Neuro-technology professor says Nintendo didn’t know “what to do” with the Vitality Sensor

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Nintendo, News, Podcast Stories, Wii

“With regard to the Nintendo sensor, at that time we were trying to start this company that would use pulse sensors, but not just to measure pulse rate – that doesn’t tell you too much. You have to be more sophisticated than that if you want to measure things thing arousal, valance or a range of emotions using heart-rate variability. I don’t think Nintendo really knew what to do with that.”

– Neuro-technology Professor Roger Quy

I’m not entirely sure I’d agree with Quy on this one. I think he’s right that only measuring heart-rate isn’t terribly useful, but I’d imagine that many people would have also said that only measuring weight distribution wouldn’t be very useful for a fitness game, and look at well Wii Fit did! I think the real issue is that Nintendo was deciding exactly where to go with Wii and DS, the Wii U was conceptualizing at that time, and bigger fish needed to be fried. They probably just decided it wasn’t worth the effort to put out another peripheral.

Via Nintendo Life