It used to be that to practice yoga you only needed a mat, a square of floor and perhaps some tinkling background music.

In Nintendo’s new version, prospective yogis balance on a pressure sensitive pad and watch a television screen while grasping the Wii controller to determine how, literally, centred they are.

No more need the yoga master guide his pupils through moves in a park – now you barely need to get off the sofa.

While standing on a pressure sensitive pad in front of a TV screen, an electronic yoga master takes you through several classic poses.

The aim of the game is to keep the red dot, highlighting your centre of gravity, within a shaded part of your abdomen. As you wobble, the pressure pad registers your moves and the dot moves on the screen.

At the end of each pose a map shows just how far your centre of gravity moved by producing a squiggly diagram.

Surprisingly, the game has not been completely rejected by yoga masters.

Anton Michael Rocke , a yoga Shiromani, or master, has been a teacher in London for 10 years and thinks the game could persuade more people to leave their living rooms.

"Yoga poses have been around for 5,000 years and this is very likely to be the most modern version of this ancient art form,” he says.

"This is the way the world is now, everyone's got a computer, and if the game inspires someone to get down to their local leisure centre or health club to do yoga - then it's fantastic.

"Obviously because the gamers are not face to face with a teacher, their technique might not be great, but as long as it's safe and fun I can't see any problem with it.”

Unveiled as part of the company’s new ‘Mind, Body and Console’ range, the Wii Fitness game has already been launched in Japan and is due out in the UK next year.

It is one of a host of new games targeting women and the 42- to 62-year-old market in the next year. Along with the yoga poses, the game also calculates BMI and a 'fitness age'. Meanwhile, other products feature sight training and facial exercises.

A slightly less Zen is the hula game, the ball heading trainer and the ski-jump simulator.

Showcasing their products in London earlier this month Nintendo said that more than 55 per cent of owners of their Brain Training game, designed for their small hand-held DS console, are over 25. Of the 4 million DS consoles sold in the UK, two-thirds of owners are women.

It has enlisted not only Nicole Kidman, but also British favourites such as Johnny Ball, Julie Walters, Fern Britten and Phillip Scofield to advertise it. A press presentation showed a Granada local news reel where one elderly care home resident expressed his love for the DS and brain training.

By stretching beyond the typical gore-and-guns reputation of electronic games, the industry, it seems, has found a new raft of players. Carl Gressum, senior analyst for IT and communications consultancy Ovum, thinks Nintendo are picking up where Sony left off.

“The trend of bringing the console outside of the domain of the usual shoot 'em up, sports, and car racing games actually started at the late stages of the PS2, when Sony launched its SingStar and Buzz games,” he says, referencing the karaoke and music quiz games, respectively.

“However, Nintendo has taken the social gaming elements many steps further, by focusing on how consumers can interact with gaming devices, for example with the touch screen for the handheld DS and two controllers for the Nintendo Wii.”

So grab your chi, then pass the controller.

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