I agree with the posts that say the Xmote will be seen as a gimmick due to being released 2 years into the consoles lifetime and being added on and will not be as popular as the Wiimote but to say it wont be successfull - couldn't we say the same about the balance board for the Wii and yet all of us Wii owners are hoping that gets supported by third parties and Wii Family Skii, RRR3 and apparantly at least seven others are in development.

It could still be fairly successfull if marketed right, and released with the correct choice of games, i'd forget the casual games and bundle it with say Halo Wars, a decent FPS and something unique (if possible) to sell the hardcore gamers on it.

 Well lets just say that its name is quite literal.

@ Balance Board tidbit.

I was looking for that fanboy, come from under that rock.

The BB comes with a uber Wiisports package which I'm shocked japan doesn't have to pay for that seperatly.

ZZzzt, I'm expecting a lot of Nintendo support of this thing, but maybe 3rd parties will get the hint and jump
on it before Nintendo can do the whole wiimote thing again.

ZZZt Ok well on topic.

Xmote = XBlu and XCell people have this fantasy that Microsoft is a Trillion dollar company, what they fail to
realise is that Nintendo has rights to the money printers.

Anyway it all comes down to application and marketing, the two have to work together like 1 uniform.

"Imitation is suicide and mimicry is the masking of the talent-less"

Now where did i read this ....

Well, If I were Sony I would've developed a wagglemote for PS2 as soon as the Wii hit the streets. I would've packed it inside every PS2 box with some kind of demo game similar to what Wii sports is. Isn't that what lots of third party games are on Wii after all? PS2 exact ports with waggle? Then I would have many japanese favourites redone to support waggle, cut the price to $99 and there you go.

Nintendo really doesn't have much of anything to fear from a potential X-mote. Because it's not the Wii Remote that makes the Wii so appealing. People often attribute the experience to the control method, but that's not quite correct. The controller is just a means of conveying a series of experiences. And it's the experiences that keep people coming (and coming back). Meaning that, even if MS did make a Wii Remote knock-off, it would be meaningless without unique and customer-valued experiences to back it up.

Microsoft has a very conventional game development mentality. They don't ask "how can we surprise our players?" the way Nintendo does. They ask "how can we please our customers?" the way almost everybody in the industry save Nintendo does. The key to unprecedented success is not satisfying the customers' wants, but rather, to introduce new wants which are not shackled by previous ones (that is to say, to surprise the customers). This is part of why Touch Generations games are so successful, incidentally...

The short of it is, Microsoft cannot compete with Nintendo on Nintendo's own grounds because they're approaching the problem from the wrong direction. They would have to completely shift their development paradigm, which is not as easy as you might assume it to be.

For more information on why rich unique experiences (and not simply pale immitations) are key to success, read "Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy" by Sean Maelstrom.  http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html

Are you referring to my post? if so then i admit i'm a huge lover of both my Wii and my DS but dont class myself as a fanboy as I also own a 360, PS2 and getting a PS3 for MGS4 release.  What I was saying is so many wii owners are saying the Xmote will fail relatatively to the Wiimote as it's an afterthought but the same are touting the balance board (and I also bought Wiifit on launch day) as a great potential controller yet both would be brought out as the consoles secondary controller well into the consoles lifetime and bring something new to that console to the table.

 I for one would love the 360 to get an Xmote for several reasons - the main being that I love the Wii's epics and am not a lover of party games, my fav games being Zelda, SMG, RE4, Wii PRo Evo, Godfather and so on so the 360 getting this type of controller supported on epic one player games would be great for me personally.

I also think it would be interesting as right now games are released for either Wii or 360/PS3 where if the 360 had the xmote and say it had a decent attatch rate - could we potentially see 360 / Wii coming a vialble option and could this push more of these type of games towards the Wii? (this maybe also applicable on XBL and Wii Ware).

If this makes me a fanboy then so be it but I just think it would be great for the industry

For evidence that experience matters more than the controller, consider the odd case of Katamari Damacy. A quirky colorful "puzzle" game (where it's usually lumped somewhat inappropriately, for truly it defies any traditional genre definition), it seemed like it would be quickly forgotten like most games of its type are. But the developer had asked the question of how he could surprise the player, and made a unique control setup for rolling around a giant ball using only the two analog sticks on the PS2 controller. Combined with a unique visual style and hilarious dialogue, it was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public and subsequently panned as being gimmicky. Initial sales were less than impressive.

But then something odd happened. Katamari didn't stop selling. In fact, its sales actually began to pick up after its launch and it was dubbed a "sleeper hit". Katamari Damacy defied expectations placed upon it by a jaded gaming press, and ultimately sold at least a half-million units when it was expected to never pass even 100,000.

Experiences, by and large, are what sell games and systems; not graphics, or controllers, or any other of the usual attributed points of success. Those are merely individual components of the overall experience, and no single component makes up the whole of the experience.

your totally correct however that the wiimote has also proved (to me anyway) that it can also improve some elements - take Godfather, I didn't like that game on the PS2 yet on the Wii it played like a different game and this proved to me (as did RE4) that the Wii's aiming is by far superior to auto aim or manual controller aim in third person games.

 Imagine Gears of War but with 100% manual aiming with an xmote (I know it wouldn't happen but for arguments sake) - for me this would add a whole new level to the battles and would vastly improve the game for me.  If MS were looking at this control method and thinking of applying it to the hardcore audience then fair play to them imo.

I think this has more of a chance of making a comeback than the x-mote has of being successful: