“It’s Dead Jim!”: Nintendo’s Quality Of Life Initiative Appears To Be Dead
Perhaps not too surprising given the absence of any mention of the device since Mr. Iwata’s passing, it appears that Nintendo’s Quality of Life initiative may be over. According to Serkan Toto, a trusted video game analyst in Japan, the Nikkei has reported that project might be dead. The potential hardware partner (Panasonic) has apparently withdrew from that project back in March.
As many people in R&D will tell you, many times a project just never comes to fruition. The same thing happened with Nintendo’s Vitality Sensor for the Wii when only 90% of the readings were correct, which wasn’t good enough for them to release it. The Quality of Life initiative was supposed to have something to do with monitoring sleep patterns, but over the last few years more and more devices have hit the public sphere that can do just that, including the Apple Watch. Perhaps (and this is just speculation on our part) Nintendo’s window of opportunity has closed and it was just time to cut its losses.
Nintendo stock is currently (11:20am on Monday in Tokyo) down a whopping 5%.
Possible reason: Japanese business daily Nikkei today reports Nintendo's "quality of life" project might be dead.
Nikkei says potential hardware partner Panasonic withdraw from that project in March.
— Dr. Serkan Toto (Kantan Games Inc.) (@serkantoto) June 4, 2018
[Source: Dr. Serkan Toto]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
