XaviX PORT

The XaviX PORT is a game console primarily intended for the home fitness market, with a series of games that feature sports peripherals (baseball bats, golf clubs, tennis clubs, etc.) to enhance the sensory experience. Developed by Shinsedai (known as SSD in the US), the console was originally introduced to the US market in August 2004 with Japan following in September of the next year. Unfortunately, technological limitations and strong competition from the much more popular Nintendo Wii in the same game space led to the platform never picking up third party support or much retail success.

Shinsedai was originally founded to produce a series of sensory toys, such as those marketed by Epoch in Japan and originally the XaviX hardware was the processor base around which they built those toys, each its own dedicated console. The XaviX PORT system works with a sensor in the console itself which is designed to be mounted on top of a CRT television, as well as a composite video connector to a television. The physical design of this setup made it a poor fit as consumers migrated to flat screen televisions with HDMI connections. The actual processing hardware is replicated in each cartridge and is a custom overclocked chip based on the WDC 65816, similar to that in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which reflects the company's origins as it was formed by former employees of Nintendo. The console design of putting the processor in each cartridge actually echoes that of Epoch's Cassette Vision.

While achieving limited success and sparse new development after 2008, the system was still sold in Japan through early 2015 and in the United States as late as 2017. A European version, the Domyos Interactive System was introduced in December 2007 and eight region-locked games were produced for that variant. XaviX also continued to deploy systems based on XaviX PORT technology to fitness centers for custom installations after the consumer version was discontinued in Japan. The XaviX design theoretically allowed for more powerful processors to be put in the cartridge and a XaviX-2 was announced, but it's not clear if that design will ever be realized in consumer cartridges.