Peloton has entered into a small partnership with Ergatta – a company who makes their own brand of rowers (though at this time Ergatta rowers only have video games to play, and no instructor led classes).
Update – Peloton ended beta testing & removed the game in late March / early April 2024 for everyone.
This partnership is bringing Ergatta’a video games “Meteor” and “Races” to the Peloton Row in a new beta for members to try.
In a statement, Peloton said the following about the new beta partnership:
We’re beta testing a program to partner with Ergatta to bring new, select gamified fitness experiences to the Peloton Row: ‘Races’ and ‘Meteor’.
The Ergatta Beta Program aims to gather feedback from Members in order to provide the best experience possible in the future. The final output is subject to change based on our learnings.
Beta Test of Ergatta Video Games on Peloton Row
At this time, the beta appears to be a limited test – not all Peloton Row members have access to it. This rollout was also not through the Peloton Field Testing beta program – members who have the beta showing up on their device did not sign up to test it.
Thanks to Peloton members Tiffany Holmes ( #tunderholmes), Violet Meyer (#VioletVibe), and others for sharing their thoughts, photos & demos in this article.
Those who have the beta can access it two ways. There will be a new panel on your main home screen of classes advertising it. You will also have two new panels on the “More” tab, next to Scenic, Just Row, and Entertainment (if you have it). There, you will see options for “Meteor”, and “Races”.
On the first page about the games, Peloton describes the games as:
Peloton is partnering with Ergatta to bring a new fitness gaming experience to Peloton Row. Ergatta’s game-based workouts put you at the center of the action with rewarding gameplay, personalized goals, and real-time feedback.
Ergatta & Peloton’s Races game “allows you to compete head-to-head with Members of the Peloton community. Soar through dynamic 3D courses with multi-segment, distance-based workouts.”
The Meteor game “has you flying through space in a dynamic single-player game that challenges you to hit personalized targets to score points. Meteor workouts offer the structure of an instructor-led class with the thrill of an interactive side-scrolling game.”
At this time, both of these games will show up as a “Just Row” in your profile after taking a class – though we might expect that to change down the road. Both games also come with a warning that people under 14 shouldn’t be playing these games. It also indicates that some of your data will be shared with Ergatta.
It is also worth noting that although the game has a section to show your heart rate, multiple people said that at this time, the heart rate integration doesn’t appear to be working – there was no option to actually connect their heart rate monitor in the game. This would likely be added later.
Although members will already have their own Personal Pace Targets set, players are asked to set a difficulty level inside the Ergatta mode on Peloton – though it clarifies this setting will only be used in the Ergatta games.
The games do not utilize or display the Peloton Row’s form feedback feature
Both games also allow you to pick your own radio station to listen to. Choices of music include Hip hop, classic rock, top 40s, and more.
The fact that Ergatta video games are being beta tested on the Peloton Row does not necessarily mean that Lanebreak won’t be added in the future as well.
Ergatta Races Game on Peloton Row
The first new video game is called “Races” – which allows you to race against other members of the Peloton community. You can see a bit more about this game on Ergatta’s website.
You can see a demo of Races in action on a Peloton Row below, courtesy of #tunderholmes, or here on YouTube. (You can see a different demo from Ergatta here.) This was a 700m head to head race against other members.
In the Ergatta version of the game, they specifically state that you will “Race against 8 other real Ergatta members (never bots) that are intelligently matched with you for close competition”. In the Peloton version, it’s not clear how you are being matched against others – although one could imagine they are picking people with the same pace target levels as you.
Initial reports seem to indicate that you are racing the “ghosts” of other real members – and this is not a real-time, live, head to head competition. But, the ghosts you are racing are their real performance at the time you took it. However, due to the limited number of beta testers, it wasn’t possible to determine about the live component for sure.
Members shared that you have a number of different race distances and race types to pick from. In addition, there is a featured “Race of the Week” – which at this point is the “700m Rower’s Web”.
Multiple people who tried Races said the look and feel felt very much like Peloton Lanebreak to them. They also reported that they felt the races were intense, and pushed them to workout much harder than they might have otherwise on their own.
Ergatta Meteor Game on Peloton Row
The other new game option is called “Meteor”, which is a side scrolling game having where you need to follow an exact structure to earn points. For those who have tried Lanebreak on Bike or Tread, this game seems like a side-scrolling version of that.
You can see a demo and overview of the Meteor game from Ergatta’s website here, or embedded below:
Meteor Workout Demo from Ergatta on Vimeo.
In Meteor, you are following a structured workout plan – and they actually let you pick what type of structured workout you want to follow. You can pick between HIIT, Conditioning, Endurance, and recovery workouts. You can also pick how long you want to workout, with time options ranging from 5 minutes, all the way up to 45 minutes and longer. All of the Meteor games appear to be time based.
Before you start a Meteor game, you can see the specific row plan for the game, so you can make sure it’s a workout you want to do. It will also continue to show you the upcoming plan as the game progresses, so you can anticipate pushes as well as see how long until you have a recovery.
Moving Forward?
This is an interesting partnership for Peloton, as Ergatta makes a competing hardware device. However, Ergatta does not currently have any instructor led classes and instead focuses solely on video games.
If the partnership continues in the future, there are several other video games that Ergatta has that could be added to the Peloton Row. This includes “Push Programs”, “Vortex”, “Live Competition”, “Echo”, “Pulse”, “Build Your Own Workout”, and more. Or, Ergatta could just keep it to the one or two and hope that those who love video games will sell their row and buy an Ergatta instead.
At this time we don’t know the full details of this partnership. Could this turn out to be like the Peloton & lululemon partnership? There, we are going to see some Peloton classes & instructors start to show up on the lululemon mirror device.
Is this new partnership with Ergatta setting up a future where in exchange for Peloton members getting access to Ergatta video games, Ergatta rowers will get access to a few Peloton instructor led classes on the Ergatta platform? We will keep watching for details on this.
Let us know in the comments what you think of these games if you’ve tried them out.
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