Nintendo On The Wii Vitality Sensor: You Just Don’t Understand
The Wii Vitality Sensor was met with a very harsh, possibly unfair reception when it was announced at E3. Now, Nintendo is getting a little defensive about their upcoming medical instrument game peripheral.
Nintendo’s North American President Reggie Fils-Aime explained that the Vitality Sensor is just the latest in a chain of products that are first misunderstood and ridiculed, gaining acceptance after they have a chance to prove themselves. Like, oh, the DS, or the Wii, or the Balance Board. Pretty much everything, actually:
[We] probably had a very similar conversation when we first showed the Nintendo DS: how is it going to work, why a touch screen, voice activation—I don’t get it. We probably had a similar conversation about the Wii Remote: how is this going to work, how is it going to work with the games that I want to play—I don’t get it. Now I’m hearing something similar for the Wii Vitality Sensor. And all I can tell you is, with the game developers that we have, we will bring forth an experience that you will say, “Wow, I get it.”
There were surely plenty of folks who ridiculed the DS and Wiimote concepts, but they would’ve been shouted down by the rational majority who could easily see how a touchscreen handheld or a console motion controller would be utilised in game terms.
Most interested people do have specific ideas in mind for the Vitality Sensor, actually, which is why they might not seem terribly excited. It’s not the nobody “gets” the product; it’s that gamers are lamenting the Wii’s accelerating change from a fun console to some kind of distinctly un-fun health device.
Of course Nintendo could blow us all away with some new kind of clever biometric game integration, akin to their previous attempt at a heartrate sensor (except hopefully better), but if they want us to expect—and get excited about—anything beyond Wii Fit II, we’re going to need a little more information—games, clues, or frankly, anything at all. [Fast Company via TechRadar]
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Nintendo has lost it
It all ended with the gamecube…their target audience has changed and its noticeable, Its all just mums and kids…i honestly only use my wii for smash bros brawl and even then its rare.
stupid Nintendo….I wish i had a ps3
You say Nintendo has abandoned its Gamecube fan base? More like the other way around. Gamecube was dead last in sales despite having a more powerful CPU then both PS2 & Xbox. Nintendo is a business and it has to survive and to do that it has to change. If it had gone down the same route of improving on power it wouldve been out of business by now no doubt. Its lucky they dont listen to people like you for their ideas.