Maybe it was a fad as many have stated.

Personally, I never enjoyed it while the majority of Wii games i've played required little to no motion at all. If a game had the option to play using a regular controller then I will jump to it.

Wii sold a ridiculous amount. Kinect sold a much smaller amount. Kinect 2.0 sold the smallest. The wii came first, the kinect came second, the 2.0 came last. 

You could say they don't want to spend more for the next iteration, but in reality, we are just seeing the downward trend that occurs at the end of a fad. Otherwise, the kinect 2.0 and the playstation move would be selling ridiculous numbers. This is also why wii sports hd sold a pathetic amount compared to its predecessor.

Then the thread is based on a fallacy to begin with. Tilt controls are motion controls. Proposing that this

is motion controls because "I don't like it" while this

is somehow not motion controls because I don't want to use a phrase with negative connotations to describe a game I like is just willful ignorance.

If someone wants to ask why pointer controls aren't a big deal any more, the answer is because they were largely usurped by tilt controls. This is easy enough to see just looking at Nintendo -- Twilight Princess used pointer. Skyward Sword used gyro to mimic pointer. Wind Waker HD, Ocarina & MM 3D forgo even the illusion of pointer controls and commit fully to gyro. As do Splatoon, Star Fox Zero, and in all likelihood the upcoming Zelda. Pikmin is the only major pointer-controlled game that comes to mind from this gen.

Sony left the Move to die because they never needed it. They had Sixaxis, and still do. DualShock 4 has gyro. Vita has gryo. Wii U GamePad has gyro. 3DS has gyro. Mobile devices have gyro. Steam controller has gyro -- and many games on these platforms support gyro controls as an option. And as I've mentioned, the supposed future of gaming, VR devices, are literally screens with gyroscopes & accelerometers that you strap to your face. People don't want to call these motion controls because they've convinced themselves that the term only applies to things they dislike.

Kinect sold 24 million from Nov 2010-Feb 2013, Playstation Move sold 15 million from Sept 2010-Dec 2012 and Wii sold 24 million from Sept 2010-March 2013 so over the course of 2-2.5 years motion based devices sold 50+ million.

Basically motion based gaming was still going pretty strong through the end of 2012 and the next-gen version didn't do enough to convince consumers to spend another $300-500 for a new device. Nintendo made so many mistakes with Wii U that u can't simply blame it's sales on people getting bored of motion controls, Xbox One with Kinect 2.0 launched for $500 and released a mere 3 years after the original Kinect.

I'm more interested in the yearly kinect, ps move, and wii sales from 2010, 2011, and 2012. Grouping them as a unit doesn't work if the transition I'm talking about occurs (and ends) during those 3 years. 

The xbox one + kinect launched for $500. After a year, the kinect was separated and is priced at around $100. The fact that most xbox one owners haven't bought the kinect leads me to believe that most of them have gotten bored of motion controls. 

People have gotten bored of motion controls, plain and simple. You could say that it happened because companies made more "hardcore" games that don't work well with motion control (Assassin's creed, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Skyrim, Fallout), but at the same time you could also say that companies saw the waning interest in motion control and shifted priorities.

OP isn't the arbiter on what qualifies as motion controls. His use of the phrase is misleading and he should have clarified properly. I won't help propogate the fantasy that motion controls were 'defeated' by the One True Controller by playing along with the charade. People should be able to differentiate between the technology in the controller they're holding and the way the game they're playing was designed to use it.

I can deal with that. The other examples stand. Most tellingly, Skyward Sword using tilt controls even though it was played with a pointer controller. The same is true of the Metroid and Zelda games in Nintendo Land, right?

Anyway the likely reason tilt controls are favored over pointer controls or considered 'superior' is just because of the kinds of pointer controllers that have been made. You can use gyro in conjunction with every other type of input because everyone made regular controllers with gyroscopes slapped on. Wii Remotes & Move have pointer controls at the expense of other inputs, like a second analog stick.

The wii motes should have been better sold for their shooter credentials. Many anti wii mote people online don't seem to have considered them as fps controllers. They just think it all shaking them around for wii sports. That all said I'm not a wii mote fan and am glad Nintendo's been moving away from them.

Cut the op some slack. He probably had a great idea for a thread and just rushed the opening because he wanted to post it on Vgchartz and then spend time with his girlfriend who just got home from work.

I honestly don't think developers gave motion control a real chance. Sure the Wii Remote without M+ wasn't the most accurate, but WM+, PS Move, and Kinect were all fairly accurate. The entire industry pretty much bet against the Wii from the very beginning, and I know someone will respond by saying "But look at the industry now. Motion control was a fad!!". iOS, Android, and Windows Phone exploded because people took chances and actually tried to build something. That never happened with motion control. Would mobile be as ubiquitous today if the cell phone industry universally shunned the iPhone when it first came out? Heck no. The same logic applies with motion (and asymetric gameplay/3D/other so called "gimmicks"). Where was the Grand Theft Auto IV PS Move patch? Where was that major hardcore IP from a top western publisher on the Wii? Red Steel sucked, and I can't think of anymore. Why didn't many people support PS Move after people bashed the Wii for being "casual"? Can people REALLY call motion control a fad when 99% of the industry never gave it a real chance in the first place? 

TL;DR: Everyone says motion was a fad, but the industry never gave it a real chance. 

Wii FY 2011-15 million, FY 2012-10 million, FY 2013-4 million

Kinect, 10 million as of March 2011. 19 million as of May 2012. 24 million as of February 2013.

PS Move, 4.1 million as of Nov 2010. 10.5 million as of March 2012. 15 million as of November 2012.

Yes Kinect was unbundled but it still required an extra $35-400 purchase so the cost of Kinect has still been $450-500 this generation.