According to Reuters, fitness games such as Wii Fit have seen retail sales of over $2 billion in the last 18 months, i.e. since Wii Fit first arrived.

Not only is it financially very successful, but the genre seems to be doing much better than other parts of the games industry. At the recent Games for Health Conference in Boston, they saw an increase in attendance from 100 to 390 people in the last year. A sure sign of growing interest in the field.

What's interesting about this report is the breadth of interest in the genre, attendees for the conference come from both the gaming and health and fitness industries. I think the mix of viewpoints in this part of the industry could potentially lead to some very interesting developments, both in fitness and for games. It contrasts quite strongly with much of the games industry which can be quite insular. It's also nice to see that games are being used in fields other than physio and fitness, with some being designed to help cancer patients, and to train nurses.

Great article - well worth a read for those needing convincing that the Wii isn't just a two game console as some articles have questioned its usage with games other than Wii Sports & Wii Fit. I think comments like that were fair a year ago, but its becoming quite the contrary, with developers other than Nintendo releasing equivalent (or better) fitness games and 'health promotion' games (such as the Re-Mission for Cancer patients - promoting a better understanding and therefore improve adherence to treatment).

I think the cost of the console is its biggest seller - how much does it cost to pay for gym membership per year!??! For a fraction of that you can buy a console and purchase some relatively effective exercise games.

Currently the Wii caters for the mass public market and I hope that the developers start catering for more health needs whether it be for training, for health promotion or for rehab....what is for certain is that most people find it very easy to engage with and enjoy using the Wii console, so to throw in a bit of 'work' with the 'playing' still makes it 'fun'.

Long live interactive and physically engaging games )