunchuck, although the game also includes a few unique gimmicks, such as a rubber strap that allows you to strap the controllers to your body for certain exercises like running. It will even include a rubber resistance band for strength training as well as a nutrition book.
EA Sport Active will be available in March of 2009 exclusively for the Wii at a price point of $60 dollars.
EA Sports’ Peter Moore also revealed a lot more details on EA Sports Active in an interview with GameSpot:
GS: OK. So we’ll continue with that. But, first off, in terms of the peripheral, when I saw it, it was basically a little neoprene strap. I ride my bike to work every day and have something similar for my iPod, so I looked at it and said, “That’s it?”
PM: Well, all that does on your bike is it just holds your iPod in place. We’ve spent a lot of time working with Nintendo on making sure it’s snug, that it doesn’t move, that it’s not inadvertently hitting buttons on either the Nunchuk or the Wii Remote. Either of them can go into the pouch, so getting the pouch shaped right was crucial. So was getting the sizing right, as it will come with two strap sizes in the box, one large and one small.
The real secret is getting the remote snugly attached to the body through these straps. Then, obviously, the software recognizes what you’re doing, and that’s reflected on your character on the screen. It knows if you’re going too deep in a squat or not going deep enough, and it knows if you’re pounding away when you’re running on the spot trying to catch up with two people on the track ahead of you. So that’s a lot of the tuning we’re doing here in getting this thing right.
GS: So, are you going to have any endorsements from celebrity trainers like Jillian Michaels?
PM: Bob Greene, who is Oprah’s trainer, is endorsing the game and is helping us build the game out. He obviously will be a big link to that consumer, which is important to us, and we can talk about that in a moment. Then there’ll be regular iterations of software updates that might be sports specific, or it might be body part specific, like your lower body, your upper body. Then we’re also working with licensees to have a line of peripherals that would enhance the workout experience in front of the television. It’s a pretty expansive product line–just not a singular piece of software–that will be constantly refreshed and added to as the years go on.
GS: Now you just said “product line”…
PM: Yes, think of EA Sports Active as a pretty comprehensive product line. It’s not just software but peripherals as well. Down the road, there will be more of a total workout [title]. But you can imagine there’s an abs version down the road. There’s a soccer version down the road. So, EA Sports Soccer, EA Sports Abs.
GS: And apparently you can just randomize the exercises?
PM: You can do like a shuffle, but I think what most people will do is what I’ve started to do, is you can build custom exercise playlists. Imagine a playlist in music for workouts. Rather than just have an album, you build a bunch of songs that fit what you’re doing. I do it when I’m running. I’ll get something to get me going, and then there’ll be some thrash metal in the middle, and then I’ll probably come down to a bit of Coldplay on the way out.
I like to build the music for whatever mood I’m in for at the particular time, and we can do the same thing with EA Sports Active. I’ve already found myself building some of my favorite exercises. In there we’ve got cardio boxing. We’ve got cardio dance. We’ve got softball. We’ve got tennis. So, you can customize what you want to do or what exercises you think you need to do more of, as well as things like squats and lunges and running on the spot and all the other stuff.
So, there’s a very strong customization level. There’s a 30-day custom workout that we’ll build for you, and we think the elements of personalization and customization are very important as well here, allowing you to do whatever you want to do. But at the same time, we’ll give you a lot of recommendations, what we think is good for you.
Sounds pretty interesting to me, at least it sounds like they are taking it very seriously and coming up with some unique ways to further the “genre”. I really like the idea of having different music to listen to as well, as that is a big aspect of working out if you ask me.
And in case you were wondering what the other fitness games already available on the Wii are, they include: Wii Fit from Nintendo, Active Life: Outdoor Challenge from Namco and Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2009 from Majesco.