San Diego Padres pitcher Heath Bell bought Wii Fit for his 11-year-old daughter, originally, but hijacked the game for himself as part of his off-season training routine. Bell tells the Journal that the game makes him a better ballplayer with its balance-focused exercises.

I'm just happy to have an alternative to senior citizens and the Wii Fit girl as motivation to play the game. Also, Bell's story inspires me to keep an eye out for a "pro training" mode in Wii Fit Plus.

Go watch Bell shake his butt (sorta):

A Pitcher's New Core Routine: A Videogame and a 'Hula Hoop' [Wall Street Journal]

In both written and video form, Wall Street Journal technology reporter Katie Boehret tackles Wii MotionPlus, Project Natal and something called Canesta, which works kind of like the Clap-on for your TV and stuff. Of Wii MotionPlus, she writes:

However enjoyable, the Wii MotionPlus is more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary change. If you've never played video games on a Wii before, you wouldn't know what you were missing if you used the remote without MotionPlus.

But even so, Boehret seems just as sold on Wii Sports Resort as the rest of us. Now if she could just transfer some of her enthusiasm from her article into the video...

Playing With a More Sensitive Wii [Wall Street Journal]

Internet games, gambling and other forms of online entertainment have seen significant surges in use in the several months since the economic downturn deepened. Social-networking services like Facebook, blogs and discussion forums — all well-known time sinks even during good times — are also seeing strong growth. Some purveyors of online entertainment say business has never been so good for them.

I'm kind of sad that the example they use is someone who's resorted to Big Fish Games. I don't mind so much that they're only pointing to an increase in casual game consumption, but I think it'd be more of a statement for someone to turn to World of Warcraft in their jobless state.

Out of Office: Job Loss in the Age of Blogs and Twitter

After Crecente posted the news of Verbinski's purchase of the rights to the 2007 Wall Street Journal article about a man cheating on his wife in Second Life, I hopped onto the virtual world in order to ask Ric Hoogestraat's avatar Dutch what he thought about his situation possibly turning into a film. Not surprisingly, he hadn't heard anything about it.

The story belongs to the Wall Street Journal now, so it wasn't necessary for either the paper or Verbinski to get in touch with Hoogestraat whatsoever. Pity though. His avatar has an extremely kick-ass pirate-themed sim in SL that I'm sure the Pirates of the Caribbean director would just love.

While trying to contact Dutch, I got a pretty good idea of what had happened since the original article ran back in 2007.

According to his profile in Second Life, he now lives in Arizona with the player of the avatar he was cheating on his wife with, having married her in December of last year, several months after the article ran in which he repeatedly assured his wife that it was just role-playing. I guess that whole bit had changed.

Just a tip here folks. If your spouse is married on Second Life, they are cheating on you. You generally do not get partnered in SL for fun. If it comes to that, there is something seriously wrong with your relationship.

Don't worry about Ric and his new wife, however. Apparently the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is doing a documentary on the couple, which looks to be so in-depth that he didn't feel the need to follow up with me on the story.

I think the CBC documentary - if they dont fuck us over - will be the only follow-up we need to do

Here's hoping the loving couple stays un-fucked.

The book details the entire roller coaster ride of development, including when Microsoft contacted IBM to have the 360 chipset designed around the core architecture for the Cell, and explains how the PS3 was originally planned to ship in 2005 and why it was delayed.

Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBM employees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in the cubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors above the Cell design teams. Mr. Shippy says that he felt "contaminated" as he sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch out their architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlier work on Playstation.

It seems like the will be an interesting read to say the least. I generally avoid stories involving technical mumbojumbo, but I think I'll be picking this up. The book is scheduled to come out tomorrow, according to Amazon.

Playing the Fool (Wall Street Jornal)

Gore "Pirates of the Caribbean" Verbinski has purchased the rights to a 2007 Wall Street Journal article by Alexandra Alter about a sordid Second Life love affair between a married man and his in-game wife. Yeah, I know, I've heard that one about a thousand times before too. This means he's working on a BioShock and a Second Life movie. My head is going to explode.

Apparently this whole "Second Life" thing is very new to Verbinksi, who will be directing the movie which is getting the script treatment by Steven Knight.

I can't wait until it comes out so I can not go see it.

Universal, Verbinski plan to role-play [Variety, thanks to the tipster whose name escapes me]

Microsoft to Cut Xbox 360 Pro Price [Wall Street Journal (sub required)]

Psychologically, it's better if the customer is begging for the product.

The Wall Street Journal has a pretty interesting story up about the surprise popularity of the Mii.

In it they talk about things like the Mii Station service that creates custom Mii for you for $5, Mii Plaza's virtual collection of thousands of free Mii, and a New York-based sculptor who will create an acrylic painted clay Mii of you for $250.

Ms. Villasenor, the Wii tennis fan, is taking her Mii mania one step further. She recently contacted an artist in Hong Kong who advertised Mii sculptures on eBay and asked him to make cake toppers of her and her fianc 's Miis to put on top of their wedding cake when they get married in September.

"It's a surprise for my fianc ," Ms. Villasenor says. She also plans to set up two Wii-playing stations at the reception so guests could play.

Yeah, I think when people start using your ideas to decorate their wedding cake you can assume you've got a pretty big hit on your hands. Brian Crecente

Look, It's Mii — on Wii! [WSJ]

quo

Another day, another mainstream press outlet singing the praises of the Wii. This time it's the Wall Street Journal's Walter J. Mossberg. Who? Trust me. Dude's a big deal. Wired once said of him "few reviewers have held so much power to shape an industry's successes and failures" and that he "makes or breaks products from his pundit perch" so people pay attention when Mossberg talks personal tech.

Mossberg (and his team of testers) don't say anything new. PS3 is expensive. Wii is cheaper. PS3 looks great. Wii is fun. PS3 is for "hardcore gamers with deep pockets." Wii is for "casual game players."

But more damning than his ho-hum reception to games and sour taste from configuring his PS3?

None of us felt that the game graphics, or the Blu-ray movie playback, were superior enough to the Xbox 360's graphics and DVD playback, to justify the PS3's heftier price. None of our four volunteer testers said they'd buy the PS3 at $600.

Bummer! Will the "Mossberg Effect" take its toll on Sony? Michael McWhertor

Battle of the Boxes: PlayStation 3 vs. Wii

Celebrities. They're just like us! They buy gelato, shop for groceries, divorce their trophy wives, and wait in line at the airport (note: all celebrity behaviors swiped from Us Weekly). And they play Guitar Hero, even if they're certified, world famous rock and rollers.

Like who? Jonathan "I'm the lead singer of Korn" Davis, the Donnas, that one guy from Incubus, another guy from My Chemical Romance, even SNL funny man Fred Armisen and NIN sad man Trent Reznor—they all love plucking away at plastic baby-sized geetars.

The Wall Street Journal has profiles and honest to goodness quotes from those folks, who, despite being well paid drummers in arena rocking bands, really fantasize about being well paid guitarists in area rocking bands. Michael McWhertor

When Being a Fake Rock Star Is Better Than the Reality

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story about an interesting pro-gaming cottage industry: Pro-gaming trainer.

The story looks mostly at 18-year-old game tutor Tom Taylor who runs Gaming-Lessons.Com. The site has a number of people working for them, teaching about games including famed 8-year-old gamer Lil Poison.

Gaming-lessons.com says its youngest "Halo 2" instructor is 8-year-old New Yorker Victor De Leon III — better known by his online gamer name, Lil Poison — who has given several lessons a month since late last year, fitting the classes in after he has done his homework. His father, also named Victor, says his son has used some of the money he earns from lessons (hourly rate: $25) to buy a hamster, named Cortana after a character in the game. Richard Jefferson, a forward with the New Jersey Nets basketball team, says several professional gamers, including Mr. Taylor, have helped him "raise his game" through "Halo 2" coaching sessions. Mr. Jefferson, 26, says he didn't pay anything for lessons, though he did give away some tickets to basketball games. Mr. Jefferson holds

Very interesting story and it shows a lot of forward looking by the WSJ to find a story about pro-gaming that hasn't been told yet, at least not in the mainstream press. Brian Crecente

Want to get good at videogames? Hire a kid [WSJ]

I admit it, I have a bit of a man-crush on Clive Thompson. But who wouldn't? He gets to write about video games for the likes of Wired Magazine and the Grey Lady and also churns out thoughtful introspective gaming pieces on his personal blog. He's like the Lester Bangs of video gaming.

His latest piece looks at the state of "serious games", aka persuasive games, aka agenda games. In it he touches on a number of our favorite thinking titles like Peacemaker, Madrid and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
While the story does an excellent job of framing the questions (Can video games be art? Can they grapple with disturbing issues, or does the act of playing a game inherently trivialize things?) it doesn't really get around to answering them.

It's still worth a read, especially because it quotes Kotaku. Clive, who loves ya baby? Brian Crecente

Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time

Walt Mossberg really needs to stay away from writing reviews about gaming hardware. The Wall Street Journal s famously influential reviewer dropped the ball in his review of the PlayStation Portable, showing both his age and disconnect with modern popular culture, and does so again with his review of the 360.

Although I only found a couple of out-right mistakes in his review of the console, which he calls the most powerful computer ever sold for gaming , the real problem lies in his total and admitted ignorance on the subject of gaming. He can t be an expert on everything, but then he probably shouldn t be writing review of a technology he doesn t understand. Isn t it time the WSJ hires a full time game writer?

Instead of relying on his own typically intuitive persepective and ability to compare, Mossberg relied on a local gamer he tracked down to play around with the system. The end result is an review that misses both the valid pros and cons of the system and comes off as awkward and ham-fisted.

Putting the New Xbox Through its Paces [WSJ]