You know how in Wii Fit when you start an account it takes a measurement of your body weight and tries to apply it correctly to your Mii? More often that not it just ends up making you look like a pudgy roll of dough instead of the ripped stud you know you are. Well, it looks like Microsoft may be angling at getting in on some of that hot self-loathing action as 1up recently found that the software giant has filed a patent titled “Avatar Individualized by Physical Characteristic”.
How exactly is Microsoft going to get your waist size, though? According to the patent, information about your body’s various metrics will be obtained via a “third party health data collection repository”, which is described in the document as a “health care smart-card.”
It gets better, though. If you opt into this digital boot camp, you can limit yourself on the amount of time your able to spend playing your console, or get access to more time by having the smart-card recognize that you’re losing weight. I’m all for bettering oneself, but there’s more efficient ways to do it than having a video game console yell at you or limit your time on it. If you really want to improve yourself, you take actual real steps like dieting and exercising. I really do hope this is entirely optional, because if Wii Fit has taught me anything, it’s that body sensors really cannot give an accurate depiction of a person. What do you guys think? Is this just one more WTF move from the sometimes perplexing New X-Box Experience? Is Microsoft barking up the wrong tree?
Source: 1up