Since Nintendo’s Wii console first demonstrated that video games could move more than a person’s thumbs, a growing segment of society has believed the Wii has opened new doors to physical fitness.

Wiis are turning up in retirement homes and physical rehabilitation centers on the premise that the system can run games with customized movements to help their clients. Schools are trying Wiis, too, as an extension of physical fitness courses.

But not everyone’s sold on Wii as an exercise tool. Nick Seaton, chairman for the Campaign for Real Education in Great Britain, thinks Wii-oriented exercise programs are mere gimmicks, and the console “panders to the views of the physically idle.”

“Pupils would be far better doing serious competitive sports and games than this sort of thing,” he said, as reported by News.com.au., an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

In other words, “virtual” PE is virtually useless.

Not true, says Britain’s Department of Health. It believes the games-as-exercise programs devised by individual schools at least motivates students to try other exercise. Thus, swinging a tennis racket in “Wii Sports” might encourage sedentary children to experiment with the real thing.

“We welcome the positive impact that innovations like these can have as a first step toward getting people to participate in a broader range of physical activities and to enjoy the many benefits of a physically active lifestyle,” the agency said.

It’s a sound opinion that Game Guy supports. Although he does not recommend substituting real tennis for virtual tennis as exercise, personal experience has shown that an hour playing the game on “Wii Sports” definitely provokes perspiration even among fit folks. (Amounts will vary, of course.)

And if Wiis encourage even a modicum of regular activity among sedentary souls, that’s more than many school fitness programs apparently have done in recent years.