Nintendo's latest internal financial report came with a Tuesday presentation from company president Satoru Iwata, who took the opportunity to announce a new type of product being developed by the game maker: a touchless sleep sensor. (Wait, really?)

Though neither a design nor product name was announced, Iwata repeatedly described a forthcoming "Quality of Life Sensor" meant to sit next to a user's bed during sleep. Overnight, the product will visually record "movements of your body, breathing, and heartbeat," then upload resulting data to Nintendo's cloud servers so that a corresponding app can analyze your sleep and offer suggestions for better rest in the future.

"Fatigue and sleep are themes that are rather hard to visualize in more objective ways," Iwata said. "At Nintendo, we believe that if we could visualize them, there would be great potential for many people regardless of age, gender, language, or culture."

The presentation also explained why a similar Nintendo project, the Wii Vitality Sensor, never made it to market. Iwata stressed important aspects for a health-companion device, saying that such devices worked better when users didn't have to wear, touch, or operate them.

Iwata mentioned the American medical-device firm Resmed as a partner in this project. As it turns out, Resmed's latest product, the S+ Sleep Sensor, sounds nearly identical to the QOS Sensor, as it too performs touchless sleep analysis and syncs with a smartphone app. (The Resmed product, which launched this month, can be yours today for $149.99.) Still, Nintendo insisted that its own Japanese sleep experts, and its "video game know-how of 'hospitality,'" would be key in completing the project.

Other Nintendo news: Sales, pre-downloads

Iwata also cherry-picked a few sales figures, including 3.22 million units of Super Smash Bros. for 3DS sold as of the end of September and 234,000 combined, first-week sales of the redesigned Nintendo 3DS (in normal and "XL" sizes) in Japan earlier this month. Notably, Iwata failed to offer specific numbers for Nintendo Wii U hardware and software sales in his presentation.

However, he did describe a forthcoming change to the Nintendo eShop, which will soon enable shoppers to buy a game online and have it download immediately to a Spotpass-enabled 3DS or Wii U so that it would be ready to play when the shopper gets home. Interested Super Smash Bros. for Wii U shoppers will also soon be able to pre-download that game if they purchase it digitally before the launch date of November 21, while other Wii U and 3DS games can expect similar download functionality starting next year.

We knew after a January presentation that Nintendo had an interest in "non-wearable health monitoring," which sounded like a bold, if vague, declaration beyond the popular Wii Fit product line. Though the presentation repeatedly mentioned a "quality of life platform," Iwata neither mentioned nor implied that other similar devices were in development, and he gave no timetable for when users in Japan, or elsewhere, might expect Nintendo's sensor to reach store shelves.

Instead, he made specific references to the growing smartphone ecosystem around the world, one that Nintendo has long avoided becoming entrenched in. "If we can use [smartphones] to help visually represent sleep and fatigue status, it would be a waste not to make use of them to, for example, check the status or offer service to users," Iwata said. "As with the definition of entertainment, Nintendo is willing to expand the definition of 'platform' without being bound by traditional thinking."