Thursday, May 22 12:00 AM ET

Get Ready to Xbox-ercise with Xbox aLive

Redmond, WA – Fearing that Nintendo would dominate the massive “video gamers who want to exercise” market, Microsoft revealed its new service at a presentation in Redmond.

Compared with the Wii Fit cartoony characters, the Xbox-ercise aLive program will take advantage of the Xbox 360’s more powerful graphic capabilities to render more realistic fitness instructors.  Also, like most comparable games between the two systems, Xbox-ercise aLive will feature more violence.

“Dance and yoga are fun, but violent actions are what get people in shape,” said Xbox-ercise aLive’s marketing director Todd Belham.  “The Wii Fit stuff is for wimps.  You burn a lot more calories smashing the controller into someone’s skull than stepping on and off the Wii Fit pad.”

The system works best with two or more players, but antisocial individuals can get in shape as well by bashing the controller against a couch or an inflatable companion.

In the EULA for the service Microsoft does not guarantee all results can be achieved in a single lifetime and is not responsible for death or injury caused by using the Xbox-ercise aLive subscription program.

Belham said that existing Xbox 360 owners should find the Xbox-ercise aLive exercises easy to master. “Most of them did these sort of movements when they got ‘red rings of death,’ so they shouldn’t have any problems.”

The Xbox-ercise aLive subscription-based fitness program will have four tiers available to consumers: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.  These will range in price from $200 to $2000 a year, and can be purchased starting in June from the Xbox Live Marketplace.