Nintendo reveals the heart-tracking Wii Vitality Sensor

Just thought of a way this could be useful:

In games such as Residen Evil where they want to keep up the suspense and intensity, they monitor the player's pulse rate and increase the intensity and shock factor accordingly, just to make sure the player has the scares that they'd want (hopefully with a custom level of scariness available).

Or, they could just introduce the Wii to my medical course - certainly make lectures a bit more interesting.

I can see Q? Entertainment doing something interesting with this (a Rez game on the Wii perhaps), but otherwise WTF Nintendo!

Huh, I realize that some gamers might be out of shape, but a heart rate monitor to make sure you don't die while playing?

Nintendo been get'n sued or what?

"Is grandma dead???"
"I'm not sure honey...check the Wii pulse"
"Mom, grandma's passed out again....and I think she pooped her pants"

-What will U and I do next?!?

Best ad ever!!!

This is where I lost it....

I think that this will become more popular with the "Adult Only" Wii Ware titles that have a different idea where that peripheral should be placed.

Such device is not only good for sport games, but also for games "tempering" with your emotion, like a psycho thriller or a horror game. Ok, I know it might block your suspension of disbelief, but I am confident, that this way they'd be capable to crate games, that use horror devices that actually frighten you, creating some sort of polymorphic horror.

Have anyone ever played Warning Forever?(It's a shmup.) Then there were a spaceship you had to shoot from part to part. The part you destroyed the first, and the fastest, was the one, that were the easier to destroy for you, so on the next level, the ship had that part bigger and more powerful. This way it was capable to monitor your gaming style. There, of course you was able to trick the system through "forcefully" control your gaming style, but are you capable to control your simplest emotions? I doubt it. I am imagining some sort of game, that learns your personality and uses it against you...

Well this might actually never happen as this kind of mental force may be too much for some people, so I don't know, but it sounds rather interesting...

And by the way, didn't they say Metroid will be using it?

To everyone instantly dismissing it: they haven't said ANYTHING about how it will actually apply to games

I reserve judgement until then

Oh, and just how many of these do you plan on selling, Mr. Iwata? Seriously, I bet a bunch of the audience was laughing in Iwata-san's face while he was up there talking about this thing. I know I laughed out loud when I saw it. It's like a REALLY BAD April Fool's joke somebody would think up. Sad thing is that Nintendo's higher-ups actually approved this thinking it could somehow have a GAMING APPLICATION. Please tell me, HOW??? They have completely lost touch with their core audience and the focus on quality and GAMES they once had, I am firmly convinced.

Forget all this "innovation" crap and get back to making great GAMES already, Nintendo!!!! I think despite your Mario and Metroid unveilings you actually dug yourselves a deeper hole with your longtime NON-CASUAL fans with announcements like the Vitality thingamajig. And sooner or later, it's gonna come back and bite you hard!

I'm actually scared of WHAT gamers will put into that thing...

Aaaaand the Wii just went geriatric

The only thing I can think of is dynamic difficulty. He was talking about making the same game enjoyable to both casual and hardcore crowds. I'm assuming you can measure how newb a person is by checking how frustrated they gets with the game. If the game is too difficult for a casual player, the sensor will pick up the frustration and lower the difficulty dynamic. If a hardcore play is too lax when he plays, then the game ramps up the difficult. Sounds like a great idea... except how can you play with that piece of plastic covering your finger.

This is just going to be used for Wii Fit (health games). Mark my words

This is just Shigy getting old, when he gets his wheelchair exspect to see a wii version. Shigy must always be hip.

Maybe it will be used in "The Grudge" on the Wii. (http://www.wiids.co.uk/2009/05/27/ju-on-the-grudge-wii-screenshots/)

"The Grudge features a new unique gameplay mechanic that measures your movements during play - the more you flinch and jump, the worse your success rate becomes. The player can progress through the game with bad scores, but it is those with a steady hand and nerves of steel that will have the most to gain from this experience."

Perhaps measuring your heart rate will influence how well you do in the game.

Wii ERECTION SENSOR MOD COMING (HEH) SOON

Seriously, this thing is probably to warn you if you're about to die of boredom during "Wii (Anything)"

haha this is pretty funny

i mean, you could make a guitar hero clone using your heartrate and breathing. maybe.

I think this would be AWESOME with a Zelda game! It would give a whole new meaning to be the hero of courage! "Now prove your temperance and stay calm... Tuc tuc tuc tuc"

This is most probably the first attempt to bring biofeedback controlls into gaming. While it could be used for fitness, it could also be used for controls based on (non-sexual) arousal levels. This means that you could, hypothetically, cast a spell by 'focusing'... an entirely enternal physiological process.

can i get a wii breathalyzer?

It would be nice if this linked in with that hint system patented earlier in the year. When your playing it monitors your pulse and when that rises when you become frustrated it offers a hint.

When your heart rate is really high....it will randomly pop something up to give you a heart attack..:P (I think dead people buy more wii)" jk

people saying this would be good for scary games are forgetting that this plugs into where the nunchuck would usually plug into.

so controlling the game without a joystick and only the wiimote?

doesn't sound like a great control scheme for a horror game

No one realizes this but, what if this was in a horror game? Your heart rate goes up when you're scared or startled so the game can know what scares you, then it makes those parts even scarier. This thing at first made me go "What the Christ?" then I thought about it and I decided it will have *some* use. It's not just gonna be for health games anymore, it'll get into other genres soon enough. There's just one problem: Why not make it so it goes on your little finger and have a splitter so you can have this AND a nunchuk plugged in?