http://www.cnbc.com/id/31084652/page/2/

(From a more general article on Nintendo and hardware):

In our one-on-one interview, though, Iwata showed a brief video about the product that he had compiled and edited on his flight from Japan to Los Angeles days ago.

The video showed Iwata himself demonstrating the product and revealed a bit more about how the sensor would work. Light pulses will be sent through the user’s finger, tracking their pulse and showing other items, such as their stress level. It also demonstrated some of the possible games/applications for the Vitality Sensor, including one that helped train users how to breath in a more rhythmic fashion, then showed the before and after effects of collecting one’s self.

Iwata said he hopes to launch the product in 2010.

While biofeedback and tools to calm one’s self might sound like a hard sell to fast-paced Americans, the Nintendo president says he is confident the company can make it work.

"The U.S. market might be challenging," he concedes, "but everybody was skeptical of the sales potential [of 'Brain Age']. Even after the Japanese sale showed results, people in the U.S. were skeptical. 'It's just a Japan thing that can't be translated to the US market.’ [they thought]."

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It seems as if Nintendo has some plan for its finger sensor after all.  It should be interesting to see what it does with it.  But this is already more information than anyone else seems to have.

Mike from Morgantown

It doesn't seem like something that will catch the worlds attention like their other devices, but who knows what they'll come up with to try and push it.

i hope u can fire a laser beam with the device in games. that would be nice.

i just hope they can use it to make more adaptive games, give the ai a tool to help get inside our heads to take gaming to the next level

Here is one potential use -- from a third-party (Seta) N64 heartrate monitor

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/06/nintendo-vitality-sensor/

Nintendo ‘Vitality Sensor’ Already Appeared on N64

* By Chris Kohler

LOS ANGELES — The Wii Vitality Sensor, Nintendo’s strangest announcement of its E3 lineup, seems even stranger when you know that it has its roots in a nearly-identical Nintendo 64 device.

Produced by Seta and released in 1998 alongside Tetris 64, the “Bio Sensor” did exactly what the Wii Vitality Sensor does — reads a player’s pulse as they play a game. It did it by clipping onto their earlobes, rather than their index fingers. In this particular title, you could have the game of Tetris either speed up or slow down as your heart rate increased. The former game mode would allow you to relax when things got too tense, and the latter would force you to control your reactions if you didn’t want the game to get uncontrollably difficult.

A clever concept, but one that ultimately went nowhere — Tetris 64 didn’t even make it out of Japan. One wonders if Nintendo has more compelling software for the accessory, this time around. If it does, it didn’t show it at E3, making the Vitality Sensor announcement a stumble for the company: An old device with no new software isn’t going to get anybody’s pulse racing.

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This shows that Wired editors can read Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_64) but not necessarily CNBC.

Mike from Morgnatown

while intriguing, unless they make an Eternal Darkness kind of game where your heart rate effects you like the sanity meeter did, I really don't see myself ever getting this.

Lol that's the same thing I thought of.  Apart from that I don't see how this could be useful.  Even then as discussed the fact this device takes up the socket for attaching the nunchuck makes it unlikely we will see it used with core games.

they could easily change the adapter so it was like the WM+, but that sitll doesn't change the fact that you need an extra finger so you can hold the controls and have the vitality sensor on at the same time. Even if you could, I still don't think it has a lot of good applications.

Man someone already mentioned Eternal Darkness haha. Yea this game would be quite useful in something like that to affect the sanity meter.

But any kind of horror game that would work as a way to determine your character's stress. Kinda a niche product but it could have its uses for some traditional video games.

I actually like the Tetris 64 idea and I think a poker or simple bluff game would be pretty funny too.

If it's bundled with some original Nintendo ideas, I think I'll buy it for a reasonable price.