I've been thinking about exercise games lately, primarily due to an onslaught of new games, devices, and initiatives. For example, we've got Footgaming, a sort of promotional blog for a student fitness program called Generation Fit. The group hopes to support casual and educational play with a peripheral called FootPOWR. Judy Shasek, the program's proponent, argues that physical activity contributes to both fitness and academic success.

Then there's Wii Sqweeze (pictured at top right), from Interaction Laboratories. The device promises isometric upper body exercise via shoulder abduction and adduction, wrought via a two-handled pumping interface with attached wiimote.

There's reason to call this stuff gimmickry. Despite its fancy name, FootPOWR is basically a standard, PC-connected dance pad peripheral used as a pointer. And Engadget has reasonable doubts about Wii Sqweeze's market potential: yet another peripheral to use once and throw in the closet.

But what did we really expect? Think of all the bowflexes and rowing machines, exercise videos and walking weights, fitness books and gym memberships, resistance bands and atheletic shoes, iPod attachments and heart monitors, ab pumpers and butt wranglers, fruit juicers and food dryers, and the myriad truckloads of other gimmicks people buy and don't use for exercise. Why should videogames be immune to such practice? Why should our medium be expected to rise above the infomercial-hocked exercise gizmo du jour?

Perhaps, by contrast, we should take gimmickery as evidence that exergaming has arrived. It is mainstream. Like QVC.

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