For years, gaming has always been compared to watching TV in terms of what your body is doing while doing both. People relied on their mind and hands, giving them a good mental workout…and finger cramps, with occasional bruised thumbs. This is all starting to change, especially now with every major platform making the move to…well…make the GAMER move.
It all started with the arcade games that would make the gamer have to dance their ass tushie off to earn their points. As time progressed and dancing impaired people protested…eyes began to turn to the Eye Toy. This device was the first of the “let’s make you move during the game” inventions. With not enough games to convert the skeptical, the Playstation Eye Toy ultimately died. While the Eye Toy didn’t revolutionize the world like the iphone, it definitely made other gaming system creators work harder to make their product better and debut earlier to compete. Thus, the Nintendo Wii was introduced. We all remember the horror stories of the crazy lines to get the rare system. Despite the epic fails that ensued concerning people who would destroy their TV’s and other parts of their house by letting their wiimote slip, people continued to use this sytem as not only a gaming device, but also a workout routine.
With more advanced cameras being able to be mass produced, devices such as the Kinect from Microsoft can make way and introduce gaming without the need of “Wiimotes” or controllers such as the Playstation Move. It is becoming more and more apparent that the big 3 (Microsoft, Playstation, and Nintendo) are making big strides to not only immerse the gamer into a virtual world, but also to improve the health of gamers so that they can continue playing these games for a long, long time.
