Atari Launches the Atari Fit Mobile App, And It Misses the Mark

Atari is moving into very catchy territory with their newest mobile application. It's certainly a noble entry into a category that could probably apply a few more quality entries, though is not ordinarily filled with the kinds of apps that Atari is known for making. They've just released their first ever fitness app, Atari Fit. An application designed to motivate y'all to workout via video games.

Atari Fit is now available on the Android and iOS app stores, set up to help you go fit with video games.

The premise is unproblematic, it provides up to 150 gamified workouts to assist y'all challenge yourself physically either by yourself or in a "multiplayer" mode, as they're calling it, against others. The idea beingness to vanquish their specific scores generated past working out. Points tin be earned for your actions that can unlock classic Atari games like Pong and Centipede. And of course, what game inspired app wouldn't be consummate without a leaderboard.

These routines that they've developed have all been done in collaboration with Michael Porter, who is a certified personal trainer, so they aren't just poorly slapped together routines that have no underlying pattern. They're practiced, certainly, if done properly and consistently.

Unfortunately they've missed the marking past quite a bit. Past marketing Atari Fit towards gamers is their starting time blunder. This isn't a gaming app by any ways. It'southward just another fitness app in a sea of other more interesting fitness apps. The social aspects, statistics and recommended workouts take all been done before in far cleaner packages fifty-fifty with the addition of badges or achievements yous tin earn. That is gamification, not simply calculation in some games that you lot can unlock. It seems similar a cheap trick really.

Gaming fitness tin be a challenging and fun matter to participate in, if done properly. True gaming fitness is when a called game is used equally the platform for doing some sort of fitness routine. Take for instance this fine gentlemen working out to Battlefield 3, or fifty-fifty sweating to Star Wars the Old Republic. Those are true examples of what using gaming as a platform for fitness truly is. Using the game as a means is gamifiing information technology, not working out to earn points.

The Xbox One and the Wii U'southward have on combining fitness with gaming has been far more interesting than releasing a clone of every other fitness app in the market. Only I digress, gaming and fitness are 2 parts of my life that I sometimes fifty-fifty bask together, and then seeing Atari claim to have a gaming fitness app that is aught more than a cheap attempt at further saturating the fitness awarding market is a little bit absurd.