Nintendo teamed up with AiLive to make middleware for the Wii. The program called LiveMove allows developers to use the remote to make movements rather than focus on writing code. “In early 2006, I challenged Dr. Wei Yen and his AI scientists to develop AIware for the Wii Remote. When Nintendo’s development teams saw LiveMove, we instantly recognized how it would greatly increase our ability to explore and experiment with new concepts and make our lives easier,” says Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director/General Manager of Integrated Research & Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd. “This revolutionary tool liberates the imaginations of game creators. We are more than happy to share this collaborative LiveMove tool with independent Wii software developers all over the world. From a cowboy’s lasso to a samurai’s sword or a chef’s cooking utensils, we just can’t wait to play the developers’ new, ‘unexpected’ applications.” AiLive is priced at $2,500, which is relatively cheap for such a sophisticated and time saving tool. At this price even smaller garage development teams could pick this up.
Using AiLive looks a lot more fun that a day of C++ coding.