Okey - and the other best games, such as Mario Kart, which has excellent use of motion

Wii Wheel works well enough, but I never use it online. I did at first and as a result, Rol will never let me live down my embarrassing defeats.

True but beside first party exclusives, is the biggest reason for owning a Wii not controls?  I could play Little Big Planet/R&C, Street Fighter 4, and Shadow of the Colossus and get a similar experience on PS2/PS3...

Also, do you think certain genres benefit more than others?  I specifically said Galaxy (platformers), Brawl (fighters), and Zelda (action/adventure) don't benefit that much from motion or IR in my opinion in the top post (although this could change with WM+, especially Zelda).  What about FPS, TPS, RTS, Team Sports, Individual Sports, Racing, Brawlers, point and click etc.  If those genres do benefit, is it just from a fun factor (superficial) standpoint or do you think there is there a technical benefit for competitive play?

silentmac,

Thanks for a wonderful thread. In all the discussion of the Wii and Wii controls, there's been very little actual analysis of which genres benefit from the control options offered by the Wii remote. In my opinion, you've hit things just about right with your breakdown of the benefits.

Any game where you aim a weapon (first or third person shooters), and any game where you have to select items, people or places in an environment (point-and-click adventures, real time strategy games) would benefit from the precision of IR controls.

Motion controls seem to work well with individual sports games, and with games involving controlled tilting (the posture control on No More Heroes, the balance ball levels in Mario Galaxy, Wii racing games in general).

However, you're very probably right about the advantages of traditional dual analogue controls in traditional action-adventure games like Zelda or Okami. Of course, that problem could be completely solved, without removing motion control, if there was a second analogue stick somehow added to the Wiimote-nunchuk combo (another plug-in peripheral?). Maybe next console, eh?

The problem with analysing the benefits of these new control schemes is that players used to traditional controls will have to overcome a skills hurdle before they can play in new ways. That means that, unlike playing, for example, a FPS on 360, with the Wii they will have to put up with being bad at the game initially. For many experienced gamers, that's a hurdle they're unwilling to leap. That's why Bozon's suggestion is so interesting, it'll show those gamers unwilling to put the effort in to adapt to the new control system that they're being left behind.

In my opinion, it's that lack of effort in adapting to new controls that has lead to odd-one-out reviews of shooters on the Wii that criticise the controls, especially those kinds of comments seen in the GamePro and 1Up reviews of The Conduit. In my opinion, this lack of effort from reviewers will only get worse as the Wii is ignored more and more by the industry press. So we'll get a vicious cycle of 'fiddle around with IR controls; find you can't control your turning easily and don't bother trying to develop your skills; put down Wiimote and play 360 shooter with lock-on instead; fire off review moaning about poor Wii controls'.

On my profile I have 3 star rankings on all courses and have beaten all the expert ghosts (it wasn't actually me who did most of it, twas a friend who also uses the Wii Wheel) The Wii wheel is very much the superior control system, especially for using bikes, because you can turn and start a wheelie at the same time, unlike the GC controller where the same thumb has to do both

Good points.  I forgot about P&C adventures.  Zack and Wiki and the upcoming Monkey Island Wiiware title are good example of how well this works.  I edited the top post to include these.  For action adventure, I can see WM+ adding to the immersion but you are right, I think there needs to be 2 analog sticks on the next Nintendo controller for those types of games because you can't use IR to control the camera and WM+ motion controls at the same time can you?  I also, wouldn't mind having an IR on the Nunchuck for dual weld gun situations.

I do agree that motion controls well for some sports games, but I think PES should be the model for team sports games like Hockey and Basketball with fast paced action where you would want to have control of more than just one player.

Slower paced team sports like Baseball, to some degree Football (although call your play is cool) don't seem to benefit as much from IR because there is no need to control different players on the fly but motion seems to work well here.  All the individual sports included in Wii Sports (Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Boxing etc.) all obviously benefit from motion.

Also, another genre I forgot to mention are JRPGs and WRPGs. Obviously, there could be a benefit with WM+ to WRPGs that are almost first or third person action games like Oblivion or Fallout. But nobody has shown how motion controls or IR would benefit a traditional turn-based JRPG at all. This is actually sad because this genre above most others is about immersion...

I think the subdivision in genres is way too coarse.

Take JRPGs: there's an obvious difference between action RPGS and turn-based ones. For the formers there's all kinds of combat actions you could bind to motion controls. For the latter, not so much is needed beyond buttons and a d-pad, besides maybe having a cursor on-screen controlled by IR if you need one.
In general the more "abstract" your rendition of gameplay, the less motion controls will be useful.

Edit: dang, I had missed the line in your OP where you made the same distinction, disregard it :) I suggest another (sub)genre that would work well with IR, and it's dungeon crawlers a-la Diablo.

Oh I forgot about dungeon crawlers.  I have yet to see anyone attempt one of these with motion IR.  I would imagine it would work like a P&C adventure with combat mapped to motion or motion+button combos.  Maybe Shiren the Wanderer will attempt this?  Did Baroque?  If not it probably should have.

I don't know if it is a good example but I enjoyed the IR-Controls in "Anno: Create a new World". I think it is a RTS.

And of course the IR-Controls are perfect for On-Rail-Shooters. My favorite game (Disaster: DOC) has a good portion of on-rail-shooting integrated.