Well then, would you all mind introducing yourselves in turn.

I’m Shimomura from the Network Service Development Department. I’ve had experience in both the development of software and hardware and so with “Walk with me!” I was in charge of overseeing creation of both the Activity Meter and the software as well as bringing the project together as a whole.

I’m Mizuki from the Network Planning Group of the Network Service Development Department. I joined this project in the middle of development in a supporting role, doing similar work to a producer.

I’m Morimura, from the same Network Planning Group as Mizuki-san. I was the director of the “Walk with me!” project. Before this, I was working as a programmer, but I transferred departments and this is the first software I have been in charge of.

I’m Akita from the Mechanical Design Group for the Network Service Development Department. I was in charge of the mechanical design¹ of the Activity Meter.

1	Mechanical Design is the carrying out of the development, design and evaluation of the mechanical parts found in the exterior components (casing) and switches etc.

Well then, first could you tell me a bit about the Network Service Development Department? It’s a slightly strange department, even for Nintendo.

Well, originally in Nintendo, we had people making hardware and people making software mixed up in the same department, and those people would work together to make things.

In other words, an integrated software/hardware business was being carried out within a single department. For example, while someone was making the Game Boy, someone at the next desk along might be working on software.

Yes, but cases of similar types of development being carried out by two different departments at the same time were increasing and the scale of development was also getting bigger and bigger. The development system in its traditional form had become inefficient and so the company went through a large-scale reorganisation. As a result, Nintendo was restructured into two hardware development divisions and two software development divisions.

The fundamental idea of an integrated software/hardware business hasn’t changed, but this idea is now realised through cooperation between departments. And only the Network Service Development Department isn’t assigned to any of the development divisions.

Yes, it’s only in our department that the traditional development system has remained. As a result, we have people like Mizuki-san and Morimura-san who make software, people like Akita-san who work on mechanical design and also programmers and so on, so it’s a bit of a strange department for Nintendo now.

So since you’ve been working in that department, Shimomura-san, could you tell us a little about the products you have been involved with up to now?

Recently, I was involved in “MAGKID”², which is a sliding controller similar to a mouse. Akita-san was also in charge of the mechanical design for this product. I also worked on “Pokemotion”³ with the previous incarnation of the Network Services Development Department.

2	MAGKID is a DS game called ‘Slide Adventure MAGKID” released in Japan in August of 2007. It is an action game which you play by attaching a sliding controller like a mouse onto the DS.

3	Pokemotion is a communication tool released in Japan in August of 2003. Through the flashing of LEDs and the afterimage left in your eyes, it allowed you to see all kinds of Pokémon and words. (Released by the Pokémon Company)

That product was a stick with lots of LEDs lined up along it and when you waved it back and forth images of Pokémon and things would appear, didn’t they? Didn’t you also work on “Pokémon mini”⁴ ?

4	Pokémon mini was an ultra-compact handheld console released in Europe in March of 2002. (Released by the Pokémon Company) Approximately 10 pieces of compatible software were released.

Yes, that was a very small handheld games console, and while it had a black and white LCD display, it actually allowed you to change software. I was also involved in the development of the special cartridge for “WarioWare: Twisted!”⁵

5	WarioWare: Twisted! is a GBA game released in Japan in October of 2004. It is a twisting action puzzle game.

A gyro sensor was included in the cartridge, so you could play by spinning the actual GBA around. I think that your team prepared the hardware, and Ozawa from “Rhythm Heaven” made the software and then together with your superior, Sakamoto-san, you came and presented it to me. After that…. weren’t you involved in the “Mobile GB Adapter”⁶ too?

6	The Mobile GB adapter is a peripheral for connecting the GBC or the GBA to a mobile phone. You can battle with far away friends and receive data.

I was. Isn’t that enough yet? (laughs) With the “Mobile GB Adapter” you could connect to the internet through your mobile phone to download data and have online battles. I was also involved in the development of “Satellaview”⁷ which attached to the SNES and allowed you to download games from satellites. Although that was quite a long time ago. (laughs)

7	Satellaview was a peripheral for the SNES for receiving data broadcast from satellites. It was possible to play games for free. The service began in Japan in 1995 and ended in 2000.

So why after working on all these projects did you decide to start developing a pedometer?

This wasn’t an idea that we originally thought of ourselves. There was a request from Europe for us to make something fun for the DS using a pedometer. And at about the same time we received a proposal from Creatures⁸ saying that they wanted to make a health tool for the DS using a pedometer. So with that we made a start on the development of the Activity Meter.

8	Creatures Inc. is the developer who made games such as Pokémon Ranger Shadows of Almia (DS) and Nonono Puzzle Chalien (GBA) as well as making the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It is based in Tokyo.

Once you had decided to make a pedometer, how did you start development?

Ummm...

It looks like the development took so long you’ve forgotten. (laughs)

Well, it’s something we began about two years ago…. The first thing that we did was to find out just how many pedometers are sold each year in Japan.

So how many are sold?

We found it was about 4.2 million in a year. This was about two years ago though. So we thought that if 4.2 million are sold every year it wouldn’t hurt for us to make one too. That was the real beginning of the project. So from there we began research into the internal structure, things like the circuitry design.

In the past, pedometers used a mechanical switch, like with “Pokémon Pikachu”⁹, but that isn’t true any more is it?

9	Pokémon Pikachu is a pedometer that lets you become closer friends with the Pikachu in the screen the more you walk. It was released in Japan in March of 1998.

That’s right, in the more recent pedometers, they usually use accelerometers and shock sensors, but back in the time of “Pokémon Pikachu” they used a mechanical device and so had the drawback that if you had it sideways it wouldn’t count your steps.

That’s why you had to fix it to your belt to make sure it stayed the right way up.

That’s right. In order for a pedometer to count your steps no matter which way up you have it, you need to use a dual axis accelerometer or two shock sensors. Thanks to this you can just put it in your pocket or your bag without worrying about which way up it is. Considering elements such as battery life, we decided to pursue a development path using shock sensors which have a low power consumption.

When did Akita-san, who was in charge of the mechanical design join the project?

It was when the internal components such as the circuitry had been decided on. Since you can’t run tests carrying around a bare circuit board, my first task was to build a case to contain it. Then, when the specifications for the circuitry had just about been finalised, the official design began. After that, it becomes quite a long story...

That’s fine with me. (laughs) I had you come here today because I wanted to hear that story.

OK then. I considered how to connect the Activity Meter to the DS software, and thought that using the Game Boy Advance Game Pak slot on the DS would probably be the most obvious way.

In other words you tried to make a GBA Game Pak function as a pedometer.

Yes. After carrying around the cartridge you could return home, put it in the DS and then the DS Card would be able to read the data from it. And this is the design we made.

It seems like it’s twice the size of a normal GBA Game Pak.

Since we anticipated people walking around with it in their pocket, if it was a normal cartridge then the connections that go into the hardware would be exposed.

That could easily lead to a malfunction. There might be lots of dust in your pocket, and if you are going walking you might get sweaty too.

Yes. So then having the Activity Meter fold in three was proposed and we looked into a design like this which would encompass the cartridge. It ended up a bit bigger than a normal cartridge, but we were able to guarantee a certain amount of water resistance. And so the design was finished, the explanation to the Manufacturing Division had taken place, and right when we were about to start the design for mass production... we suddenly had to stop.

For a reason that nobody could have anticipated, we had to upturn the tea table¹⁰ and start again from scratch.

10	“Upturning the tea table” is a humorous phrase used by developers at Nintendo to refer to a sudden and dramatic change of direction suggested at the latter stages of the development process.

Let me explain the reason why production was stopped.

“Walk with me!” was originally intended to be completed much earlier, but the software development was delayed, and in Japan the release date overlapped with that of the Nintendo Nintendo DSi. As I’m sure you know, the Nintendo DSi doesn’t have a slot for the GBA Game Pak, so you wouldn’t be able to play this game unless you had an original DS or a DS Lite. I thought that the customers who bought the Nintendo DSi wouldn’t appreciate it very much if we went ahead and released it in this fashion, so we decided to stop production.

It was really tough then. It’s wasn’t easy to come out and say “I’m sorry. Let’s go and remake it in a different way” when everyone had put so much work into making it.

The sight of you looking so crestfallen when you got up to leave my office is burned into my brain. I’m sure it was a big shock for you too when you heard the news, Akita-san.

Of course when I heard the news it was a shock. But since it wasn’t going to be in cartridge format it meant that we would be able to make it more compact, and I decided to reimagine it afresh.

You didn’t need to make it the right size to fit the cartridge slot anymore.

But it meant a new problem came up. How could we transmit the data from the Activity Meter to the DS Card?

When it was in the cartridge format you could transmit the data just by inserting it into the DS.

So that’s why working out how to connect it became our main challenge. There were lots of ways to make the connection, but we talked with the staff from the circuit group and we decided that using an infrared connection would be best. We didn’t need to transfer much data and it didn’t cost much to make. However...

However?

Yet another new problem appeared. DS Game Cards are really small and thin. Just where could we put an IR communications port on a card like that?

I see. The designers never imagined anyone putting an IR port on the Game Card when it was first being designed.

That’s why it was necessary to modify the Game Card. It didn’t look all that great, but we thought about having the IR port stick out the top of the Game Card.

But when we did that, if you just pushed it a little, the DS Card would snap out of the DS console.

With it sticking out the top of the Game Card it made it easier to catch.

We thought about using a lock function to stop the card snapping out, but when we added that it just made it even more cumbersome.

It would be hard for it to clear the drop test, one of Nintendo’s traditions, with a bit sticking out like that too.

Having it that big was a problem for us, and while we were trying all kinds of things to solve it, a staff member from the circuit group came running up and handed us a small component. When we used this IR port and doubled over the circuit board for the Game Card, we were able to get it to fit inside perfectly.

However, this kind of circuit board structure wasn’t something that we’d done at Nintendo before and some people were worried about whether we would be able to mass produce it. But thanks to the work of the staff at the Uji plant, we began to see some promise on the mass production front.

So you just about managed to solve the problem with the DS Game Card, but what about the Activity Meter?

At that point the insides of the circuitry were just about finalised and the size had also been pretty much determined. But, and this was a problem back from when we had been making it in a cartridge format, this time we really wanted to increase the water resistance.

You could take advantage of the opportunity that starting over again gave you.

That’s right. So what we ended making was this. This was made before the designers had worked on it, so the design isn’t all that great.

It’s a lot more compact than the cartridge design was.

Yes, that’s why I was full of confidence when I went to take it over to Shimomura-san.

And what did he say?

He said, “What’s this? It’s huge!”

(laughs)

I said, “This isn’t any good at all. You have to start over!”

Why did you need to go that far?

The concept we decided on right at the beginning of this project was to make a pedometer without a pace display (LCD screen). We thought it would help people to enjoy the software if they could just walk around normally during the day without paying too much attention to it, and then find out how much they had walked when they turn on the software at the end of the day. And since there wasn’t a LCD it meant we could make it really compact. I wanted to make something that people wouldn’t believe was a pedometer if you showed it to them. But the prototype I was shown then was far bigger than I had been imagining and I thought “how come they can’t they make anything smaller than this?” Although I felt sorry for Akita-san.

It must have been a real shock to have the apple-cart upturned on you a second time, Akita-san?

But my job is to design the case for the circuit board. So I walked over to the circuit group and just repeated Shimomura-san’s words straight to them. “This isn’t any good at all. You have to start over!”

(laughs)

When I told them, “it needs to be smaller!” the staff from the circuit group really worked hard. They started the design again from scratch, even the placement of the screws, and in order to make it just as small as possible, they kept making very fine adjustments, again and again, and in the end what we came up with was this.

See, you can do it when you try. (laughs)

Now this really is quite small.

While we’ve of course made it smaller, with this round shape, like a piece of soap, it won’t bother you at all if you put it in your pocket. It doesn’t hurt even if it rolls around onto its side.

It seems like you even did tests to see if it would hurt if you stepped on it with bare feet. (laughs) By the way, this compact Activity Meter has a special feature you won’t find in your average pedometer, doesn’t it?

Do you mean the function to record your step data for each minute?

Why did you decide to include a feature like that?

There are a lot of pedometers out there, and you can see the total number of steps you have taken in one day, but there wasn’t anything that would let you look more in more detail with the number of steps for each minute. So we made it so it could record the number of steps you take in each minute and gradually build up that data. We thought if we added that function to the hardware in advance they would be able to do something interesting with it on the software side.

In other words, even though you didn’t know how you were going to use it, you added a function that hadn’t been seen in pedometers before. Was that your idea Shimomura-san?

I think maybe my intuition just happened to be working well. As a hardware technician for Nintendo, I’ve had lots of opportunities to think about what kind of fun things you can do when you add all sorts of features to new hardware. That’s why, as far as cost allows, if I find something that looks like it could do something interesting, as a hardware technician, I just want to add it no matter what. After that it’s just a matter of passing the baton to the software developers, saying, “I’m sure you’ll find a use for this function, so I’ve gone ahead and put it in there”.

There is a small lamp (an indicator) attached to this pedometer and when you reach your target number of steps it changes from red to green. Was that also your intuition?

That’s right. Normally lamps like this change colour to indicate that the battery is running low. But since with this device the software will let you know when the battery is low, we thought up another use for it. I thought that if the colour changes when you reach a target number of steps we could come up with an interesting way of using that later. So even I couldn’t picture the finished product at that stage. I just thought, “Right, my part of the work is done, Morimura-san, the rest is up to you. Make something interesting now!”

You really did unveil those developments with impeccable timing. (laughs) Now then, let’s hear a little about the software.

Morimura-san, thanks for waiting. By the way, you were one of the first members of the “Userbase Expansion Project”¹¹, weren’t you?

11	The Userbase Expansion Project is a project across all the departments in Nintendo which began with the launch of the DS. Members were assembled from a number of development departments and exchanged ideas about software to expand the game playing population.

Yes. At the time I was part of the Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, but in that project there were representatives from all sorts of departments within the company, and there were also people from departments not related to software development, so I learned that there are all kinds of perspectives on the issue.

It was from that project that the original model for “Brain Training” and the key word “Brain Age” emerged. Morimura-san was a member of the team who suggested I consider making Brain Training on the DS. After that, he transferred to the Network Service Development Department, and this is his first project there. How did you first think you would bring it all together?

When I joined this project, the basic model for the Activity Meter was pretty much finished, so I began by thinking about what kind of things we could do with the software using the Activity Meter that they had built.

When you say the Activity Meter, you mean the cartridge design, right?

That’s right. The one that they built first. So I thought I should add some fun ways to play that you don’t find with normal pedometers and which are characteristic of Nintendo. So we got everyone together, thinking up plans and building all kinds of prototypes.

At the time, the Activity Meter didn’t have a name, and it was called by the development code “DHC”. I didn’t know for a long time, but it turns out that DHC is an abbreviation of “DS Hosuukei (Pedometer) Cartridge”. (laughs)

That’s right. The software was going by the working title “Mii Walk”. I thought that Mii characters (characters that resemble you) would work really well with this software. I thought if you could put a Mii on screen as your own double you’d be able to feel a link to your actual lifestyle. As you walk every day, your total step count gradually builds up, and I thought that you should be able to use that to do something fun.

So what kind of things will you be able to do as your step count increases?

For example, as you walk more each day your in-game Mii will be able to go to various places around the world and leave a monument there. This feature is still there in the finished version, and I had thought that this map of the world you build as you walk around could become the centrepiece of the game, but…

It wasn’t the centrepiece.

No, Iwata-san pointed out that just leaving monuments behind on the Earth wouldn’t lead to enough motivation to continue every day. I had quite a lot of trouble trying to find a good solution.

On the other hand, the Activity Meter was just about finished, so I thought for the time being I’d have the board members take home the product as we had it and hear their honest opinions about it.

I was made to take it home. At the end of last year. (laughs) I was told to test play it over the new-year holiday.

We held a conference after the holidays, but the response we got wasn’t all that great. (Shigeru) Miyamoto-san¹² said that it wasn’t clear what the software was trying to do.

12	Shigeru Miyamoto is the Senior Managing Director of Nintendo Co. Ltd. He is the creator of Mario.

The response from everyone who had tested it regarding the hardware was very good. But they said that we should be able to do something more with the software. I think that the “world map” that Morimura-san had been thinking of as the centrepiece is also one part of the fun of the game. As a game for a pedometer it is visual and elegant. But, it is a bit limited to have as the centrepiece. I just couldn’t think that I’d want to keep going at it every day just to progress round the planet. So I thought that, with the game like this, most people wouldn’t keep going every day.

If I think about it now, at the time I was still trapped by thinking within the boundaries of existing pedometers. The original base for the plan was to make a fun game with a pedometer and I was thinking that as you walk more, your step count builds up and as a result you should be able to do something fun.

That’s why we were calling it Mii Walk. Your Mii would walk around, building up a high step count and then be able to get a reward.

But most people aren’t thinking that they want to walk around a lot.

Right. If there wasn’t something about it that could hold the attention of people who aren’t interested in walking a lot then this game wouldn’t spread very far. So, when was it that Mizuki came to join the project?

It was right at the time of that conference with the not so great response. I was present there, and listening to everyone’s responses. There was some really harsh feedback…

Did it really feel that harsh? (laughs)

Just a little. (laughs) So then I thought about what I’d be able to do, and as soon as the conference had finished I went over to Shimomura-san and told him that I wanted to help.

Mizuki-san is really just like a relief pitcher.

A relief pitcher? Like in baseball?

That’s right. The starting pitcher, Morimura-san was facing a big pinch after taking some big hits from the board members, and unable to bear it, he calls for the relief pitcher.

(laughs)

Well that’s just about how I came to join the project. (laughs)

So then, Mizuki, you come in and provide the relief and what is the first thing that you do?

First I asked the members of my own group to have a play with it and did some refinement with those opinions as reference. At the same time as that was moving forward, I thought about whether there was a way to use the step data per minute that Shimomura-san had proposed. Iwata-san spoke to me about this feature a number of times.

I felt that the first thing I wanted to see when I got home and sent my Activity Meter data to my DS was the step data for each minute. But with the prototype I took home over New Year, it was buried deep into the menu, as if it was being treated just as a bonus feature.

At the time it wasn’t in the specifications for you to be able to see it straight away. But, in February the Tokyo marathon was being held, and as one of our staff members was participating in it and, partly as a test, we had him run with the Activity Meter. Then when we looked at the per minute data after the race it was really interesting. At that time we already had the data displayed as a bar chart, and we could see that there was a gap of about 5 minutes there. Everyone got excited, saying “Ah here’s where he went to the toilet”.

Also, the number of steps per minute would change according to your running speed, so I’m sure it was interesting to be able to see how you ran afterwards.

Some people would get tired and sometimes stop, and because that period of time comes up blank you find out exactly when you were resting and for how long. So thanks to the Tokyo marathon, we decided to strengthen the per minute data recording section, for example making it possible to add memos to the data.

Well, that may be fun for the kind of people who can compete in the Tokyo marathon, but isn’t that a rather limited number of people?

If you are living a normal regular lifestyle, a similar pattern will be recorded every day, so it might feel a bit mundane or lose its freshness.

Unless there is a special event, it will feel like every day is just the same thing.

That point became a real key issue for us, and I had a number of discussions about it with Morimura-san.

So, Morimura-san, when was it that you came to see the light?

It was when I was riding on the train. I had gone with Mizuki-san to have a meeting with the development company and late at night on the train back to Kyoto when I was talking to Mizuki-san…

You hear a lot nowadays about so-called “lifestyle-related diseases”. Let’s say , for example, that you hardly walk at all on Sunday morning. When you look at the per minute data it would be clear as day that your activity levels were low.

And so we thought that it might be pretty good if we made it into a game that measured your lifestyle, and we both got really excited.

You saw the light when you were on the late night train. (laughs)

So the next morning we went straight to discuss it with Shimomura-san, he got it right away and said “Maybe we could call that ‘life rhythm’”.

So it was Shimomura-san who thought of the keyword “life rhythm”. I thought it had a nice ring to it from the first time I heard it too.

I’m normally told that the suggestions I come up with are no good, and they get rejected. (laughs)

To have a good life rhythm can also mean that you have a regular lifestyle. That’s why I thought that if a similar pattern of data is recorded every day, you can think of it not as being “Ah, today was just more of the same”, but instead take it in a positive way thinking “Ah, I had a good life rhythm today.”

Before that we had only looked at the per minute data at the level of a single day. But, when we made it so you could compare per week, per month or for a certain day of the week we were able to see something we couldn’t before.

For example, when I looked back at the level of two or three months, in my case the number of steps in August was quite large. I was able to praise myself for doing a lot of exercise over the Obon holiday.

For me, after we entered the final stages of development, the time I was arriving back home was getting later and later each day. So when I looked back at the data for my weekly levels, the period during which I was making it home later was clearly visible in the step data. Seeing this almost made me glad I was doing overtime. (laughs)

(laughs)

Even within my own lifestyle I became able to see things I couldn’t before and truly felt that this could really work.

There is actually something that I felt with both Brain training and Wii Fit. That is, that they both enabled you to see and measure something you couldn’t before. And I think that this game also shares this quality with regards to the fun in seeing changes. And so then it felt very strange when we found the keyword “life rhythm” and became able to see what we couldn’t before. By the way, the Japanese title is “Walk and find out. Lifestyle Rhythm DS”, but why did you decide on this?

Well, first of all, life rhythm also lumps in things like what time you ate and how long you slept for.

The phrase life rhythm is fundamentally related to what time you get up and go to sleep and your three meals a day, isn’t it?

That’s right. Just by itself, walking isn’t determining your life rhythm. But though looking at your per minute step data over weeks or months from all kinds of angles, we thought it might help you become more aware of your life rhythm.

In other words, everybody has their own life rhythm and there is a part of it that they can find out about through walking.

That’s right. So then, to make it easier to learn about your lifestyle, we thought about it evaluating your average lifestyle pattern, like with a “brain age”, but we couldn’t’ get it to work. Everybody’s life rhythm is different after all, and it just ended up being pushy.

Then, we had a suggestion from the developers at Creatures and Engines¹³that when you are looking at your daily data it could compare you to an animal. For example, it could say “you are a morning koala type” and you could reflect that oh, come to mention it I was like a koala and didn’t move at all.

13	Creatures is a Japanese toy company established in 1995. Engines is a software development company established in 2005, with a core of members with 10-20 years in game development and other members with careers in 3D modelling, publishing, communication design and film production.

Also, through comparing you to animals it makes it easier to talk about it with your friends. Instead of being told “yesterday I walked 8000 steps”, what would you think if you were told “yesterday I was a night bat”?

You were off wandering around at night. (laughs)

Also, we’ve added “mini goals”. Every day a certain topic concerning your health is given out.

We got the idea for the mini goals from Creatures and Engines who supported the development of this project, and they thought of all kinds of ideas for us.

For example, really obvious goals like “Eat something you don’t like” or “Walk as much as you can using stairs” are presented, and we hope that with this you might become just a little bit more conscious of your life rhythm and your lifestyle may become just a little bit better.

Even if you don’t complete the mini goals it won’t evaluate you negatively at all. You just have to do a self evaluation, answering whether you completed them or not.

In other words, it is like a daily routine.

That’s right. It’s just like a daily routine. The Activity Meter is very compact so it isn’t a problem just to keep it in your pocket. That’s why I hope that people will keep it on them the whole time from when they wake up to when they go to bed, that it becomes a habit like brushing your teeth.

Why did you decide to sell the game with two of these Activity Meters?

One is for yourself and one is for your dog. (laughs)

Of course, it’s fine to use it for your family too! (laughs)

Akita-san, you really love dogs don’t you?

Yes. I have a miniature dachshund at home, but he really hates it when I try to make him wear clothes or anything. So back when the Activity Meter was still in cartridge format, I took it home to try out, but he didn’t like it at all…

He wouldn’t walk a single step, would he? Why did you think of measuring the number of steps a dog takes in the first place?

When this project first began, I thought about why people walk, and while I took the dog for a walk around the neighbourhood, I watched all the people who were walking. I saw that a lot of other people were taking their dogs for a walk too. So I thought it would be pretty amazing if people would attach the Activity Meter not just to themselves but also to their dogs.

That is pretty amazing. In terms of your business sense anyway! (laughs)

(laughs)

How was your dog after that?

The second Activity Meter that I made him wear was the one that I thought I had made pretty small, but even still he didn’t like it and refused to move. But when he wore the Activity Meter with the final design, not only did he not hate it he barely seemed to notice it. He would go for a walk as normal and play around with a ball while he was still wearing it. That’s why, when we met with not the first, but the second complete overturning of the tea table, I felt that you had to be joking, but now, I’m really truly grateful.

(laughs)

How do you attach it to the dog?

I’ve brought a picture of my dog here today so…

Ah look, he’s wearing it.

At first I thought about putting it in a bag, or attaching a strap and having it hang down, but it would swing about and not measure the number of steps accurately. So I decided to make this clip at short notice.

Just by changing the back cover you can add a clip to the Activity Meter.

The game will be sold with two Activity Meters so we will also be throwing in two of these purpose-built clips for no extra charge.

Once again the businessperson. (laughs)

(laughs)

I hope people will use this hook to attach it to their dog’s collar or harness.

Of course, there are also customers who don’t have dogs. And sometimes, especially in the case of women, they wear clothes without any pockets. In such cases, they could put it in their bag, but they would also be able to attach it somewhere with the clip.

I just hope that they will attach it to their dogs. (laughs)

You can easily talk about having a dog wear a pedometer, but their movements are bound to be different to those of a human, it must not have been easy to verify the step count.

And if it is a small dog they are always scampering around.

And they have 4 legs too.

So we had a discussion about whether it should count with the front paws or the back paws or with all 4 paws together, and in the end we decided to have it count with just the front legs. Then, in the end, with the cooperation of a local dog park we verified that it would count properly with each breed of dog. There were all kinds of dogs in the dog park, from big to small, and we attached the Activity Meter to 25 breeds of dogs and we filmed them while taking them for a walk. We took the video back to the company and replayed it in slow motion, making sure that the step count matched for each section.

I’m amazed, you didn’t cut any corners even for dogs.

That’s right. Of course, the validation for humans also involved a lot of people over some time. The development staff would put it in their bags and walk as fast as they could, or keep dashing up and down slopes! It was strange to see all those people wandering around with no purpose in the large development room. (laughs). To make sure that it counted correctly they were counting “one, two, three, four” while they were walking around, which just made it all the stranger. (laughs)

Like a middle school sports club. (laughs)

We drove around and around the company car park, and took lots of bus trips. After all kinds of validation experiments like that we established a reference value to prevent false positives. When you continue walking for about 10 seconds or more, the paces will be counted from the first step. This is to make it harder for false positives to occur from riding in cars and on buses. However, it means that small numbers of steps, such as when you are making dinner in the kitchen, won’t always be counted, but after a lot of thought, we thought that this specification would have the most accuracy for your lifestyle as a whole.

I see.

Since we had checked with my dog too, I definitely wanted to use the Activity Meter together with him. There are also some other interesting features. A feature called “Illuminate!” is included in the game which lets you know who it was in the family that took him for a walk afterwards.

In other words, there is a mode where your Mii will become happy if you walk together at the same time as someone else. You come back from your walk with the dog, and when the game collects the data, both yourself and the dog say ‘Synchro!’

That’s how you know who it was that took the dog for a walk, and when it synchronised I felt a strange sense of unity with my dog, it made me really happy.

Of course you don’t feel a sense of unity with just your dog. I often come home from work late at night, but when I got home one day and uploaded the data it synchronised with my wife at about one in the afternoon. I thought to myself, “Oh, when I was coming back from lunch she was off shopping. She really is alive at home while I am off at work.” And so I would think really fondly of her…

(laughs)

In other words, what you find out by walking is not just your own life rhythm, but also the life rhythm of your family.

There is a lot of meaning behind including two Activity Meters with the game. A wife who is worried about her husband’s weight might ask him to join her in using Walk With Me! and hand him one of the Activity Meters.

And when she finds out that on weekdays he just sits at his desk at the company doing work, it can lead to a conversation about going out for walks on his day off.

If you were just competing over the number of steps, discussion wouldn’t get much further than “I walked 6000 steps today” with a reply of “Then let's try and walk more tomorrow”. But if, for example, you give an Activity Meter to your child, you can make new discoveries such as “Ah, so he’s walking around at this time of day”.

I think there are lots of fun ways to use it like that, so I hope that people will play it with their whole family. We are selling it together with two Activity Meters, but for those who need 3 or 4 it is also possible to buy them separately. One Activity Meter including tax comes to 1800 yen. (about 15 euros)

(laughs)

Well then, since the business person amongst us has come into his element, we should probably start summing things up. Could you please tell me what you paid the most attention to and give some words of recommendation to the customers? Let’s start with Shimomura-san.

I think that most of all I’d like them to use it for a long time. The Activity Meter has been designed supposing 10 years of use. A little earlier we talked about upturning the tea table with the Activity Meter, but part of the reason we decided the original design wasn’t good enough was because we were thinking about whether we had built something that could last for 10 years. Since it is a product that has been built with those feelings and attention to that aspect, I hope that you will make use of it for many years.

OK then, Akita-san.

OK. Well the thing I paid the most attention to was making the Activity Meter compact. At one time there was a problem with the interior components and it was suggested that we make it a bit bigger, but partly since this was the only thing I could make my dog wear without him hating it, I definitely wanted to keep it this size.

Since even your dog doesn’t mind it, it means that people wouldn’t notice wearing it at all either, doesn’t it?

I think so. But when you are walking your dog there are lots of places you stop, when your dog wants to sniff something or if you talk to a neighbour. That’s why even if you think you have spent plenty of time walking, the amount of exercise your dog has done is actually less than you had thought. So then you can decide in advance a target for how many paces you want your dog to walk, and when the lamp on the Activity Meter changes from red to green you can think “Yes! We’ve reached the walk quota for today.” Especially with all the talk about overweight dogs recently, I really recommend this to all the dog lovers in the country.

Morimura-san, you next.

Hoping that all kinds of people will use it, from a one year old who has just begun to walk to grandparents who love to walk, and of course dogs, I have tried to make it as simple and easy to use as I could. Shimomura-san mentioned it already, but I really do hope that people will use it for a long time.

Since you specially spent such a long time making it too. (laughs) Last but not least, Mizuki-san.

Like Morimura-san said, I’m anticipating a wide range of people enjoying this product. As testers for this project, we had employees in their 50s and 60s who aren’t involved in development evaluate it from the perspective of customers. We received lots of pointers on which parts might be difficult for seniors to understand and went on to rectify them. As well as hearing the opinions of people that don’t know much about games, we also had developers with lots of experience on practical software like Brain Training and received lots of pointers so that everybody will be able to play it without getting confused. That’s why I don’t think there is going to be anybody who doesn’t know how to use it. I really want a lot of people to enjoy this game.

Then let me say a bit to finish. I wonder if people are going to see things they couldn’t before, become conscious of that and use it as a chance to change themselves. Then maybe talk to others about what they couldn’t see before and before you realise it the whole country is walking more than they used to. While it’s unusual, I do hope that lots of people will embrace this game. Thank you very much everybody.