Nintendo to Enter the Sleep Tracking Game

Nintendo, the Japanese video game company that was made famous by iconic characters like Mario and Zelda, is apparently looking to expand its presence in the personal wellness industry, following up on the Wii Fit, a system for their Wii video game console that gave users workout routines and allowed them to track things like their weight and BMI.

The next venture for Nintendo looks to be in sleep tracking; the company reportedly filed a patent for its own sleep tracking device, according to a post on the message board NeoGaf. The patent information obtained by this user includes a rough sketch of the proposed device, and it looks a lot like a standard iHome: a basic speaker system with a dock in the middle to connect a smartphone.

According to the patent application, “The portable terminal detects sensor information for assessing a user’s emotions. It would be permissible, as an example, for the sensor information to be sound information which is detected by a microphone, or image information which is captured by a camera. The information processing system assesses the user’s emotions on the basis of the sensor information.”

While this one of only a few sections of the patent application that is currently available in English, it is safe to assume that the device will use various sensors like a camera, microphone, and thermometer, and somehow use that information to give users a quantifiable metric on the quality of their sleep.

Sleep tracking is nothing new in the wearable technology market: fitness trackers from Fitbit, Jawbone, and Apple Watch already have this feature, and companies like Beddit and RestOn offer standalone sleep trackers. What will be interesting however, is if and how Nintendo will be able to leverage its well-known name as well as its immense experience with entertainment and video games into success in this new endeavor. If, for example, Nintendo were able to incorporate some level of gaming into their sleep tracker, similar to what they did with Wii Fit, it could be a new wrinkle that could attract more customers, especially younger ones, to Nintendo’s sleep tracking device.