Xbox Launches Workout Aggregation App

I know it’s not “cool” for games media to talk about exercise or the Kinect, but a new app launched on the Xbox today that is actually an awesome idea.

Despite having a name that was probably born in a board meeting, Kinect PlayFit aggregates your activity across all “active” Kinect titles like Your Shape Fitness Evolved and Dance Central. Once tallied, you can compare your activity to friends, earn achievements, and track your activity. Oh yeah and it’s free.

A lot of gamers have written off the Kinect because of its inability to provide core experiences, but the exercise genre is blowing up on the device, and ignoring that is a little short sighted. Also, come on guys, sometimes we gotta do some jumping jacks.

I plan to poke around on it a little, though I worry it’ll eventually be the sort of deal where you don’t have much of a reason to launch it independently of the actual games you want to play.