A new collaboration between Adidas, EA and Google has resulted in a rather quaint old video game idea being resurrected for the 2020s: the concept of using a small piece of electronics to track your real-world exercise and have it reflected in a game. Only instead of it being for the Nintendo DS, it’s for a FIFA game.
The tech works by inserting a ship in the insole of a pair of football boots/cleats, which will track the user’s activity while playing actual sport. Players just buy the insole + chip, not a whole custom pair of boots. The data the chip receives will then be integrated with FIFA Ultimate Team Mobile, and used to train and improve your virtual players, like very expensive Tamagotchi.
I said this is quaint because there have been loads of games, some of them very old, to have tried this sort of thing before! The Pokéwalker, released in 2010 for the DS (above), was a notable example, but Nintendo’s old handheld had another first-party pedometer as well, released in 2008, called Personal Trainer: Walking, which used a Mii to track your fitness progress.
This Adidas x FIFA version will be out on March 10, and you can see some packaging stuff at Footy Headlines.