AiLive

From Rare Gaming Dump

AiLive (formerly known as iKuni) was a company that helped Nintendo by developing motion software for the Wii. They also co-developed the Wii MotionPlus. It was launched on April 13, 2000 which was the same time BroadOn launched. Like BroadOn, AiLive was founded by a Chinese-American entrepreneur named Wei Yen. The company said that they "made 100M+ homes less sweaty".

Middleware

It's unknown what the company did during the GameCube era when they were known as iKuni.

During the Wii era, they worked on middleware for the Wii called LiveMove. It was used in many dancing games like Just Dance. LiveMove was also licensed to Sony to use on the PlayStation 3 for their PlayStation Move controller, which uses motion sensors just like Wii Remotes do. Based on what the company said on their website, you could make motions using the Wii Remote easily and be able to capture them and used them in games. So for Just Dance, someone could dance and the movements would be matched up in the actual game.

There were 2 versions of LiveMove: LiveMove Pro and LiveMove 2 (probably optimized for use with the Wii MotionPlus). They also had middleware called LiveAI, which seems to implement machine learning.

Location

The company was headquartered in California. Looking up their address actually showed it being in the same office as BroadOn was (in Mountain View, California and the office now being used for a school owned by Khan Academy called Khan Lab School), but another source says it was headquartered in Sunnyvale. It is also not clear what this company did before the Wii age.

After Wii

After the Wii age, they said they were working on something new, but that remains unknown as the company has shut down according to employees of the company. While Just Dance games continued to come out on the Wii which used LiveMove, the Wii U counterparts use it as well. AiLive's site is no longer up.