Making Sense of the Vitality Sensor

If you were attending or watching E3 live, or read any post-E3 news posts, then you have probably run into the newly-announced Vitality Sensor. With its announcement came very little detail as to what it would be used for. There were assumptions made that it would in some way relate to fitness games, with no confirmations from Nintendo on this. So hopefully Reggie Fils-Aime would shed some light when he had a chat with Fast Company about the new peripheral.

Mr. Fils-Aime ended up having little to say about the usage of the Sensor, and the gist of his talk was essentially that the Vitality Sensor is unexplainable. When asked about the peripheral, Fils-Aime responded by saying, "All I can tell you is, with the game developers that we have, we will bring forth an experience that you will say, 'Wow, I get it'. Until you have that software, it's tough to understand."

Using the Balance Board as evidence, Reggie Fils-Aime attempted to make the connection that people were skeptical of the Balance Board as well, and that eventually, it has turned into "arguably the third largest development platform across the globe."

He also went on to explain the thinking behind coming out with this new peripheral. Apparently reaching out for what he calls the "new core," Nintendo's goal is to attract even more of the casual crowd who have yet to get in on the Wii craze. "There are a 150 million consumers in the markets that we do business, that say they'd be interested in videogames if they had the right content, but today don't play." Fils-Aime concluded by saying that the Vitality Sensor is that right content to make them want to play.

Will the Vitality Sensor become a hit when it finally comes into use? What do you think Nintendo will use it for?

Via Eurogamer