A company best known for running shoes and sportswear wants to get people moving again—and it thinks virtual reality could be a way to do that.  Gaming has long traded on the appeal of professional sports—think Electronic Arts’ Madden and Fifa series—but the relationship has rarely gone the other way. But the world of sports is now tentatively exploring the idea of digital e-sports, starting with the Olympic debut of e-sports at the Tokyo Games in 2021.  Video gaming’s presence in Tokyo caught the eye of one Olympic sponsor, the Japanese sportswear brand ASICS Corporation. And now, the 75-year-old company behind the Onitsuka Tiger sneaker brand is releasing its first video game: DISC, designed for Meta’s virtual reality headset, which releases Friday.  DISC is the Japanese company’s first foray into the gaming space, fostered by its new ASICS Ventures division. ASICS Ventures is meant to build entirely new products with no relation to ASICS’ current running shoes or sportswear.  The Japanese brand has been a “laggard” in the digital space, admits Joe Pace, vice president at ASICS Ventures and DISC project lead.  Ventures is an opportunity to catch up, adds Akihiko Sadaka, ASICS chief digital officer. “It wasn't simply possible to be a company that made good products. We needed to find a new way to add more value,” he says. (Sadaka spoke with Fortune through an interpreter.) Game developers like Nintendo have previously tried to combine fitness with video gaming. But ASICS was concerned about the sedentary nature of most games. usually enjoyed while hunched over a keyboard, or lying on the couch. “We really struggled with it for a few years,” Pace says. “We weren’t going to be a sponsor of any type of game where people were just sitting down and staring at a screen.” Eventually, ASICS settled on virtual reality. “Gaming was extremely successful in VR. Fitness was extremely successful in VR. But those two ideas hadn’t been combined. It looked like a gap in the market,” Pace says.  DISC is a bit like a virtual reality version of air hockey. The player stands in front of a goal, using his or her hands to catch and return a virtual disc to the other side of the court. Pace suggests that the game reminds users of Tron, the 1982 science-fiction movie—but it also resembles the 1972 Atari video game Pong, or the 1994 cult classic Windjammers.  Still, DISC is a sport first, and a video game second. Pace stresses that there’s no power-ups or items to help or hurt players.  And some sacrifices need to be made to make things work with the technology: The player is, after all, wearing a headset as he or she moves around. That means the game is mostly played standing in one position, rather than physically moving around a space. DISC was developed in partnership with Meta, with the game launching on the tech company’s Meta Quest headset. ASICS approached Meta first: “They really are the leading player. We went straight to them to say: Is there something we can do here?” Pace says. VR excitement has cooled significantly since companies like Meta, Sony, and Apple released headsets for both virtual reality and mixed reality. Still, Pace is bullish on the potential of VR. “We feel confident that the head is a place where hardware will be,” he says, pointing out that the headsets are becoming “less and less noticeable over every generation.” ‘A sound mind in a sound body’ ASICS’s roots stem back to 1949, when Kihachiro Onitsuka founded a company making basketball shoes in the Japanese city of Kobe—and named it “Onitsuka.” Onitsuka quickly expanded its product line to include different sports, most famously its Mexico 66 shoes, released in 1966, which features the brand’s classic “Tiger Stripes.” (Nike, the U.S. sportswear giant, actually got its start as an importer of Onitsuka shoes.) In 1977, Onitsuka merged with two other sports equipment companies to become ASICS, an acronym of the Latin phrase anima sana in corpore sano or “a sound mind in a sound body.” The company has since expanded past its Japanese roots. “When I joined the company, ASICS only had about 40% of its sales coming from international markets. Now that number is over 85%,” Sadaka remembers.  SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 04: Asics shoes are displayed at a Big 5 Sporting Goods store on June 04, 2024 in San Rafael, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) ASICS reported 678 billion Japanese yen ($4.5 billion) in revenue for 2024. That's small compared to giants like Nike, Lululemon or China’s Anta Sports. Half of ASICS revenue is generated from its performance running segment.  Yet investors are bullish on the sportswear company’s ability to keep growing. ASICS shares are up almost 85% over the past 12 months, hitting an all-time high in late January. It’s far outpaced the Nikkei 225, Japan’s benchmark index, which has fallen by 5.9% over the same period.  Why Japanese companies are 'more hesitant' to go digital Sadaka isn’t just focused on video games. He’s also responsible for building out ASICS’s direct-to-consumer business, as well as its Institute of Sport Science, a center for product innovation.  ASICS works with top athletes to develop better sportswear products. Sadaka points to tennis star Novak Djokovic as a successful example of collaboration. “He’s a bit on the older side, and he wants to maintain his top performance,” he notes.  He agrees that Japanese companies are often “more hesitant” to adopt new digital technology. Part of the problem is that Japanese companies, including ASICS, habitually try to keep everything in-house.  “We want to do everything on our own,” Sadaka says. He points to Japan’s working culture, which until very recently discouraged job-swapping, as a drag on innovation. “People tended to work at the same company, and so they had to do everything within the walls of that company,” he suggests. ASICS is hopeful that it can build a true community, with tournaments and rankings, around the new DISC game. Sadaka hopes that ventures like DISC can reverse a global decline in physical activity. “We saw in the world that less people were moving on a daily basis, and that movement is central to ASICS business.” Not that he’s against the idea of video gaming, even in its more sedentary form. “I love video games. I play Mario Kart a lot with my kids,” Sadaka says, with a laugh. “And Dragon Quest, obviously.” This story was originally featured on Fortune.com ...read more read less