Dec. 20, 2013 3:32 p.m. ET
The Promise | Xbox Fitness streams videos by star trainers ( Jillian Michaels of "The Biggest Loser" fame, celebrity fitness guru Tracy Anderson ) and, as you follow along, uses a high-def camera to provide "immediate feedback on your form, power and heart rate," according to its website. You'll see a silhouette of your body with the muscles that you're working highlighted; the game's "Form Meter" rates the accuracy of your movement. Unlike earlier Xbox exercise games, this latest version evaluates your moves by generating a physics-based model of the body in motion. "We're not just matching poses," said Dave McCarthy, a general manager at Xbox who led the game's development. "We're also looking at weight transfer and that force of motion—how much you are getting into a certain move."
The Reality | Chelsea Lynn Acree, a dancer with the Mark Morris Dance Group, tested two workouts in the game. Right off the bat, her "Form Meter" shot up and the "Score Multiplier" starting dinging—a sign that her technique was consistently spot on. But when she intentionally botched her moves to test the Xbox's tracking ability, the meter didn't budge. The only time it went down was when she stood still. "It definitely registers when you're not moving; it wants you to keep your heart rate up," she said. "But there's not much information about form and how to do things correctly."
Ms. Acree experimented by making subtle shifts that could put undue stress on the ankles and knees. "In a squat, you want your knees to be over your toes and not forward, past your toe," she said. The game didn't correct her when she did the movements slightly wrong, but when her efforts were in the general ballpark, it flashed suggestions to "squat deeper" or "twist toward your knee." Going to an extreme, she ignored the instructor entirely and just moved randomly; the game continued to award her points.
This, it turns out, is part of the game's design. "As long as you're moving, you'll get basic credit," said Mr. McCarthy, adding that his team didn't want players to feel as though they were failing. "There's really no sense of right or wrong; there's just degrees of better."
But Ms. Acree questioned the everyone's-a-winner approach. "Sometimes you need to know when it's wrong." For beginners, clear feedback is crucial, she said.
Ms. Acree was more impressed by the graphic that highlighted the muscle areas being engaged, which she thought was "pretty accurate" and would be helpful "no matter what your skill set is." And overall, she thought the workouts were engaging and well paced. The games don't offer the detailed corrections of a personal trainer, she said. "But it's still better than sitting on your couch and eating potato chips."
The Future | Xbox Fitness can deliver more refined feedback than it currently does, according to Mr. McCarthy. "The precision and potential is there," he said, adding that too much information can overwhelm players. Because Xbox Fitness is streamed over the Internet, the game will evolve. "We do a bunch of machine learning as it's in the wild with consumers. You're going to see the capabilities of what we can track in that physics model get better and better."
For Ms. Acree, making Xbox Fitness akin to a human instructor would require more than improved feedback. "Maybe it gets to know you over time," she said. The game might recognize that you tend to put more weight on your left side than your right, for example, or that you seem to be more tired than usual today and therefore adjust its comments accordingly. "That's something that's really important when you have a student-and-teacher relationship," Ms. Acree said.
Xbox Fitness is included with an Xbox Live Gold subscription ($60 per year) until the end of 2014.
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