No More Heroes creator Suda Goichi has plans for the Wii's Vitality Sensor device, which was recently revealed at E3.

Kotaku :


"You may not have been overly excited to see Nintendo unveil the Wii Vitality Sensor, a Wii Remote add-on that monitors one's pulse and "the body's inner world," but it filled No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle director Goichi Suda with ideas.

Sadly, those ideas don't seem like they'll make it into the follow up to Wii adventure No More Heroes. And the Grasshopper Manufacturer CEO wouldn't tell us what those ideas were. But considering Desperate Struggle's focus on revenge and Wii Remote swordfighting, one would think monitoring a player's pulse would be regularly up.

Vitality Sensor use in Suda's upcoming game probably won't happen, but Wii MotionPlus support might. Suda says Grasshopper is "going to definitely try to use" the peripheral for No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle, one of the few properties the developer has worked on that's spawned a sequel.

If they can figure out how to dual-wield beam katanas with one-to-one motion tracking, we could have something interesting on our hands. Just not our fingers."




I cannot wait to see what he comes up with using the new device. The dumb have looked at it and poured scorn on it, but to me it seems like the device is going to make yet another huge impact for Nintendo, while others play catch up yet again.


http://kotaku.com/5277753/no-more-heroes-goichi-suda-has-plans-for-the-wii-vitality-sensor

Hmm, should be interesting. Perhaps we'll see some non-casual use from the Vitality Sensor after all. Thought they were just going to make yoga games and whatnot ^_^

Um, did my comment get deleted or something? So yeah...

Is Kotaku stupid? Of course those ideas won't be in NMH2, the accessory was just announced and we know nothing about it or its release date...

And no, NMH 2 doesn't have one-to-one beam katana dual wielding. Do they know anything about the games they discuss nowadays?

Kotaku has always been stupid in my eyes.

SI: The sensor doesn’t have a direct connection to Wii motion sensing. But let me say why we made an announcement about it at this time. Take the example of Wii Fit. When we talked about it two years ago, a lot of people thought the Wii Balance Board was crazy. They thought Nintendo would start selling a bathroom scale. But Wii Fit became a success because we saw a “blue ocean strategy.” But now a lot of companies are fighting in the red ocean of follow-up exercise games. [Note: As discussed in the Blue Ocean Strategy book, too many sharks in one area make a red ocean; but innovators who swim in the blue ocean have no rivals]. When we introduced the Wii controller, we were in the blue ocean and this year is still the blue ocean. But the year 2010 may become the red ocean for motion-sensing controls, based on what Microsoft and Sony say. The advantage for Nintendo is that we always try to do things that other companies don’t try to do. That is something that the general public appreciates. That’s why we have to introduce this Wii Vitality Sensor. A lot of people must be wondering what the hell this is about. But that’s exactly the way people felt two years ago with the Wii Balance Board. Looking at the history of video games, and game controllers in particular, you have always controlled it consciously. That’s what the name implies. Starting from the movements of your fingers to the shifting of the body mass, you always control it consciously.

VB: How is this going to be different?

SI: We have been trying a variety of different technologies and possibilities. We have found that a lot of information can be found through the pulse of a human being. The pulse is not the simple measurement of just your heartbeat. It provides a number of other signals through your body. It can show how your automatic nervous system is operating.

VB: Your nervousness or calmness?

SI: Not exactly that. Your automatic nerves. You can’t control it consciously, but your heart always beats. You may sweat. Your body may shiver. Those are signals of your automatic nerves. By trying to sense the nerves, it can tell a lot. The pulse can include this information. You may feel totally relaxed. Maybe you will play a horror game and the sensor can tell how scared you are. Several other things can be learned from the pulse, like if you are breathing in or breathing out. We may come up with interesting new software that we sell with the new Wii Vitality Sensor, much like we sold the Wii Balance Board with Wii Fit. Sometimes you are physically tired at night but your brain is functioning too much to go to sleep. If you can have software that helps you understand how you can shift from such a tense situation to being more relaxed, then that would help. At some point, what is invisible can become visible. You can learn your level of relaxation.

What we have inside the Wii Vitality Sensor is an optical sensor. It sends light through your finger and detects the amount of blood that it passes through. If there is more blood, the more light is blocked. We can calculate a relaxation level, through my heartbeat and my breathing in and breathing out. With yoga, they try to calm the nerves through meditation. If you can become conscious about it, you can control it. Some of our employees see their vitality go up at the end of the week because they may be looking forward to the weekend. Normally, this is invisible. A long time ago we sold something called a Love Tester. A boy and girl would shake hands to see how passionate they were. I think boys simply wanted to touch girls’ hands. There was no science behind this. Now we may be able to do a real Love Tester.

VB: I would guess you will talk about a game that uses this soon?

SI: You can see we are already working on a lot of this. Maybe we will announce the game next year.

Just found this article on Kotaku explaining how it works:

http://kotaku.com/5285232/how-the-wii-vitality-sensor-actually-works