AiLive's LiveMove Brings AI Brains To Wii Developers

AiLive chairman and founder Dr. Wei Yen has told Gamasutra the company has seen fast uptake of the company's new LiveMove motion-learning tool for Nintendo's Wii, and explains what the future holds for both indie and professional Wii developers alike. Speaking to Gamasutra in an exclusive interview, Yen has said that AiLive sent out 400 of the LiveMove kits to developers in the first two days alone, through a partnership with Nintendo. Nintendo themselves, he said, were LiveMove's first users, utilizing the motion-learning tool on a unspecified title. But beyond simply using LiveMove for professional Wii development, Yen stressed that he hopes the tool, which he notes is "almost sold as a give away," will empower independent development as well. "I personally really want to see many, many little games come out," said Yen. "Wii is the perfect system for casual games, and I also feel that because the Wii remote unleashed not just one dimension, but multiple dimensions. So there’s the possibility of many many new games coming out. Many of them will be casual games. If you’ve seen the demo we did on our website, what you see there, we made in a half hour. We used LiveMove and created a game in a half hour. I think if we put that game on the net for people to play, it would be an excellent game." On whether LiveMove could be used for other motion-sensing devices, including PlayStation 3's new Sixaxis controller, Yen could only say, "This is tough for me! Ken (Kutaragi) is also a friend of mine. I mean…it was a cakewalk even for Wii – the PS3 would be even easier. I feel that the idea of using this analog control came from Nintendo. So that’s that. I’ll stop right there. I respect Ken, and he’s been a friend of mine for a long time." "And AiLive is a commercial company, so we would do this with anybody," he added, "but I think the first attempt of bringing this natural control to the game player is from Nintendo. We should give credit where credit is due." You can read the full Gamasutra interview for more from Yen on what it's like to have a human brain inside the Wii's remote.