Nike and Microsoft Team for Fitness App on Xbox

The connected athlete just got a bit more connected today as Nike has entered into a partnership with Microsoft that will see the development of games for the Microsoft Xbox that uses the Nike+ technology.

The alliance was announced at the E3 show in Hollywood and the first program to be developed will be called Nike+ Kinect Training and the target date for release will be this year’s holiday season. And it will be exclusively available on Microsoft’s Xbox platform. It is currently estimated that there are 67 million Xboxes worldwide.

The program will connect users wearing shoes or a wristband that has Nike+ technology. Using the Kinect camera in the Xbox a user goes through a set of physical tests and the data is recorded and a personalized workout program is generated.

Then activity is recorded over a month and a reevaluation is made. As a user makes progress in getting in better shape the program evolves to raise the bar on their workouts. The program is capable of providing real time feedback to help keep workouts in line with goals.

Multiple users can share a video and work out at the same time by using the Xbox network. You forgot to work out? No problem as you can set it up to send reminders to your phone (apparently only if it is a Windows Phone).

The effort is expected to help expand the Nike brand, and as part of that effort the program will feature the ability to integrate with Facebook so that a user can share results on the social network.

In other Xbox news Microsoft has released a software program that enables tablets and smartphones to connect to the Xbox console and allows them to be used as a second screen. Called Smart Glass it can be used on devices powered both by Microsoft’s Windows family as well as operating systems from rivals such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.