Ever wonder what it would be like to hook yourself up to your Xbox or Nintendo Wii and have it monitor certain vitality signs, use the data to change your avatar accordingly, or tell you what your feeling during certain points of a video game. Imagine status updates but from your internal Biology, take that Facebook!


Microsoft recently patented tracking of players physical characteristics and converting that information to reflect on your avatar.  Of course a third party device would have to be created first, but Microsoft would pick up all the info and beam it into your Xbox Live account, making your Avatar look more like you.  For the overweight players your Avatar could become "heavier", or losing weight could make your Avatar "skinny", so i wonder what it would do for ugly players? 

Microsoft's patent includes (but not limited to) tracking blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose, peak flow, pedometer, etc.  This seems no different than your iPod Nano with pedometer app, but the capabilities of such technology could really bring some honesty to players avatars.  I don't think this is such a good idea considering most players don't really make avatars look like themselves in the first place.  Also could you imagine the achievement system?

Nintendo announced at E3 back in January, a device that could monitor your heart rate through the pulse of your finger.  Most thought that this and the Wii Qube were just April fools jokes but apparently Nintendo is really going to roll with it (the guy with the head piece creeps me out)  The idea behind this is when a gamer is attached to said device, and playing a horror game, the game can judge how scared the player is by the increase or decrease of their heart rate.  This would makes the horror genre a little bit more interesting.  I know for a fact that when i first played Resident Evil and the damn dogs jumped out of the windows, my heart was pumping like no other.  The other uses could be for concentration games or for more relaxing type games, the complete opposite adrenaline style games we all know and love (does anyone remember the Wii Relax idea).

Biometrics are the new Twitter.  Reporting your bodily functions directly to your home entertainment system and updating your online account in real time.  Multiplayer could be interesting though if you could see if other players were nervous, anxious, or just plain scared.  Players could pwn another player and see how pissed off that player got, or everyone i gank could see how I'm such a calm and cool killing machine.

These new ideas and concepts are really a hit or miss though since the market is still new and in development.  Would you really want your avatars to reveal who you are on the other side of the controller? Should your Video game console monitor your vital signs like you were hooked up at a hospital?  I can see it now, your up late, hyped up on Caffeine trying to use Jedi mind tricks to calm yourself down enough to get to the next level.  Not too sure i would spend 50 Bucks to calm myself to sleep though. Whats the Aggrogamer community feedback on this?