No Pulse
Hmm. It, uh ... well, it's ... huh.
Such was the reaction to the Wii Vitality Sensor, which will likely be remembered as the most befuddling announcement in E3 history. When Nintendo president Satoru Iwata took the stage, the crowd expected a big revelation. Maybe a new Zelda game or Pikmin 3? Instead we got the Vitality Sensor, an attachable finger clamp that measures the user's vital signs as well as, according to Iwata, a "number of other signals being transmitted by their bodies, and will then provide information to the users about the body's inner world." Confused? Join the club. While the device appeared to be some sort of biofeedback peripheral (to allow, say, a game to jack up the adrenaline when it senses your heartbeat is slowing down), Iwata left without providing a single example of how it will be used, leaving a stunned audience to question whether Nintendo had finally gone crazy or if it just wanted to see what it could get away with.