...via you buying an addon! Introducing Wii MotionPlus.
Nintendo's upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play. The Wii MotionPlus accessory reconfirms Nintendo’s commitment to making games intuitive and accessible for everyone. Nintendo will reveal more details about the Wii MotionPlus accessory and other topics Tuesday morning at its E3 media briefing.
I knew it. They'd need to update the controller since it's somewhat unreliable with those IR sensors. At least for me.
Let's hope we get some actual software stuff too, right? Maybe this new add on will revive Project: H.A.M.M.E.R.
That'd better be a pass-through port on the bottom, though.
Interesting. I look forward to seeing this tomorrow. Also, it looks to me like that is indeed a pass-though at the bottom of the MotionPlus with a dust cover over it.
It'd be cool if they were giving them out for free or as an add-on with a game or something. I can't say I like the idea of buying something to fix what should have worked in the first place.
Senbei wrote:as an add-on with a game or something.
I don't think a single person bought WiiPlay for the "game" alone. I'm guessing something similar will happen with this add-on; it'll be packaged with a game to obscure the price.
Oh Christ, they're going to have to introduce a whole new line of condoms to fit over the attachment.
Nintendo is starting to remind me of me back when I kept hitting the edit button after I posted to add things. It's not any less annoying when they do it.
Until I've actually used it, I can't really say if a thing like this is enough of an improvement to make it worthwhile. But I'm not going to complain about their decision to make it an attachment instead of forcing people to buy an entirely new set of controllers.
The Wiimote we have now is excellent at detecting tilt, but it's movement detection -- particularly subtle movements at low speeds -- is pretty limited. To be honest, better technology didn't really exist at the consumer level when the Wii launched, but things have come a long way since then. If Nintendo has found a way to cheaply integrate improved motion sensing then more power to them.
Smart money says we see this thing used to demo Retro's Zelda game at the Nintendo presser tomorrow.
How cute. All those months Gearbox spent trying to adapt Samba to the less technically capable remote, then Nintendo drops this lil' "update". There must be clumps of hair all over the floor at their offices by now.
My question is what is this going to lead to? Hopefully not a whole bunch of games that require the MotionPlus to even play?
Team Mecha wrote:All of a sudden the odds of a new Zelda trailer jumped. I mean they gotta have some signature game to demonstrate this.
All right, let me see if I can make a fool of myself, but I don't think there's going to be a Zelda trailer tomorrow, and if there is, I honestly don't care. I'm not a big Zelda fan, and, personally, I want some of Nintendo's other franchises to see the spotlight and show how the controller can truly change the gameplay. So far, only Super Mario Galaxy has done that (and even that was typically just shaking the controller at opportune times); maybe we can actually start on motion control with this new doohickey. You know. Not just shaking the controller around and calling it "innovation" when it really means "an extra button that's a lot more unreliable than the others".
Twilight Princess kind of restored my faith in the series and I'd like to hang on to that for a while. I'm pretty sure the world won't need a new Zelda until the Wii 2.
The rumour floating around is that the next Zelda title -- possibly being made made by Retro -- is going to be a spin-off that diverts away from the standard Zelda formula.
If we don't see a Zelda sword-fighting game that uses this dongle tomorrow -- or at least eventually -- I will actually be pretty surprised! And I can believe Retro is behind it, because honestly -- what other franchise would Nintendo give their most adult-focused development studio to play with next? A new IP? (ba-dump TSH!)
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that Zelda Wii (the ACTUAl Zelda Wii) is going to be an FPS in the style of the Elder Scrolls. They've been wanting to do it since Ocarina of Time, now they have the tools to do it with, and they've even already experimented with it in Link's Crossbow Training.
Green Gibbon! wrote:Twilight Princess kind of restored my faith in the series and I'd like to hang on to that for a while.
What. TP destroyed my faith in Nintendo and (fortunately) converted me from a soulless, ignorant Nintendo fanboy to... something else. The first half was undoubtely amazing, but after the 3rd dungeon the game took an extreme fall in quality. There were almst no sidequests at all, the cool Twilight Realm entirely disappeared, having to become a wolf (which was interesting in the TR) in normal Hyrule was lame and annoying, the story wasn't really interesting anymore, everything was far to easy, the items were unimaginative or useless, rant rant rant. To me, TP marks the low point of the 3D Zeldas.
Actually, I disagree. It's true that the TP started falling in quality at a certain point (the high point for me was the Snowpeak Ruins), but I think TP had some of the best dungeon design the series has ever seen. I also hate Zelda games where tedium and ambiguous goals and destinations are involved, as I like my goals to be fairly easy to find out and clear (Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker scarred me in that respect, and I played both of them after their sequels). It may lack in sidequests compared to the other games but the truth is I don't have the patience for those anymore so that doesn't really matter to me. Besides, a lot of sidequests in Majora's Mask and Wind Waker require you travelling from point A to point B which eats up ten minutes of your time where you're not even doing anything interesting but sailing and walking and talking during those ten minutes. I think the Golden Bugs and the Poes were a bit cooler for sidequests in that you can get some of them on the way of your adventure without having to actively search for them but you can if you wanted to, and in that you might reach a place you haven't accessed before if you felt like doing that. In other words, I don't like it when sidequests take up half the game when the focal point really should be in clever dungeon design.
Anyway it's inevitable there will be two Zelda titles on the Wii. One in the Wii's mid-life and as one of the Wii's last games.
I liked Twilight Princess a lot. But then, I never liked all that random side quest collectathon stuff, and really enjoyed getting to play a Zelda game that pushed those elements into the background and focused more on the dungeons -- dungeons which, as far as I'm concerned, got better in the second half of the game, not worse!
