Videogames get a bad rap for turning kids into couch potatoes and keeping gamers overweight. Yet more and more they are being seen as a way to get people off the couch and into exercising. Maybe some companies think exercise games are like passing out condoms at school — they’re going to do it anyway, might as well protect them from themselves. Some genuinely want to help and devise new ways to incorporate fitness into gaming in fun and interactive ways, but some are simply finding clever ways to make a buck or rather, in the case of a £699.90 fitness machine, a whole lotta bucks.

That machine would be the new GZ Family Fit, a combination home rower and cycle that works with the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360. It’s made by Gamercize, a company specializing in fitness machines, and works with all existing games. Players simply start rowing or peddling, while playing their favorite games. Then, if they stop rowing or peddling, the game stops until the motions are resumed. That’s it. No, really. That’s it.

To top things off, when ordering online buyers have to specify which system they are purchasing it for, so it looks like one machine won’t work for all three systems. A cross-trainer this is not. So, here we have an overly expensive machine marketed to gamers that doesn’t even come with its own software for stat tracking or other helpful tools, has as much interactivity as running in place and only works for one system. This begs the question: who the $%@! would buy this thing?