Xbox Fitness

I know this isn’t really a game so this review is probably just going to seem a bit like me showing off the fact that I actually completed it (only 172 gamers have done so as at the time of publication – I was the 74th) and to moan about Microsoft.

Xbox Fitness is not a game. It’s a fitness program that launched with the Xbox One but it carries achievements. When I started playing it, I thought that I was fairly fit and how hard could it be? Well I answered that after doing a 30 minute Mossa fight workout which pretty much left a puddle of sweat on my lounge floor. So hard. If you do it properly.

I continued sporadically jumping in and out of it every month for ages – I tend to do a lot of exercise outside of the home so I didn’t really fancy doing more exercise after playing football or squash. However, all of that changed around a year ago when Microsoft announced that they would be shutting down the Xbox Fitness program with effect from 1 July 2017.  This sparked outrage from the Xbox community, many of which had paid for content from the program. Microsoft were forced to refund these users for all of their paid content due to a breach in the terms and conditions – that the workouts would be available for life. This is probably the only time a gaming company has not taken the ‘service may be removed at any time’ line and played off that.

Anyway, the year’s advance notice (6 months in terms of the free content which stopped being available in December 2016 – the only content I had) was enough to push me to start working in earnest to get this one finished – and also meant that I was forced to abandon my pilates workouts in favour of more ‘achievement-beneficial’ workouts.

Achievements – 1,825 Points – 31 Achievements

Everything the base game asks you do is nothing compared to the additional achievements added via title updates.

There are four things you have to do – earn workout stars, complete stamp cards, win friend challenges and gain height through jumping, squatting and climbing apparently... there wasn’t a lot of climbing involved and I’m not sure what even constitutes climbing.

Completing the stamp cards has a very cheap work around. One of the workouts gives you 4 stamps when you complete 9 workouts but after you complete 8 workouts, if you quit out of the workout as soon as you can, it gives you the stamps but not the workout completion so you can rinse and repeat this FOR HOURS until you get to 100 stamp cards complete.

You also have to win 200 drill challenges against friends which was actually one of the easier things to do once I started working on the harder ones. By the point of winning this achievement using a combination of fight, dance and recovery workouts, there were only two achievements left to get and two of the most notorious ones I’ve won – Peak Performance and Run the Day. Peak Performance was the last one I unlocked and is for climbing, jumping and squatting for 100km. In order to get 1km a day I had to do three 30 minute workouts a day. Every day. For nearly three months. It’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve done for achievements if I’m completely honest.

Real Downloadable Content – N/A

Xbox Fitness was an experience in terms of a completion and one that benefitted my personal fitness in the long run. Unfortunately no one will even be able to play the game again following Microsoft’s decision to remove it from service. It’s a real loss for the community too and quite a lot of people enjoyed and invested a lot of time into it. I’m sure Microsoft have their reasons and I’m sure even more sure they are business related.