Microsoft Korea joins World Gym Fitness Center in the Ilsan district to promote the Kinect throughout February. Members of the gym will be able to participate in the "Dance Time with Kinect" program, held twice every Tuesday. The promotion will use Dance Central 2, and during the last week of February, there will be a dance competition for prizes.
As Microsoft Korea's IEB division director Song Jin-Ho stated, Microsoft participated in this promotion to allow gym members to enjoy the game's "great music and easy to follow motions." Song added that he hopes young women who are normally reluctant to exercise will take an interest in Dance Central 2.
Let's ignore the strangeness of the gender discrimination of this quote, but instead consider the old absurdity of using games to exercise. Even with perfect 1:1 motion controls, even with a game as critically well received as Dance Central 2, gaming in the living room cannot yet replicate the fun and social element of real exercise. This leads to the idea that World Gym Fitness Center is trying to target gamers to step outside and join their gym, Microsoft trying to get non-gamers at this gym to buy their machines, and everything reeks of desperately motion controlling at straws.
I exercise specifically to exercise, away from my computer, television, and games. I think that if I were to see a Kinect and Dance Central 2 hooked up at my gym, I would feel the wrong kind of ripped, and then I'd forget about it since I go there to swim anyway.
Dance Time with Kinect [VideogamerX]