Wii MotionPlus

In June, Nintendo is releasing a new add-on for the WiiMote called Wii MotionPlus at $20. It increases the sensitivity of the motion detection, allowing for more precise controls. The early games that support it all seem to be sports titles: Virtua Tennis, another tennis game from Electronic Arts, a Tiger Woods golf game, and Wii Sports Resort (which also includes a MotionPlus).

Those of you who have a Wii, will you be picking up a MotionPlus at some point? Do you think it will improve play on the Wii or be a huge step backwards? EA has complained that it's actually too sensitive and they had to tone it down to make their game playable.

Ehh, probably not, unless I start getting more games in which I find the wiimote isn't sensitive enough. But I find the wiimote as it is to be just fine for the games I do have.

I think it'll be good for some games and bad for others. If it's too sensitive in a game like...say...Metroid Prime 3, it could really hurt. Maybe for sports games it'd be great. And for the Wii Warioware game it'll probably depend on precisely which mini-game you're playing.

I don't care about Wii motion plus or the Wii. I still say it's far too expensive, and not even close to being worth the money.

Oh Nintendo, why couldn't you make the controls more sensitive in the first place? Now we have to pay extra for something we should have had from the beginning. Oh well, I think that I can live without it.

I'll try to answer that one, Lemina. They were doing their best to experiment with the tectnology they had to get it working right and accurate as possible. When the people complained, they responded. Not that I'm trying to completely defend them here...

I'm not overly pleased at the idea of paying more money with a product I should've had with my Wii, or get it in the mail for the rough price of shipping with an apologetic note attached to it. However, if they claim it'll get us a more calibrated and more accurate controller, then I don't see a major downside there. I mean, if I'm playing The House of the Dead Overkill, and I'm trying to go for the top score, the last thing I need is for my calibration to be off. (I'm aware that the game has an option to set the calibration. Please don't use that as a counter.) So for the moment, I shall consider it, but I'm not passing up on other more important activities (Such as playing Super Paper Mario or MadWorld) to go out of my way to buy one.

Nintendo has revealed now that the MotionPlus won't be backwards compatible with existing games. It will only work with games specially designed to use the MotionPlus.

I was thinking about getting a couple (or one, plus the Resort game for two), but now I'm not so sure about it. Nintendo has a bad history of making add-ons like this, giving them one or two games, and then abandoning the things completely. I'm a lot more hesitant to pick one up now.

W-wait...it's not compatible with older titles? Wow...that's a seriously poor choice in their part. Even worse than their decision not to cram in a GBA slot into the DSi. And I do agree with you, Thoul, they do have a spotty habit of that. GBA/Gamecube Link Cable, anyone?

Well, now that some time has gone by, I think Nintendo might actually have an accessory they'll support in the MotionPlus. I haven't tried it myself, but as of last week Wii Sports Resort had sold over 1.6 million copies worldwide according to articles on gamesindustry.biz. That's pretty good distribution for the MotionPlus.

Since we have two controllers, my girlfriend and I bought Wii Sports Resort and an extra Wii Motion Plus pack. Once we got to playing, we could definitely tell the difference. I think it was worth the 20 dollar investment for the add-on alone. Everything seemed much more responsive. I definitely cannot dis the Motion+

Well, to revive this a bit: Nintendo has now announced a new version of the Wii remote that has MotionPlus integrated into the basic controller. It's called "Wii Remote Plus" and looks almost identical to the basic Wii Remote. Andriasang has a picture of the white, black, blue, and pink versions.

Neither a price nor release date have been officially announced yet. However, Gamestop recently advertised a game called FlingSmash priced at $49.99 and shipping in November. The box art they displayed (and have since pulled) promotes the game as being bundled with a black Wii Remote Plus. So we can probably expect this new controller to go on sale just in time for Christmas this year.

I guess with the coming release of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which requires MotionPlus, next year, Nintendo has finally decided to simplify this whole concept into what it should have been at the beginning. There's been speculation that Zelda would have a MotionPlus bundled, but now it looks like this new controller is more likely to be included with Zelda, if anything does get in the box. Maybe they'll have a limited edition, golden colored controller.