Nintendo announces Quality of Life program and other stuff

[Da Robot]

I'm surprised by the fact that it's been two days and no one has mentioned this news (from the recent investor briefing)

This is quite a big announcement with a lot of info and a lot of ways to interpret it, so I hope you read at the links first.


www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/01/satoru_iwata_announces_a_quality_of_life_platform_business_of_non_wearable_technology

Here's another summary

www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=760139

And here's the slides from the presentation

www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/140130/index.html

---

Defines entertainment =improving quality of life QOL in the next 10yrs is to improve this, first area is health, want to find blue ocean

QOL could do wearable devices but wants to leapfrog that to non wearable devices by Nintendo, want to propose healthy structure for day2day

Thinks there will be synergies between games platform and QOL platform

QOL platform with roll out in April 2015,integrated with games, business plan details in 2014, business impact in fiscal year mar 2016

Mr. Iwata now going into how Nintendo is going to expand into new fields. He looks back the past 10 years of his tenure, saying he’s had some success in expanding the gamer population by bringing Wii and DS to people who may not have played games in the past before.

What’s Mr. Iwata going to focus on for the next 10 years? The main theme: enhancing the quality of life through entertainment. The key word is health, Mr. Iwata says. Citing a flood of wearable devices already on the market, he says Nintendo is trying out something completely new: non-wearables to monitor your health.

For those of you wondering what non-wearables are, Nintendo will unveil the details of its new business during 2014 and launch it for the fiscal year through March 2016. Mr. Iwata’s speech is now over. And now the Q&A session is starting.

Source

www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=760097







From the sounds of it some of the ideas that go into this QOL stuff may work thir way back into he gaming side of things (possible return of the vitality sensor?)





But the idea seems to be a small dedicated platform for this kind of QOL content to be released next year?




Also a game using the Near Field Communication of the Wii U will be unveiled at E3 this year (about fucking time)

[Nester the Lark]

Despite the amount of info, it's all really too vague to comment on.

It sounds suspiciously non-video game related to me. Perhaps they're exploring the option of establishing themselves in a different industry.

Jan 31, 2014 18:11:08 GMT -5 Da Robot said:

(possible return of the vitality sensor?

Let it go. As Andrew Eisen once pointed out, Nintendo probably realized that too many guys would clip it to their penis.

[aj52294]

Gotta agree with Nester on this one (not the weiner thing the other part) Everything they said was so broad and vague they could be talking about taking up cow farming for all anybody else knows. I think it was just an attempt to show investors they're trying to stay current or a even a little ahead of the market.

[Shadrio]

I guess this whole "too broad" mentality seems pretty widespread, and I can't say I don't blame people for thinking as such. It basically felt as if Nintendo said that they were going to adapt but were going to continue doing things as usual. "What?"

And Nester reminds me of something, something that Nintendo remarked upon in their briefing, that Nintendo hasn't always been about videogames in the past and that they worked in many different businesses in their 100+ years since being founded, as a Hanafuda Card shop.

And what I'm not liking one bit is all this "Quality of Life" business. My biggest pet peeve with nintendo as of late has been how unconcerned they've been with their IPs that aren't Mario and Zelda. Hopefully this IP lending business would fix that, as I'd love to see a new F-Zero. Hideki Kayima even stated he'd be interested in making a new Starfox game, I wonder how that would play out.

[Nester the Lark]

Kamiya apparently lost interest in making a Star Fox game after too many people bugged him about it on Twitter. He does pay homage to it in a rail-shooter level in The Wonderful 101, but I'm not sure I'd want to play a whole Star Fox game made in his style.

[Shadrio]

Hmm, that does sound familiar. It's a shame, too, as most rail-shooter segments in TW101 really felt out of place and, in my opinion, hurt the game's pacing and game feel. That, and the first company that came to mind when I heard about IP lending was Platinum Games. From what I played of Metal Gear Rising, they did a great job, and I would have like to see their take on some dusty nintendo IP.

[Boo Destroyer]

Also, Miyamoto has commented on how they don't know what else to do with F-Zero, which is why it hasn't gotten a new game in ages.

Why they can't at least remake F-Zero X on the 3DS is beyond me. (Is it sad to say that the old joke of a Captain Falcon action/adventure game might actually be the only plausible way to get a new game for it in the next few years?)



No idea what's keeping Star Fox. Maybe they're out of ideas for this one too? (Can't be) The fact that the only game in the series that matters has been remade is icing on the cake.

...How did Star Fox 64 3D fare sales-wise anyway?

[Nester the Lark]

Iwata elaborated on Nintendo's QOL initiative in an interview with a Japanese website. Siliconera has translated his comments:

“Surely, a lot of people around the world must think ‘Nintendo is a company that is just for video games,’ about us, and I believe that there are more and more of our own employees who’ve begun to think like that,” said Iwata. “Some employees that are in charge of making things, are often kept in positions where they have to think of how they can make the game in front of them more fun, so I don’t think it can be helped if others outside of our company think like that.”

“So, even if the fact that our focus is videogames won’t be changing, I felt the need to take this occasion to say ‘Nintendo is a company that can do whatever they want’.”

Iwata continued, “This subject came to light when Yamauchi passed away, but I felt ‘our surroundings are greatly changing. We need to redefine what Nintendo must do, from this point on.’ However, I felt that saying ‘Nintendo will do anything,’ was also the wrong idea for the company.”

“Yamauchi was one to always say ‘Nintendo is a company for entertainment, and it shouldn’t be for anything else,’ and he didn’t necessarily think that ‘entertainment = video games’. I’ve been wondering how to express Yamauchi’s feelings, and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop, even during the New Year’s holiday break.”

“Lately, the words ‘QOL’ (quality of life) have come up,” says Iwata. “Entertainment is there to improve people’s quality of life. After your basic needs, there’s entertainment. However, when it comes to ‘improving people’s quality of life,’ I didn’t know the difference between us and household appliance makers.”

“At the start of this year, I finally figured that ‘improving people’s quality of life with fun,’ with emphasis to the ‘fun’ would be perfect for Nintendo. And that’s when I decided to use this as a focus during the financial results meeting in January and wrote the manuscript for the presentation.”

[TV Eye]

I think Iwata's missing the point. The Yamauchi era of Nintendo was about innovation, but it was innovation IN the games. Nintendo tries so hard to be different that they're in effect isolating themselves. The Wii came out at the same time as PS3 and Xbox360. It had a unique, motion-sensing controller...that still used batteries? The console couldn't play DVD's or display in HD and still used out-dated composite cables. If I wanted a component cable I had to go out and buy one. Most TV's don't even have composite output anymore which I learned the hard way.

Nintendo doesn't need to develop new technology while ignoring what's already out, they should just focus on their games. Everyone loves the Virtual Console because all those old games are timeless. Or maybe it's just nostalgia talking.

Either way, I have more fun with my PS3 than any other console out. If Nintendo put out a new Metroid or Star Fox like they're doing with Donkey Kong and Mario, then they'd please a lot of people.

[Nester the Lark]

No one's mentioned it yet, but Nintendo revealed their initial plans for the QOL platform a couple of days ago, and it's apparently a sensor that monitors sleep quality and makes recommendations on how to improve it. They've teamed up with an American company called ResMed, who specializes in studying sleep and fatigue, to work on it.

Iwata's full statement can be read here just a little ways down next to the "Redefining Entertainment" slide.

We will prepare the QOL Sensor that will automatically measure sleep condition under this Five “Non” Sensing concept. All you have to do is place the QOL Sensor on your bedside.
Inside the QOL Sensor is a non-contact radio frequency sensor, which measures such things as the movements of your body, breathing and heartbeat, all without physically touching your body. This automatically gathered data will be transmitted to the QOL cloud servers, which will then analyze the data measured by the sensor and visually represent sleep and fatigue results.

Iwata also briefly mentions the Wii Vitality Sensor:

From sensing to analysis, measuring biological information inevitably takes some time. This is one of the issues we could not overcome with our “Wii Vitality Sensor” project.

A week earlier, ResMed posted a YouTube video about a device that sounds strikingly like what Nintendo is describing, although Nintendo is not mentioned in it.



The device is apparently due out by "March 2016," so it's not coming any time soon.

It's not really gaming-related, but personally, I think this all sounds really fascinating. The idea that a device can analyze your health just by sensing things while you sleep is so... Star Trek-ish!

[nocturnal YL]

For some reason, all I can think of from Nintendo working on sleep analysis is even more of those "You've played enough! Get some rest!" messages.

I'm not particularly interested in this myself, seeing that it has nothing to do with games. Slapping Nintendo's name on something doesn't automatically make it more interesting.