A man who used Wii Sports to shed nine pounds in six weeks has got himself a book deal and a deal with a website to develop fitness programmes around the software. Gaming gone mad? Find out after the jump.

Another little Wii phenomenon here as a man uses Wii Sports to knock off a few extra pounds. After playing a round of Wii Sports boxing against his wife and finishing off short of breath and exhausted, Mickey DeLorenzo decided to take action. The results might not be instantly noticeable, but the implications of a book deal and a agreement with a fitness website are dramatic. The Wii is doing big, important and very interesting things to the gaming industry.

Who needs real golf, out in the rain and cold?

And there is a precedent for this sort of thing. In January of 2006, more than 750 schools in the USA incorporated Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution game into their health and physical education programme. Further to this, a recent study has also shown that playing activity centred games like Wii Sports can burn up to six times as many calories as traditional games.

DeLorenzo was contacted by Jeremy Katz of Sanford. J. Greenburger Associates. The company approached him about a book deal after following his blog as it was reported all over the mainstream media through online, print, television and radio. They are now interested in creating a book with him using the idea. No details of the project have been released as of yet.

It all started out with a simple submission of the story to Digg, and from there it ballooned out all over the Internet across a number of large websites. You can view the full media coverage and loads more details in the latest blog update.