There are few things so irritating as the sneering bystander commenting that everyone should stop playing Guitar Hero or Rock band and instead spend their time learning a real instrument.

Because, you see, being white, middle-class gamers we all play guitar, bass and drums already, moron. And, even if we don’t, we’re playing the game for fun, not to service Ricky Gervais-in-the-Office dreams that one day we’ll break free from day job monotony and take to the imagined freedom of a Glastonbury stage.

And, even if we are playing for that unlikely, misguided reason, rhythm action games (once you’ve got to grips with their peculiar type of notation) help improve rhythm and timing better than any amount of going-nowhere rehearsals with a sucky garage band’s incompetent rhythm section.

Anyway, the backlash against the rhythm-action backlash is well-established with comics such as xkcd and CTRL-ALT-DEL, being the most succinct and incisive opponents of the anti-fun, amateur musician twit.

I’m a week into Nintendo’s masterful Wii Fit (Yahoo review here) and already I can foresee a similar strain of sneery derision that will be aimed at the game and its players from fitness fanatics.

Indeed, yesterday Eurogamer posted an amusing little video of the lovely Ellie Gibson trying out some of Wii Fit’s exercises, to which one reader comments:

If you really want to get fit do what I do, 100 situps every day after work and some weightlifting. Only takes 10 mins and gives you good results within 2 weeks.

Also, running for an hour or 2 or walking 20 to 40 kilometres in the weekend works like a treat.

To be fair, I was taken by surprise at how the game’s exercises feel like they’re actually working but, in reality, the way in which the game monitors your daily workouts, giving endless stats and graphs and advice, is an extremely effective tool in ensuring you return each day. It’s a level of attention and statistical service even the most cutting edge gym would be unable to match and it’s value in pulling you back to exercise daily is immeasurable.

Indeed, I’m watching what I’m eating and drinking much more closely than I otherwise would, for fear of admonition from the game when I get home in the evening. Add to this the fact that many of the exercises in the game are standard, tried and tested work-out routines and the idea that you won’t lose weight or tone up just because this is a videogame seems ludicrous.

Videogames have always been about abstraction. From Track and Field to SSX, gamers have an inherent understanding that the job of a successful videogame is to offer the opportunity to try out dangerous or unlikely real life activities by way of minimalist thumb movements.

It’s all role-play – from Call of Duty 4’s comic book warfare to Tetris’ obsessive-compulsive tidying – and, despite the incessant claims to realism made by modern gaming, the actual interactions we make are hugely abstracted from the output of these interactions displayed on the screen. Realism is generally a word only used by developers in relation to aesthetics.

However, Wii Fit represents another leap forward for developers who are choosing to approach videogames not as a virtual replication of real-life activities but as an actual platform for real-life activities. Eyetoy and the Wii’s obvious potential lies not in endless mini-game compilations, but in interactive realism whereby games monitor, test, measure and appraise non-abstracted tasks and movements.

It’s a subtle but very real paradigm shift that gamers, with years of indoctrination into the abstraction of games, seem to be picking up on far more slowly than the casual mainstream player who is new to the medium. And it’s herein that Nintendo’s newfound genius lies.