Why The Conduit Dropped Wii MotionPlus Support

The developer breaks down exactly what happened to 1UP.

By Patrick Klepek, 03/09/2009
The Conduit was supposed to have support for Wii MotionPlus. As revealed last week, however, it's been removed. But why?

1UP got in touch with High Voltage Software VP and chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger to find out what happened. "We've been committed to doing what is right for the game and being true to our fans from the start," said Nofsinger over e-mail.

At Nintendo's media summit last fall, while I was a reporter for MTV, Nofsinger was notably excited when telling me how quickly they incorporated MotionPlus. The situation changed between then and now, however, but there's no conspiracy.

"We _could_ have included support for Wii MotionPlus as Nintendo provided us with early hardware and good developer support," he continued. "However when we actually implemented it for the Conduit, it didn't really add anything for our primarily ranged combat. We had hoped that it would allow for better off screen IR tracking, but the device seems to lend itself more naturally for hand to hand combat where the player can calibrate in-between bouts. And that just doesn't feel like an optimal fit for how we had designed our moment to moment gameplay."

High Voltage went as far as prototyping several melee weapons specifically designed to take full advantage of MotionPlus but ultimately scrapped them. Nofsinger believed the weapons showed "promise" but without enough time to make them really work before the game's June ship date, they were removed.

Even though The Conduit no longer includes support for Nintendo's improved Wiimote technology, WiiSpeak support still is. "WiiSpeak [has been] a fantastic fit," he said. "And although it did take a colossal amount of effort from our audio engineers, it has really paid off and made for [a] great online multiplayer feature."

No one outside of High Voltage played The Conduit with MotionPlus, so we'll never quite know what we're missing, but what do you make of the studio's decision?

Source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173179

Like it said in the article, unless they specifically re-worked the system to incorporate more melee weapons, it wouldn't work, and they've obvious gone to great lengths to balance the gameplay, so haphazardly incorporating melee weapons would lead to bad things

What I find interesting is that, apparently, it's realy hard work to incorporate WiiSpeak into games, at least judging from the "colossal amount of effort" it took to get it working right. I hope this does not mean that WiiSpeak won't be seen in games with a smaller budget than The Conduit.

Hmmm... From the sounds of it, "The Conduit's" sequel is going to be very good... Split Screen, and enough time to add M+ weapons in...

Not really that big a loss...

Heh sounds like after this they should work on the Wii's own version of a game like Condemned.

Figured that it wouldn't add much, unless you wanted to be really precise with how you throw grenades.

I think that the reason that it took a "colossal amount of effort" to get it working right is because they had to add this feature late in the development cycle.  They had to get it working right in a short amount of time.  If they had known about it from the begining, I bet it wouldn't have been a problem.

@OP

I think it was probably a good decision to take Motion Plus out.  High Voltage knows their game better than we do.

i think, since they didnt have the time to properly incorporate into the game, then its better too take it out and keep the game balanced.

New Red Steel-esque game utilizing the Quantum3 engine in development - confirmed?

Haha we can hope.

Except when it comes to split screen and increasing the framerate. Then some here insist they know it can be done.