3rd March 2015, 9:30 PM
It started a few years ago, when Nintendo made Wii Fit and Brain Age. The results are in, and both of those products have been pretty well panned as "basically useless". Neither one can actually accomplish what they claim. Namely, "brain training" exercises have been shown to increase blood flow, but not actual long term skill. There is no actual "brain age", and it seems that particular doctor responsible for this recent fad might have gone the Dr. Oz route.
Wii Fit isn't much better. The exercises themselves are all well and good, just as any exersise is, but nothing about that scale can figure out exactly what your body mass index is, and the recommendations the game makes are, well, just nothing, really. The whole notion of "balance" being so very key to weight loss (with the claim that "restoring" your balance will make you just so much better) and health is a rather outdated yoga concept at that. In fact, Nintendo's official position on the actual health merits of these is that they are "for entertainment use". This is the sort of thing a company says when they want to legally get away with a claim, but look at the boxes and ads for these things. They're CLEARLY trying to market them as products that work.
Basically, Nintendo's "health products" are snake oil, though harmless snake oil (heck it's not like they're offering an alternative to vaccines). So fine, they've done worse (there was an ESP training game for the Famicom, using those cards from Ghost Busters), but they're back to making games, right? Not so fast, because it seems Nintendo is going all-in on this due to this ONE tiny detail: Wii Fit is the best selling game Nintendo has ever had, and perhaps even the best selling game in the world. Only League of Legends beats it, and that's a game that's FREE (so free it can regularly be found on your local library's computer, in spite of their rules for computer use). Nintendo has announced that their "Lifestyle" line will continue as a MAJOR peg of their whole business strategy moving forward. There's a 3DS Brain Age, a Wii U Fitness game, and "more" to come. No clue what that means, but maybe we can expect some sort of "Mario's Chakra Balancer" or "Kirby's Bodily Humours".
Here's the deal. Nintendo has every opportunity to actually produce a scientifically sound set of health products, ones which keep their claims reasonable. A few slight tweaks and Wii Fit could be a worthwhile exercise game. Heck, all they'd need to do is drop basically any claims about the mystical powers of "good balance" and the faulty measuring of BMS, and it's a perfectly fine guide to decent exercise. (I'll say this though. Nintendo's trainers are a LOT nicer than the incredibly loud and obnoxious XBox fitness trainers. When exactly did we as a nation decide the only people interested in our self improvement are the ones belittling us at every step like friggin' sociopaths?) However, a few things stand in the way. For one, once they ditch the BMS thing and the "balance" nonsense, the only thing that scale does is measure your weight (well that's really the only thing it ever did), and thus there's basically no point to it in terms of the "gameplay". So, that's tossed out, and all that's left is a very albino version of those old fitness VHS tapes your parents eventually threw out. What could replace it? Well, they COULD make a tool that actually feeds back real time data about how you are moving, and one that does it WELL unlike that board. But, and here's the rub, that'd be very expensive to both develop and buy. Heck, just making sure the science is sound means hiring science advisors (which, if Pikmin's anything to go by, is something Nintendo has never once done). Nintendo is known, above all else, for making their products affordable. Heck, it's because of them that we just automatically assume portable games cost less (and everyone else has to play BY that standard). The only other option would be MS's solution, an all-seeing body tracking eye. Not only is that STILL a very expensive little toy compared to a weight scale, but Nintendo isn't ignorant to just how well MS's camera was accepted by their loving fans. They won't be repeating that.
So that leaves us here. I hate to say it, but it looks like everything about Nintendo is pushing it towards selling lovable entertainment, and also products that actively MAKE THE WORLD WORSE. They now have a sustainable branch of their company that James Randi would very likely "challenge" if his foundation still did that, and I am not sure I like that.
Wii Fit isn't much better. The exercises themselves are all well and good, just as any exersise is, but nothing about that scale can figure out exactly what your body mass index is, and the recommendations the game makes are, well, just nothing, really. The whole notion of "balance" being so very key to weight loss (with the claim that "restoring" your balance will make you just so much better) and health is a rather outdated yoga concept at that. In fact, Nintendo's official position on the actual health merits of these is that they are "for entertainment use". This is the sort of thing a company says when they want to legally get away with a claim, but look at the boxes and ads for these things. They're CLEARLY trying to market them as products that work.
Basically, Nintendo's "health products" are snake oil, though harmless snake oil (heck it's not like they're offering an alternative to vaccines). So fine, they've done worse (there was an ESP training game for the Famicom, using those cards from Ghost Busters), but they're back to making games, right? Not so fast, because it seems Nintendo is going all-in on this due to this ONE tiny detail: Wii Fit is the best selling game Nintendo has ever had, and perhaps even the best selling game in the world. Only League of Legends beats it, and that's a game that's FREE (so free it can regularly be found on your local library's computer, in spite of their rules for computer use). Nintendo has announced that their "Lifestyle" line will continue as a MAJOR peg of their whole business strategy moving forward. There's a 3DS Brain Age, a Wii U Fitness game, and "more" to come. No clue what that means, but maybe we can expect some sort of "Mario's Chakra Balancer" or "Kirby's Bodily Humours".
Here's the deal. Nintendo has every opportunity to actually produce a scientifically sound set of health products, ones which keep their claims reasonable. A few slight tweaks and Wii Fit could be a worthwhile exercise game. Heck, all they'd need to do is drop basically any claims about the mystical powers of "good balance" and the faulty measuring of BMS, and it's a perfectly fine guide to decent exercise. (I'll say this though. Nintendo's trainers are a LOT nicer than the incredibly loud and obnoxious XBox fitness trainers. When exactly did we as a nation decide the only people interested in our self improvement are the ones belittling us at every step like friggin' sociopaths?) However, a few things stand in the way. For one, once they ditch the BMS thing and the "balance" nonsense, the only thing that scale does is measure your weight (well that's really the only thing it ever did), and thus there's basically no point to it in terms of the "gameplay". So, that's tossed out, and all that's left is a very albino version of those old fitness VHS tapes your parents eventually threw out. What could replace it? Well, they COULD make a tool that actually feeds back real time data about how you are moving, and one that does it WELL unlike that board. But, and here's the rub, that'd be very expensive to both develop and buy. Heck, just making sure the science is sound means hiring science advisors (which, if Pikmin's anything to go by, is something Nintendo has never once done). Nintendo is known, above all else, for making their products affordable. Heck, it's because of them that we just automatically assume portable games cost less (and everyone else has to play BY that standard). The only other option would be MS's solution, an all-seeing body tracking eye. Not only is that STILL a very expensive little toy compared to a weight scale, but Nintendo isn't ignorant to just how well MS's camera was accepted by their loving fans. They won't be repeating that.
So that leaves us here. I hate to say it, but it looks like everything about Nintendo is pushing it towards selling lovable entertainment, and also products that actively MAKE THE WORLD WORSE. They now have a sustainable branch of their company that James Randi would very likely "challenge" if his foundation still did that, and I am not sure I like that.