Nintendo's next product will watch you sleep

Nintendo quality of life sensor

Just when you thought to yourself, "You know what? There's almost nothing Nintendo can make at this point that'd surprise me," it comes out with something so far-fetched that you begin to question your own sanity.

Today that came in the form of a patent for a quality of life product Nintendo teased a few months ago that will sit on your nightstand and collect "physiological information and/or health information relating to the health or the body of the user, obtained from said physiological information."

According to the documents filed with the World International Patent Organization, it will collect this data using a combination of a microphone, a camera(!) and a sensor before giving you an overall score. (And you thought the Kinect was scary…)

Strange, right? It gets even stranger.

The device would also have a built-in projector that it would use to give you feedback on how you slept.

Nintendo quality of life

Here's the exact language found in the patent: "This display system is provided with a sensor, a projector and a control means. The sensor detects user information for calculating a state relating to sleep of a user. The user information is, for instance, biological information, such as pulse rate. The projector displays, by means of projection, a predetermined image. For instance, the projector displays, by means of projection, an image on a ceiling by projecting the image upward. The control means controls the projector corresponding to the sleep-related state calculated on the basis of the user information."

A projector, admittedly, could be cool if it had some way to sync up to a New Nintendo 3DS or even the Nintendo NX, the next-generation Nintendo system Satoru Iwata unveiled at an investor meeting before E3.

So far in 2015 the company announced the Nintendo NX, partnered with DeNA to launch a series of mobile games, and is now developing a sleep monitor that has a projector and uses what looks like the Wii Balance Board to track how healthy you are. We're living in some strange times.

Source: NeoGAF

Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.