LMAO yay! I caused a quandry!

I know what you're saying and I agree, it won't radically change gaming as motion controls have, and that's because motion controls have yet to hit their point of inflection. Basically for a disruptive innovation (motion controls) to overtake a sustaining one (graphical enhancement), the sustaining innovation has to be slowing in it's progress or in the case of gaming, fewer and fewer people see a difference basically.

Vitality Sensor is going to be a disruptive innovation in that it is not within the exact same set of values as motion controls are right now. Instead of active, social and intuitiveness, the Vitality Sensor is hitting on values such as calmness, stress relief and wellness. The way it'll work is it'll sell to those that don't feel as though the Wii is a possible purchase at this time. If however, it is supported well, it may become disruptive and move upmarket with horror titles for instance that the core Nintendo user may be interested in or it could be used in a party game for the current expanded audience to enjoy.

Sorry If I'm a bit all over the place but my mother just had a baby boy :P

Imagine in lets say a game like Eternal darkness, the more 'freaked out you are' the more messed up the game gets

I've seen some of the videos for ED, and what's jumping out at me is that the game changes based on what your character experiences. In that scenario, it's awesome, because you have full control over it, well, to some extent.
Basing it off of pulse rate would be difficult for gamers to control. To talk about the erratic heart rates I mentioned earlier, it's not a joke. It cannot be simply "baselined" and differentiated because of several key ideas which all spawn from the inherent fact that it must record beats per MINUTE.

"Why", you might ask? Check your pulse for a full minute. Pulse changes erratically based on things like air quality, breathing speed, sitting position, and more. What about smokers or people drinking caffeine? The game will change simply because you had a soda, or even based on the time of day. Even while in the same position, the heart does not beat at a steady pace, it jumps, and does other things because of biological processes. Then on top of that, you are goig to be waving a wiimote around, further affecting your heart rate. It just doesn't seem very plausible.
I do think there will be some games for it, and I can now think of some that might use it, but as far as fun factor, I don't see it changing much.

Vitality Sensor's applications in traditional games are going to be minimal and gimmicky, if at all. The Balance Board has more to offer in that field than the Vitality Sensor could hope for. I also honestly think that this "horror game" that Reggie and Iwata keep tossing around is a red herring to stall the ire of the internet, in that such a game won't come from Nintendo, but is merely a possibility that someone else could work on.

I do think, however, that this little thing could really broaden the spectrum of what Nintendo is trying to do with "lifestyle games," and really branch out from the Wii's current conception of Fitness (as an active engagement), to an overall idea of Wellness (as Puffy said)

The Vitality Sensor is Nintendo reaching past the facade of gaming, and into something different, something that could potentially be a great disruptor. But this is all speculation until we see some software.

Give Nintendo a chance to show what it does.

Nah, we only need to wait 'till Pachter says the vitality sensor will flop.

Then we can be sure it'll be as big as Wii fit. =D

To address the first point about ED, well no you don't really have control over it until such point as you a very good at the game, can easily kill all your enemies and never lose sanity.  Alternatively you can use magik to restore your sanity but you can't easily do that if you are surrounded by enemies.

(skip to the last sentence if you want the short version)

Secondily a few misconceptions.  Pulse is quoted as beats per minute it's not recorded as such.  Have you ever seen a doctor take someone's pulse for a full minute?  Typically it's recorded over 5-10 seconds and then you do the necessary multiplication in your head. A pulse oximeter works the same way, it records your heart rate for several seconds and then calculates the bpm from that.  It would be impossible and very impracticle for the machine to count beats for a full minute before updating the stats. The vitality sensor likely can update your heart rate every few seconds.

Finally heart rate is not nearly so erratic as you seem to think.  This is a slight simplification but basically in  a person without heart disease you can have a regular pulse or a regularly irregular pulse and that's it.  The latter is a regular varition of the pulse in some people associated with breathing  and is repeating and predictable.  All other variations are just increases or decreases in rate, if someone suddenly develops an irregular rate then there is something wrong with their heart. The machine could reasonably test a baseline heart rate for you before each session of the game based on a few seconds recording in a sitting position  and as long as you hadn't done anything like running up three flights of stairs before playing the game it would be ok.   Now any other factors like time of day, position (unless you go from lying to standing while playing), caffeine etc might have a slight effect on your resting rate but your heart is still going to react as it normally would in terms of increasing or decreasing rate in reponse to stimuli or need. Now sure something like drinking a few strong coffees while playing the game could potentially mess up the readings but if you have your Wii-mote strapped to one hand and the Vitality sensor to the other it's going to be really hard to pick up a coffee cup anyway so i don't think it's going to be a problem ;)

I still question myself how well this can all be integrated into gameplay but measuring a baseline heart rate at the start of each gaming session and measuring changes from that at short intervals is not that difficult.

I agree, look at Nintendo's balance board support outside of Wii Fit.. It extends to Wii Music and Punch-Out!! Nintendo won't release any core games for the Vitality Sensor. If it really takes off then they may in a year or two after it's launch.

Nintendo will release Wii Vitality Q3/Q4 next year with a huge marketing campaign about stress levels, sleeping patterns and general wellness which will expand the market. Of course anybody that listens to Iwata will notice that market expansion is the number one agenda for Nintendo with DS and Wii. It's quite amazing what they've done with Wii; Wii Sports, Wii Fit and Wii Vitality all position Wii far away from the video gaming stereotypes of former years.

Yes, I actually forgot to mention that recordings only happened for 5-10 seconds, which was the point of everything.

If your pulse double jumps once in 5-10 seconds, which it does a lot, your pulse rate will be calculated as having jumped 6-12 bpm. If you bring your feat up to your chest it will do the same, possibly more. While taking a pulse at the doctor doesn't require 100% accurate pulse rate because there is a range of health spanning nearly 60 beats per minute, having incremental adjustments in a game is going to be necessary. Of course they could just up the range between pulse rates, but then, how much is it going to take to see any differences.

Plus, you don't hold the sensor, it clips to your finger.

@theprof00

(I'll preface this by saying i'm assuming the vitality sensor works like a pulse ox, it does look exactly the same)

"If your pulse double jumps once in 5-10 seconds," See my above point about sinus arrhythmia. The other thing to note that after this "double jump" the interval to the next heart beat is usually signficantly longer meaning that over several seconds of monitoring it averages out. Try this by feeling your pulse, take a deep breath in, hold, then breath out, it exaggerates the phenomena.

The reason that the machines sample every few seconds as opposed to beat to beat is that it allows for this physiological phenomena. Pulse ox could easily be designed to sample every beat and instantly calculate a rate based on the beat to beat interval but it's not practically useful and would provide readings that would fluctuate wildly due to sinus arrhythmia.

You gave the example of lifting your feat to your chest but honestly how often are you going to do this while playing? It would cause a small change in heart rate but it's not sustained and when you recommence playing your heart rate will have returned to its previous value. Is it any different from your wii-mote cursor going of the screen while you scratch your nose?

When sampled over 5-10 second intervals your heart rate does not vary as much as you are suggesting.  By sampling over this 5-10 second interval you get a relatively stable measurement of your heart rate and the pulse ox will only pick up changes in heart rate that are sustained for more than a few beats.

I'll stop now.