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HappySqurriel on 17 July 2008
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BrainBoxLtd said:
greenmedic88 said:
The question here is intent.

Is this the direction Nintendo want to take for the platform as a whole?

Naturally, most games aren't going to make use of 1:1 controls seeing as how most don't even have a handle of providing decent motion controls with the standard remote that actually make controls more intuitive or improved. More often than not, motion control functions are tacked on simply because they're available.

If Nintendo is keeping an eye on the future, then they should account for integrating this into the standard Wii experience immediately, rather than take a "wait and see" approach to gauge how many people are interested in the additional functions.

I think it's obvious the intent is take the Wii in this direction. As some people have pointed out, this may be finally delivering on a promise Nintendo originally made with the Wii. The biggest tell for me is it's being packed with new Wii Sports. If this were just something they're doing to feel the waters in further expansion, they would have made a separate title with a specific focus like they did with WiiFit. In this case it seems more obvious since WiiMusic was also debuted, which has a different focus than Wii sports with completely non-competitive open ended play. Yet no Motion Plus, despite a lot of critics feeling it would very greatly benefit from it.

They didn't want to risk this passing people by, they opted to pack it with something synonymous with their system, and not risk people passing on it because they attached to it something experimental. It's the same reason there's fencing in the game. What does fencing have to do with beach games? The Answer: who the flying fuck cares we want people to know how cool using swords with this damn thing is.

But they can't snap their fingers and just replace the current remotes, so they create a sequel specifically tailored to this device, and packed with this device, as a way to suck people into their refined vision. They likely will do what you're suggesting and make it standard. I'm imaging they'll redesign the remote with this include and probably mark it up at least another $10 and quietly discontinue the old ones at some point and start packing the new ones with the Wii itself and maybe even replace Wii Sports with it's updated brother to further drive home the point.

 

I think there is another thing to consider ...

What I work on from day to day may not seem all that related to what Nintendo's hardware engineers deal with, but there are similarities with all technology that is ever developed. Often when you're working on something that is supposed to be generic, reuseable, and/or extendable when you have finished initial development and it starts getting used (for one reason or another) it ends up being not generic, reuseable, or extendable enough and it doesn't match the requirements you're given ...

With software this is an easy thing to fix ... You refactor your solution to fix the problems and create a new deployment or patch the existing system.

 

It is quite possible that when Nintendo first started working with the Wiimote and didn't notice the limitations because of how successful they were early on; or that they assumed that they would be able to overcome some of the limitations with greater understanding or through improved software. As they started to try more complicated things with the Wiimote they could have simply discovered that the initial version of the Wiimote was not accurate enough to do what they wanted to do.

Now, hardware is difficult to patch because of the cost associated with it, but being that they can add a little dongle for (hopefully) a minimal cost to the user it is a much simpler problem to solve than a memory bottleneck (as an example).