Uhm doesn't that wikipedia link say:

MEMS gyroscope

Relatively inexpensive (less than US$10 per part as of 2009) vibrating structure gyroscopes using MEMS technology are available. These can be implemented as the tuning fork resonator, vibrating wheel or (planar) wine glass resonator.

A component that's $10 is expensive.. what would the price have been in 2006? $40? $30?

Safe to say it wasn't thousands of dollars and only available in housings the size of a aircraft nose cone. Or that this drastically changed over the span of 2 years.

But you raise a good point here. It may only be a production cost difference of even $10-20 to determine if a peripheral add-on is viable enough to sell at retail while still making a profit that makes it worth the manufacturer's effort.

$20 wasn't an unreasonable price for the dongle. But if it cost as much as the Wii Remote itself, Nintendo would have been better off just giving consumers an "all new" controller with Motion Plus built in at a slight premium instead.

The Wii Remote, which is more or less what made the Wii possible, had an estimated $10 worth of components upon debut according to iSupply.

Maybe the lackluster Motion Plus support just shows, that 1:1 Motion recognition is just not necessary for many games.

Good points from both of you, I'd add this: Nintendo's huge order allowed the producer of the model it uses to immediately apply a more affordable price, being granted anyway the economies of scale, this would have been true even 2-3 years earlier , and even more, with hindsight, as it would have been fitted on every console (although back then not even Nintendo predicted Wii would have been so successful and fast-selling). As in 2009 Nintendo profited on a separated $20 dongle, including it in Wiimote in 2006 would have been affordable and Nintendo would have anyway kept an additional profit from those $50 it was able to add, thanks to the competition being insanely expensive, to the initially planned $199 Wii price. Anyway, as I wrote, it's a business decision, Nintendo surely knew the cons as well as the pros and accepted them.

I agree. I mean The Conduit and MWR just use a "one motion fits all" for whatever control is mapped to either the Wiimote or nunchuck.

This is likely why Nintendo hasn't been too hasty, as they want to make sure their games truly need the Motion to work. This is likely why Zelda is the key to this before they can start ramping up their M game production.

Cool, you went to E3? I really hope to be able to experience Zelda at gamescom, though I don't expect Nintendo to show it there. *shakes fist*

The impression I got from videos is that Skyward Sword will benefit from WM , and it seems they borrowed several great control variants from WSR.

You are right that Nintendo wants maximum profit. They're as evil as every corporation out there, but that's the price we have to pay for having capitalism. At least they develop fun and innovative games in return that convince gamers are worth their hard earned money.

Plus it's not as though every game with paid DLC isn't what kylie claims about SW.

it's disapointing to say the least, a bit like wii fit, it's a periferial you buy because it adds something... but then it's dropped almost completely.

Luckily, my 2 WM came free... the games were the same price with or without it (thanks amazon)...

I like it in Wii Sports Resort.

I'll probably like it in Zelda and Fling Smash.

That's good enough for me, actually.

QFT. Wise words.