Out of all the things at E3 that Square-Enix could have showed invested interest in: the new, streamlined PSP, the mysterious possibilities of Home, the ever-growing functionality of Xbox Live – it decided to publicly swoon over … the Wii Balance Board?
That’s right. Akira Toriyama and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings producer Eisuke Yokoyama, in an interview with IGN, have expressed some genuine curiosity in Nintendo’s contribution to a healthier gaming world:
Right now we’re mostly interested in Wii Fit. We’re really intrigued by it. There are no actual plans to take Final Fantasy into the fitness genre, but that whole system and mechanism of using your weight and balance to control games is something we’re interested in incorporating into future RPG titles.
Even though by no stretch of my imagination can I comprehend how this new control scheme will be incorporated into an RPG, I am excited that major publishers are embracing some much-needed change to the industry and stepping (no pun intended) out of the box to make that happen.
This news is also of note as it kind of confirms Square-Enix’s plans for more Wii RPGs in the future. What those will be, though, is anybody’s guess.
What do you think? Are you excited by this growing trend of more physically interactive videogames? Any thoughts on how the Wii Balance Board really could be incorporated into an RPG? Seriously, I am still totally confused.