14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft is set to hop on the peripheral adding train, as it said at E3 that its new fitness videogame, called Your Shape, would come packed with a new camera device that should analyze the shape of the body of the gamer and construct a fitness experience around this data.
Ubisoft is saying that the camera has “proprietary body tracking technology” but the company has refused to reveal for how much the bundle with the videogame will be sold or whether the device can be acquired separately. The fitness game is designed so that it gets its data from the camera and then estimates the weight of the gamer and the program that he/she needs based on the images captured.
Yves Guillemot, who is the president of Ubisoft, explained that “The development of the new camera for Wii and our Body Tracking technology means that Your Shape will offer an interactive experience that is a technological breakthrough in gaming, as well as in the fitness category.” The company is also saying that more fitness exercises are packed into Your Shape than in its rivals, from Wii Fit to the recent success EA Sports Active.
The interesting thing about Your Shape is that it's the first time someone has created and is preparing to sell a camera peripheral for the Nintendo Wii. At the moment, both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have a camera solution but Nintendo is more preoccupied with the issue of privacy for those who use its console, even limiting the multiplayer aspect of the device to make sure that players can control whom they play with.
When contacted for comment on other uses that the Ubisoft camera might get, a Nintendo representative told Gamasutra that “We have not announced any plans for other camera-enabled Wii games.”