I am totally uninterested in realism. Who wants a realistic boxing experience or violent zombie battle experience. If gaming is trying to let me experience the fundamental literal truth of those things I think I will pass. I am interested in playability which controls are a million times more important to. With the traditional gamepad I would only play a few games mostly puzzle games, fighters, and racing games. For shooters and RTS type games the gamepad experience is so excruciatingly miserable I don't want to talk about it. The motion+IR control scheme now makes these games entirely open to me as a player, unfortunately some of my old standbys have been screwed up. I love Bust-A-Move but sadly it sucks on the Wii as even with new controls they can be poorly applied in an attempt to use them for no good reason.
Graphics are nice, I love the looks of Soul Calibur IV, Little Big Planet, and a number of other games. They look just amazing. I though do not need them. For me it is a lot like the re-making of the original Star Wars movies. The new visuals are a serious improvement and the final Deathstar explosion is a major upgrade, I now think that the original looks like some sort of firework going off, but those little things did not fundamentally change the movies for me. Ignoring the story change parts, as I hated them, it is the same experience with the best part of it being for me that I got to see them on the big screen. There are the occasional big improvements in gaming graphics, like going 3-D for instance, but the biggest difference between high end and low end is really now just in detail as far as I can tell.
I think of the trade off as being in one version I can have an amazing looking building that I have to invade. It has a very detailed and unique front that as the windows break they go into hundreds of pieces of glass that glitter on the ground. In the other the building is pretty plain, easily identifiable as what it is but nothing special. In the first case I will have the annoying experience of trying to get around the building becoming stuck at times on odd things and getting killed because I have trouble moving and aiming at necessary speeds. In the second moving and aiming are cake and if I get killed it is more because I am reckless than because I could not tell the machine what I wanted to do. The first game I would probably never finish, I would take it back and trade it in towards something that does not piss me off. The second game I have played through one like that and I am on my second one. It is an entirely new experience and I have now whole new genres of gaming to enjoy.

The eyetoy for the Playstation has better motion controls then the wii mote. If they had the two together they might be on the right step to full motion controls but not right now.

But i pick Graphics overall, i will never buy a game/system that forces motion crap like the wii-mote, i hate every part of it. Thats why i will never play lair aswell. If the PS forces it next gen then the 720 will be what i buy.

Good controls dont mean motion sensing. Some motion games are good others crap. FPS is far better with analogs. Anyways, A good game is a balance of the power in a system used right and good contols. Not one or the other.

So I guess my answer is:
Both.
1 without the other is a flawed game.

I could understand a statement like "Fighting games are better with conventional controllers" but FPS?

My main complaint with games like Bioshock and Halo 3 is they don't have the Wiimote which is far better than analogue sticks for a FPS; the keyboard and mouse is still king, but I would say that it is not that much better than the Wiimote nunchuck setup.

Well every1 will differ with what controls they prefer. So no arguement from me.

Just personally I am far more natural with analogs.

Who cares about realism?

We're talking about video games. Interactive fantasy lands. Reality is what's outside your window. If you actually cared about reality, you'd be there. Instead, you're playing video games.

The important question is which is more fun. You've left reality behind because it isn't fun enough, not because it isn't real enough.

Wii controls cannot and will not -ever- be 'realistic' nor should they even try to be.

When you swing a sword and your opponent blocks, your wii controller will not stop in mid air. No, your hand will swing right through him, even if your on screen attack stops. So, how can you make a follow up action if your hand and onscreen avatar are now in signficantly different positions.

1:1 control schemes are a bad idea.

As for When you swing at wii tennis, a lot of subtle control is already in place. Its not just "swing". I can pretty effectively control where the ball is going to land on the court by the angle I have the Wii remote at when I swing.

Its true I can't make an idiotic move like swinging backwards to drive the ball into the crowd behind me, the wii tennis will try and interpret such an attempt in a more "productive" manner. And that's a -good thing-. Otherwise these games would be nearly impossible to play.

And its also true that wii tennis is a very simple game. I'm sure a full on tennis game could allow a lot more subtlety to the controls. But the point of Wii tennis is to let you play tennis fairly well with some basic timing and strategy.

It was never intended to be a full on tennis simulator. If it were most people would find out that just like in the real world, they suck at tennis. And it would be even worse because unlike real tennis with a real ball to hit, in the game you have base all your information looking over the shoulder of an avatar on a 2D screen 6 feet away.

1:1 control schemes are a bad idea.

what they should do, and what the better games have done, is allow you to control your avatar with natural actions that map to what you want the character to do.

But 1:1 controls except in very limited cases would be un-fun, and counter productive; and in most games physically impossible to really do well anyway.

After all would it be fun to play a game like Godfather, swing the rear of your controller out have your onscreen shotgun swing out and hit the guy in the face, but then find out that you didn't use enough force to actually injure him? Or perhaps you swung 45 degrees, and you needed to swing 50 because of his exact position. Or maybe you swung a bit low and it hits him in the chest to no effect and your onscreen opponent bursts out laughing at your incompetence...

Or would you prefer to swing out the back of your remote, and have your onscreen avatar correctly interpret that you intend have him slam the butt of your gun into your opponents face with jawbreaking force, and have him actually do that?

No video game system today makes you completely feel like you're in the game. However, I don't see how something like Wii Bowling isn't THE realest version of a game in its genre, period. Sure, you can't go between your legs, but that's because you're not decked out in a full body suit that keeps track of not just the Wiimote, but you in your entirety. However, you can be sure that the Wii recognizes the exact motion that goes into throwing between the legs, and that that motion determines how the ball moves, even if the Mii isn't going between his legs. The value of being able to actually swing your arm and have the ball react accordingly is infinitely greater than the value of being able to see every skin line on your bowler's hand in terms of realism. I'm not saying every game is as great as Wii Bowling at getting you in the game, but you sure picked one heck of a poor example. That feel of being able to throw the ball with all your might and knocking down a strike is just so dang satisfying.

Overall, I think the answer to which is more important is clearly evident if we go back and look at how we played when we were younger. When you were young and pretending to fight a gigantic dragon or something, how did you do it, with a stick and a trash can lid in your backward attacking that dead tree with all your might, or in your room staring at the poster of a beautifully drawn dragon? When you were pretending to drive a car, were you in a cardboard box making totally excessive turns back and forth, or just sitting there staring at a poster of some Porsche or Corvette? I think we all (most of us, at least) were always doing something similar to the first choice in both cases. The point is that we actually value tactile feedback and movement more than visual images. We all have this amazing thing called an imagination and are very good at using it to either create or enhance images--tactile feedback, not so much. Just look at little kids play, and it's pretty clear which is fundamentally more important.

@people, Kwaad in particular.
true, Wii tennis etc doesn't work the same as a real tennis swing, but that's not the point (If you had to do a real swing each time, why not go play tennis) the point is that doing a real swing registers in a similar way to if you were playing tennis, so if you want you can act like you are really playing it....That is what makes it realistic.

When i occasionally have a go with Wii tennis in my room, sat up on my bed (TV is at the end of the bed) i do tiny little motions and can quite easily make similar shots to when i do the big swings (like volleys and slices), and if my mind could work it out better i could probably keep the remote pointed at the screen and just flick left and right, which would be even less realistic.....the point is doing the realistic moves works, and gets results.

Edit; extending to warioware (though i havent played it) the game where you "lift weights" or the hula hoop game, both can be done without doing the real actions, but the real actions work (and i assume in these cases make it much more of a challenge) so it is realistic motion controls.

an example that doesn't work in terms of realistic motion is SSXBlur, you perform tricks by drawing weird shapes with the remote nunchuck, not even remotely realistic, but there is little way to perform real snowboard tricks (i think the idea is excellent, but two or three of the shapes seem really difficult, one of them i haven't even managed to do outside of the practising bit). The leaning the nunchuck to steer is excellent though.

^

I know it's fun like I said on the end of one of my post, for me the fun factor isn't the same as realism factor. In fun factor: controls>graphics

But in term of realism, graphics atm, are more well, realistic.

Don't get the terms wrong people, this thread is about which one is more realist, not fun.