Consumer Game Consoles & Exercise-based Videogames
Consumer driven forces for new ways to interact with videogames have lead to the development of video capture and inertial sensing devices for measuring movement of the human body. Devices such as the Nintendo Wii™ (Nintendo of America Inc., WA, USA), Sony Playstation® Move (Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., Tokyo, Japan) and Microsoft Xbox® Kinect™ (Microsoft Corporation, WA, USA) are now at a price point (~US $300) that it is possible to deploy motion capture, virtual- and augmented-reality feedback technologies directly into the homes of older adults for use in training and rehabilitation. Many new videogames are becoming commercially available that require physical movement on the part of the player to successfully engage with the game. The following describes the main consumer videogame console systems and exergames that have been used by health researchers and clinicians.
Nintendo Wii™
This game console, first released for sale in 2006 has been particularly popular as an adjunct to rehabilitation therapy. A recent audit by the National Stroke Foundation of Australia revealed that 61% of metropolitan stroke rehabilitation hospitals in Australia have purchased a Nintendo Wii console. The popularity of the system is largely owing to the new approach to videogame interaction enabled through the Wii Remote™ (or Wiimote; Nintendo of America Inc. WA, USA) and Wii Balance Board™ (WBB; Nintendo of America Inc., WA, USA) peripheral devices. Exergames such as 'Wii Sports™' (Nintendo of America Inc., WA, USA), a collection of five sports simulations, tennis, baseball, ten pin bowling, golf and boxing, requires players to use the Wiimote to mimic actions performed in real life sports, such as swinging a tennis racquet. 'Wii Fit™' (Nintendo of America Inc., WA, USA), another exercise-based game for the Nintendo Wii, makes use of the WBB, which is a platform device capable of measuring a person's weight and their center of pressure (COP). The game contains over 40 activities designed to engage the player in physical exercises that focus on maintaining center of balance. When a player shifts their COP, their onscreen avatar shifts its position on screen accordingly.
Sony Playstation® Eye & Move
The Playstation® Eye, or previously EyeToy (Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., Tokyo, Japan), is a color digital camera that enables players to interact with game environments through image processing-based gesture recognition, unlike the Wii, which uses data streamed wirelessly from inertial sensors in the Wiimote or WBB. The PlayStation Move is an inertial sensor-based controller similar to the Nintendo Wiimote that features an orb at the head that can glow in any of a full range of colors using light-emitting diodes. The colored light serves as an active marker that enables the Eye's camera to track the spatial location of a player's hand movement. The uniform spherical shape and known size of the light also allows the system to simply determine the controller's distance from the PlayStation Eye through the light's image size, thus enabling the controller's position to be tracked in 3D. Games, such as 'Move Fitness' (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, London, UK), 'Zumba® Fitness' (Zumba Fitness LLC, FL USA) and 'Get Fit with Mel B' (Koch Media, Munich Germany), are typical of an increasing number of gym-based exercise and fitness videogames that make use of the motion capture capabilities of videogame systems such as the Playstation Move.
Prior to the introduction of the Eye and Move, a popular exergame adapted for use on the Playstation involved the use of a dance mat peripheral device. Dance Dance Revolution® (DDR; Konami Digital Entertainment Inc., CA, USA) games, where repetitive medio-lateral and anterior–posterior steps are required, have been suggested as a novel, yet effective, technique for training stepping ability in older adults to reduce fall risk. DDR is played on a dance mat sensor (Figure 1), which measures about 1 m and has between four and eight step panels (arrows). The pad is connected to a visual display screen that provides step direction instructions to the player via a system of scrolling arrows that typically rise slowly from the bottom to the top of the screen. As the arrows scroll up to the top of the screen, they cross over a set of four corresponding arrow silhouettes. The player must step on the corresponding mat arrow as the scrolling arrow crosses its silhouette. The sequences of stepscan range in difficulty from simple marching or walking patterns to those with varied rates and irregular patterns that challenge coordination and attention.
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Figure 1.
An older adult (identity obscured) and researcher with a modified Dance Dance Revolution® system for training stepping ability to reduce the risk of falls.
Microsoft Kinect™
In November 2010, Microsoft launched their new peripheral device for the Xbox® 360 game console (Microsoft Corporation, WA, USA), the depth and video camera-based Kinect. This technology enables a controller-free gaming and entertainment experience that is also available for desktop personal computers via the Windows operating system. It enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to hold a game controller, through a user interface using gestures and spoken commands. Compared to the Wii and Playstation devices, the Kinect enables full-body, depth-based 3D motion-capture, facial recognition and voice recognition capabilities. A number of exergames (e.g., 'Yourshape® Fitness Evolved 2012'; Ubisoft Entertainment, Montreuil sous Bois, France) are beginning to be developed for the Kinect that may soon find use in rehabilitation and training settings. Many of these target strength, balance and cardiovascular training tailored to an individual's fitness level, goals, schedule and preferences. Such exergames also provide the ability to set a tailored exercise program where the player attempts to 'match' the exercise movements of a virtual exercise trainer (Figure 2).
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Figure 2.
An example of a virtual trainer leading a 'player' in an exercise class, in this case a knee-bend exercise.
Feedback on performance is given continuously to the player throughout the exercise such as the total calories expended during the session, encouragement from the trainer if the player starts to perform out of sync and overall feedback in terms of the percentage of the task the player successfully completed.