EA touts Sports Active accreditation

EA Sports Active meets the minimum requirements for exercise recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), EA revealed today. The publisher commissioned researchers at the University of Wisconsin to test 16 physically active adults between the ages of 25 and 45 with two preset workouts from EA Sports Active. The group determined that the intensity caused by the exercises fell within the guidelines set by the ACSM, an international sports medicine organisation.

ACSM guidelines recommend that individuals exercise five days a week, burning a minimum of 200-300 calories per session and at an intensity of between 64 per cent and 94 per cent of their maximum heart rate.

Fitness is big business. EA's calorie-burning Active series made $125 million in revenue during the 09/10 fiscal year. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference in March, president of EA Sports Peter Moore declared fitness games a "billion-dollar industry."

The publisher's next installment in the series, EA Sports Active 2.0, is set to be released this year and features a heart-rate monitor alongside the original's resistance bands. It will be available on the Wii, PlayStation 3, and iPhone.

The current games in EA's series--EA Sports Active and EA Sports Active More Workouts--are two of the higher-profile entries in the increasingly saturated fitness game market, with many publishers chomping at the bit to get a piece of the fitness-game pie. Nintendo's competing product, Wii Fit, was declared the fifth-best-selling non-PC game in the US by the NPD group at the start of the year.

The study also follows a similar attempt by Nintendo to attach serious health credentials to its flagship exercise titles, with the company announcing a partnership with the American Heart Association in May. The study was conducted by the La Crosse Exercise and Health Program at the University of Wisconsin.

For more information, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of EA Sports Active.