Nintendo finally explains why it killed the Wii Vitality Sensor

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Accessory would have read your pulse

Nintendo Wii Vitality Sensor
The Wii Vitality Sensor looked like a mini Gom Jabbar (Dune reference!)

The Wii Vitality Sensor didn't actually work very well, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata revealed in a recent Q&A with investors.

Nintendo unveiled the puzzling peripheral, which could guess players' moods by reading their pulses, at E3 2009, but now it turns out it's more or less dead.

"After a large-scale test of a prototype inside the company, we found out that for some people the sensor did not work as expected," Iwata explained. "We wondered if we should commercialize a product which works as expected for 90 people out of 100, but not so for the other 10 people."

He added that the device "was of narrower application than we had originally thought," or in other words, it seems no one could figure out what to do with the damn thing.

Will Nintendo ever revisit the idea in the future? If they can get it to work right, Iwata said. Fingers crossed!

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Michael Rougeau
Michael Rougeau

Michael Rougeau is a former freelance news writer for TechRadar. Studying at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Northeastern University, Michael has bylines at Kotaku, 1UP, G4, Complex Magazine, Digital Trends, GamesRadar, GameSpot, IFC, Animal New York, @Gamer, Inside the Magic, Comic Book Resources, Zap2It, TabTimes, GameZone, Cheat Code Central, Gameshark, Gameranx, The Industry, Debonair Mag, Kombo, and others.

Micheal also spent time as the Games Editor for Playboy.com, and was the managing editor at GameSpot before becoming an Animal Care Manager for Wags and Walks.