Nintendo has long been seen by both those in the industry and fans as the “weird” one of the “Big Three” (which is comprised of it, Sony, and Microsoft).
The company has a history of trying unique and sometimes outlandish ideas that its competitors might deem too risky and abnormal to pursue as a full-scale venture. For Nintendo, this strategy has been its bread and butter–for better or worse. We’ve seen it work out quite well, as evidenced by the wild success stories of the Nintendo Wii, DS, and most recently, the Switch. However, there are examples of this strategy leading to disasters, such as the case with the failure of products like the Virtual Boy and Wii U.
Despite this fragmented success rate, the Big N continues to push ahead with its various ideas. In a recent interview with Cnet, former Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime, discussed his thoughts on the matter.
How this specific part of the discussion was introduced came from Reggie being asked how he feels about hearing how James Park of Fitbit fame was inspired by Nintendo’s health and wellness ventures on the Nintendo Wii.
Reggie’s response to that was that “Nintendo was doing a lot of different experimentation [at the time].” He then marveled at the company’s ability to “marry the IP [Nintendo’s franchises] with technology, especially technology that’s accessible….I think that’s a critical part of what the company does.” It was here that he acknowledged that fitness technology rapidly grew following the release and subsequent success of Wii Fit–one of Nintendo’s ace-in-the-hole during the Wii era.
While Nintendo found a lot of success tinkering with health and wellness during the Wii era, there was at least one piece of announced hardware that never got the chance to really take off: the Wii Vitality Sensor.
This device was a small peripheral that plugged into a Wii Remote and was supposed to check a user’s heart rate to tell them various aspects about their body, such as if they were relaxed enough. This peripheral only made one public appearance at E3 2009, where it was introduced by the late Satoru Iwata. It came and went without a fuss, and is considered one of Nintendo’s lost treasures. What happened to it?
Reggie did have some info on its situation, but it’s essentially a repeat of what Nintendo has said in the past about it. As he put it, the Vitality Sensor was part of Nintendo’s plan for “expanding the gaming population,” and Nintendo had every intention to gamify the sector of sleep (and health) awareness. While it couldn’t seem to find a way to fully realize the Vitality Sensor in a game-enabled way, Reggie made an interesting statement: “a key about Nintendo is no idea ever truly dies. Ideas are constantly played with.”
He elaborated on this by mentioning how the concept of the Miis was first birthed by Mr. Miyamoto long before the Wii’s release. In a similar way, he suggests that the idea behind the Vitality Sensor could very well find its way into a product somewhere down the line; it just needs the time and circumstances to come to proper fruition.
Reggie essentially alluded to this very outcome by saying it “wouldn’t surprise me if there are developers continuing to just experiment with the idea in this space. And when they come up with an interesting idea that really wows the consumer, they’ll bring it back.”
In all fairness, the world now is far more obsessed with health metrics than back in the mid-2000s when the Wii Vitality Sensor was initially being worked on. So, Nintendo once again tapping into this market at this point might prove to be even more fruitful than its original timing. Come what may of the idea, we all know if and when the Big N does something like this, it would be in a very “Nintendo” way.
Reggie had more to say to Cnet in the interview mentioned at the onset of this article, so be sure to read the rest of it for more interesting Nintendo tidbits.
Source: Go Nintendo
