Nintendo's Struggles With Vitality

Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, has told investors that, "It seems like the Wii Vitality Sensor is a kind of product which we are having some difficulty in addressing its product concept."

We think that means that the company is having a problem getting the idea of the sensor over to consumers.

With much of the gaming community wondering why we're supposed to care about an apparently application-less peripheral that looks like it would ship with a slightly less than great third-party title, we're currently inclined to agree with Nintendo's head honcho.

Pitching the idea to investors in a Q&A session following Nintendo's financial results, Iwata followed the E3 line, saying, "What we are trying to propose first is a video game with a theme of relaxation, which is completely opposite from traditional ones, to enrich the users' lives."

He goes on to explain, "Especially among those who are constantly busy, I am sure you have experienced not being able to go to bed even when you are so tired after a busy day at work and coming home late at night... What if you were able to visualize how to unwind and relax, or check the condition of your automatic nerve by simply inserting your finger in the device once a day?

"...And I think you have all had an experience where you are not in tune with how your body is doing or aware of how exhausted you body may be in a busy, strained period, but if you can visibly measure your condition every day, you can start to see how you're doing. It would be like stepping up on a scale every day and seeing the change of your weight. Our new challenge that is different from past software development is to make a video game by using the visible activities of your automatic nerve."

Commenting (albeit very vaguely) on when we might see the product and its accompanying software, Iwata said, "We would like to deliver the actual product not too late in the year next year."

A reasonable question at this point would be, 'if it's so far from release and it's a difficult pitch without any software, why announce it at E3?' Iwata has an answer for that. It's not a great answer: "As there was concern at E3 this year that people might misunderstand us as makers developing sequels only, we decided to make it (Wii Vitality Sensor) public at the media briefing."

So, Ninty didn't have any products it felt were all that strong for an E3 showing, so it jumped ahead to show us something pretty underwhelming.

If you're worried Iwata's completely lost the plot, don't fret too much - he also admitted that Nintendo's E3 media briefing wasn't all that thrilling.