The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) wants you to get fit and healthy in the new year and have fun doing it at the same time. How can you do both of those? By getting healthy through video games! Gamers For Heath is a new group formed by the ECA with goal in mind of getting gamers to play workout video games like Nintendo’s Wiifit or EA Sports: Active, to get healthy and in shape.

Okay, so we’re down to less than 12 hours until 2011. Every store has put together every sale it could before the year ends. I think we’re ready to relax. Oh, wait, Amazon’s at it again! If you check out its video game section, you’ll find a New Year New You video game sale designed to help people get in shape next year with games and accessories…

If you are playing the EA Sports Active games on your Wii, you may be satisfying the American College of Sports Medicine‘s (ACSM) guidelines for an active lifestyle.

A study released on June 2, 2010, conducted by Dr. John Porcari of the University of Wisconsin concluded that these games passed the fitness guidelines of ACSM.

ACSM recommends…

With the appearance of different control schemes for video games, developers have found new ways to get people involved and engaged with the action on the screen. Music games have been greatly benefited by this and motion sensing controllers like the Wiimote have prompted many people to interact with games in a more physical way.

Maybe one of the most popular games with this approach is Nintendo’s Wii Fit, which has created a way for people to get involved with physical activities like jogging or yoga while getting a positive feedback through the animations and displays on the screen.

Activision is getting into the whole Wii fitness thing, and teaming up with Anchor Bay Entertainment to do so. See, Anchor Bay Entertainment has a series of exercise DVDs called 10 Minute Solution. If you’ve ever sat up, watching infomercials, you’ve probably heard about them. There’s titles like 10 Minute Solution: Pilates, 10 Minute Solution: Tone Trouble Zones, 10 Minute Solution: Hot Body Boot Camp, and so on.

So, what Activision is doing is compiling some of the most popular and useful exercises from the 10 Minute Solution DVDs into a $19.99 10 Minute Solution Wii game. There’ll be three categories of exercises to choose from, aerobics, cardio boxing and mixed games, and each workout lasts exactly 10 minutes.

As you can see from the screenshot at the right, 10 Minute Solution will have balance board support….

Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus has been granted endorsement from the United Kingdom’s Department of Health. In a move that has surprised many, now Wii Fit Plus will be allowed to use the logo of the Change4Life campaign in its advertisements and stores – and probably on the product itself – beginning next year (2010).

The Change4Life campaign is a program sponsored by the UK’s government aimed at promoting an active lifestyle and a healthy diet. Now Nintendo will join other major companies including Pepsi and Cadbury providing funds to support the campaign.

Sultry songstress and actress Beyoncé Knowles recently told Billboard that she has ideas for her own fitness game.

When asked what she has on her “to-do list,” Beyoncé said, “I’d like to get involved in videogames since I really love Wii Fit. I think it would be a great idea to incorporate choreography because for me my workout is way more fun…

According to the latest inclusion in Nintendo’s Personal Trainer “game” series, I am not a fat, lazy slob. Instead, I am as active as a Daytime Deer and, some days, an Evening Owl.

Thank you, Personal Trainer: Walking. You make me feel thin…

DreamCatcher Interactive and JoWooD Productions have announced they will be bringing Yoga for Wii and The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft to the Nintendo Wii. Both games are currently under development and are set to be released Fall 2009.

Yoga for Wii will utilize the Wii Balance Board as players are guided through a variety of popular yoga exercises. A “yoga guru” will act as the player’s personal instructor and help monitor progress, making suggestions based on the player’s performance and computations taken from the Balance Board.

The Hardy Boys: The Hidden Theft comes about as the result of a partnership with Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing to develop a series of interactive games based on the Frank and Joe Hardy characters. Already available for Windows, Hidden Theft puts the young detectives at Spencer Mansion where a vault has been robbed and the police apparently need the help of teenage boys to tie-up some loose ends.

“You are fat,” the Wii Fit game stated matter-of-factly, as the world crumbled around a 10-year-old British girl, who had been excitedly standing on the game’s Balance Board peripheral until the heart-breaking pronouncement.

However, her father hasn’t come to terms with the game’s assessment of her stepdaughter’s body weight and refused to accept it. “She is a perfectly healthy, 4ft 9in tall 10-year-old who swims, dances and weighs only six stone,” the miffed father told the Daily Mail. Although he agreed to his stepdaughter being sturdily built, he didn’t accept that she was “fat.”

The game is under considerable fire from British obesity experts, who have…