Kinect Playfit Unites Calorie Counts

Finally, we have a unified way of tracking exercise across Kinect games! Microsoft released Kinect Playfit last week, a free Xbox 360 app that logs your exercise and calories across multiple games.

I do like using motion games for fitness but since my exercise is spread between Dance Central, Your Shape, EA Sports Active and all the rest, the in-game trackers have been next to useless for me. Playfit fixes this by bringing your progression across a range of titles into a single tracking program. You can also record your weight, height and age in the dashboard so that games will give you a more accurate estimate of your calorie usage.

So far, ten titles are supported by the app:

• Deepak Chopra’s Leela
• Dance Central 2
• Double Fine Happy Action Theatre
• Kinect Fun Lab’s Junk Fu
• Kinect Disneyland
• Kinect Sports Season 2
• Let’s Cheer! (Yes, there is a cheerleading Kinect game. Seriously)
• Once Upon a Monster (preliminary forum reports suggest that this doesn’t track properly yet)
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012
• Kinect Star Wars

It comes with 20 achievements, leaderboards to compare calories burnt against your friends’ and all sorts of other stats. Kinect Playfit isn’t available to download through the Xbox website but you can find it under Apps > Games (not Games > Kinect, where I was looking for it).