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It’s important to take any claims about the effect of recession on spending habits with a pinch of salt, so consider it duly sprinkled when we report that internet users may be saving money by playing free online games.

According to the number crunchers at comScore, visitors to free online gaming sites are up almost a quarter on the same period last year at 87 million US visits in May.

Cheaper alternatives

Drawing some serious conclusions, comScore’s report states that, “consumers increasingly opt for cheaper entertainment alternatives, driven in part by the reality of economic challenges.”

Of the big gaming players, Yahoo Games ranked top, with 19.4 million unique users in May, closely followed by EA Online at 18 million.

Big up all round

Whether or not this has anything to do with the economy is debatable, but the bump in numbers at the big players is clearly good news for the industry at any time.

Readers of technology news websites may pooh-pooh the idea of cheating at video games, although that isn’t stopping Nintendo from lending a helping hand.

According to sources in Japan, the company is set to introduce official (i.e. not secret) cheat modes in its new games in a bid to stop frustrated newbie gamers abandoning them unfinished.

Skip over it

The cheat modes will allow players to skip sections they get stuck on, rather than bestow immortality or magical powers, so they might not appeal to anyone wanting value from a game.

Apparently, the first game to feature the sneaky new mode will be New Super Mario Bros on the Wii, which is due out towards the end of this year.

If the scheme works and attracts even more of the casual gamers Nintendo is so keen on, then we can expect to see plenty more cheaters before long.

Nintendo’s US President Reggie Fils-Aime has claimed that the company’s heart-beat monitor that was launched at E3 2009, the Wii Vitality Sensor, is set to be as successful as the Wii Balance Board.

Despite widespread scepticism amongst the gaming media in attendance at Nintendo’s E3 conference, Fils-Aime has said that we will have to wait until we play Vitality Sensor games before we “get it”.

“If I told you that you would be standing on an oversized bathroom scale, and having fun doing it, you probably would have said, ‘Reggie, I don’t get it.’ And yet here we are with the balance board arguably as the third largest development platform across the globe,” Fils-Aime told Fast Company.

“All I can tell you is, with the game developers that we have, we will bring forth an experience that you will say, ‘Wow, I get it’. Until you have that software, it’s tough to understand.”

Of course, it would have helped if Nintendo had deigned to actually show some games using the Wii Vitality Sensor at E3 2009…

The new core gamer

Fils-Aime also identifies what he refers to as ‘the new core’ - specifically “girls who have bought a DS or DSi, and maybe have played something like Nintendogs or maybe have played new Super Mario Brothers for DS. This is another step in the journey for them, and then also to showcase Wii Fit Plus, and then to showcase the Vitality Sensor.

“There are a 150 million consumers in the markets that we do business, that say they’d be interested in videogames if they had the right content, but today don’t play.

“Those are the consumers that we believe something like the Vitality Sensor with the right software could compel to get in the game.”

It may only have just been released, but Nintendo’s Wii MotionPlus controller is turning the heads of many a games developer.

However, the fledgling controller is still not showing quite what it’s capable of, according to one dev.

High Voltage, the makers of Conduit, the new first-person shooter for the Wii, have been “messing about” with Wii MotionPlus and producer Cameron Rains is impressed with what he seen but thinks there’s more to come.

In an interview with Official Nintendo Magazine, Rains notes: “At the moment you see all the stuff from EA and other companies concentrating a lot on the sports genre. The full potential is still yet to be seen but it won’t be long in coming.”

New equipment

“Whenever you see new equipment and tools to play with, that just opens up the door for all kinds of creative new ideas.

“I’m sure we’ll see in the next year some really cool stuff coming out on the Wii that could only work with Wii MotionPlus.”

Unfortunately, Conduit doesn’t make use of Wii MotionPlus, but to sweeten that bitter pill, point your browser to this week’s competition where you have a chance of winning a Wii and a copy of the game.

Sega has released the first shots of a new keep fit game for Wii called Daisy Fuentes Pilates, in a clear attempt to follow up on Nintendo’s runaway success with Wii Fit.

As Wii Fit takes its sixteenth week at the top of the UK videogames charts (yes, sixteenth!) it really is not hard to see why Sega has decided to jump aboard the keep fit gaming bandwagon.

Daisy Fuentes, it turns out, is a “pilates icon” who hosts America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Back-saving Sega

Pilates is particularly ideal for those that suffer from back or spinal problems – which, annoyingly, is most of the TechRadar news team, seeing how we spend our days hunched over hot laptops in pursuit of the latest tech and gaming news.

We jest! However, should Sega’s latest foray into keep fit gaming prove to make Pilates popular with the gaming crowd (and its mums and grans and aunties) then the Japanese publisher may well be directly responsible for helping many overcome the drudgery of back pain. Which is no bad thing.

The Wii Remote is also used in the game to control the movements and to get advice from Ms Fuentes. Sega UK has still to confirm a British release of the game, so we’ll be sure to follow up with them to find out if and when we’ll see Sega’s back-saving Pilates title over here.

“Who would you like to see front Sega’s Pilates game?” asks CVG, adding, “and don’t say Lisa Riley. Don’t ever say Lisa Riley.”.