Videogames: Health benefits

Some benefits to videogaming are beginning to pop up here and there in the news media. The one concerning eyesight, for example got a lot of coverage: “People who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their vision by about 20% percent,” NBC6 TV in South Florida cited researchers at the University of Rochester as finding. And The Dartmouth looked at whether videogamers and couch potatoes had a lot in common. It depends on how you play them, the paper reports, especially Wii Sports for Nintendo Wii (you choose whether to just wave your hand or get your whole body involved). Certainly Wii boxing and Wii tennis don't replace their real-life counterparts, but they do get heart rates up. The article also looks at NBA Live and DDRMAX2 (Dance Dance Revolution) for PlayStation2. Meanwhile, the Wii is outselling the PlayStation3 in Japan these days, CNET reports.