Well, I’ve been talking about Adidas MiCoach for it seems like an eternity now, but at LONG last the pre-order link is available on Amazon. The pricing will be $49.99 and the original list of athletes that were promised to be part of the game will be there: Kaka, Dwight Howard, Manuel Neuer, Jessica Ennis, Jose Mourinho, Ana Ivanovic, Will Genia and Eric Berry. The athletes aren’t just generic computer animations with their faces painted on–word has it that the athletes actually did the exercises and skills challenges themselves, and it’s their actual performance that’s part of the game.

Early reports of the game had said it’ll come with additional hardware, but since the game is priced at $49.99 I doubt that hardware will be the MiCoach pacer nor even the speed cell. Perhaps there’ll be a heart rate monitor such as the one that came with EA Sports Active. We’ll see about that.

One thing the MiCoach will definitely come with is an already active online community where you can track your progress online and compete in challenges against friends or even strangers. Again, early news reports said that you can earn points that you can exchange for discounts on Adidas products.

In other words, early indications are that this will for all intents and purposes be the next progression forward for EA Sports Active 2 (we all know by now that from all appearance EA Sports has abandoned that product). Time will tell, of course, but I for one plan to be one of the first in line for this.

More information as it comes, as always.