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Hands-on With the Wii MotionPlus
Parz writes "In June, Nintendo will be releasing a peripheral called MotionPlus. This small device attaches to the bottom of the Wii-mote and acts as a more sophisticated motion-sensor to the controller as it currently stands. Its goal is to bring greater parity between a user's movements and the animations that they bring to life on-screen. Gameplayer got some hands-on time with the device, and they are extremely impressed."
The MotionPlus will only affect new games; Nintendo has said they have no plans to add support for older titles. Virtua Tennis 2009 will be the first game to support it, and Eurogamer has a look at the game both with and without the MotionPlus.
Hasn't that been everybody's dream game for the Wii?
Man, I would like them to rerelease the golf and bowling with support, so it actually works.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/13/
How we know is more important than what we know.
You know.. I was all ready to hate them for not making the new sensor backwards compatible with older games, but then it occurred to me that it says that the new motion sensor hooks into the base of the existing Wiimote. It may simply be that the connection there for peripherals/nunchuks doesn't allow the new sensor to supercede the existing Wiimote movement sensors.. that may be why only new games will be able to make use of the extra information.
Of course we could then always argue that Nintendo should have re-designed the Wiimote from scratch with the new sensor embedded if that's the case. If so, I would hope that they do, because there are a lot of existing Wii games that would benefit from the extra sensitivity.
Read: It's a near impossibility to support older titles. It would be nice to head over to http://hackmii.com/2009/02/why-the-wii-will-never-get-any-better/ and find out why; specifically:
so is bowling and golf. Where's my lightsaber?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Actually since the MotionPlus doesn't use the IR sensors that's kinda pointless. This thing contains afaik 3 multi-axis accelerometers that are way more precise than what was possible during the launch of the Wii years back. It snaps into the Wiimote which is a good thing because they have sold 50 million Wiimotes and most people won't be too happy to spend another 200$ on new controllers just to have a sword fight with their mates. Nintendo already pissed off loads of people with their strange antics, now telling me I have to throw away my Wiimotes and buy new ones -no wai. Instead it's a 20$ addon which is much more feasible to most consumers, if you want it ... it's 20$ per controller extra instead of another 50 for a new one. Other than that, older games won't work because there is no real patching infrastructure on the Wii that I'm aware of. You would have to re-write potentially large chunks of the controls code to have your game react to the MotionPlus input correctly and why bother in the first place? The games that didn't have M+ don't need it now. Most games wouldn't benefit from simply "tacked on" MotionPlus just as they don't benefit from tacked on waggle or motion control. Now, games that are built around MotionPlus ... that's a different story.
And it requires a fairly large court (which you usually don't own and have to rent) and human opponents near you and doesn't come with computer assistance that can make anyone feel like a world class player.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
...you've lost me as a customer and no, I won't be buying a Wii again.
How many were you planning on buying?
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Maybe you should look it up, then, because that's exactly what it means.
http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=parity&search=search
2. equivalence; correspondence; similarity; analogy.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
bring greater parity between a user's movements and the animations
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
It comes from the french word pareil, which means "same".
The whole idea of a parity bit is to make sure the data is the same.
Secondly, the Wii motion plus is rumoured to be a 20$ item or included with several upcoming Wii motion plus games, so how can it go from being 'too expensive' only a few years ago to being a 'throwaway item' now?
In the same way that a DVD burner can go from $150 to $20 in a few years time, or RAM that cost you $80 a couple of years ago is now $20. Technology becomes cheaper over time.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Actually, it uses a 3-axis gyroscope. Accelerometers can only measure movement, but the gyros can measure position. This is why you had to use a lot of "waggle" on wii games: the accelerometers couldn't tell the difference between flicking your wrist and an arm movement. The gyros can.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/08/wii-motion-sensor.ars
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
they make up money on the games anyhow.
So you claim above that nobody but grandma and little Billy play it, but now you claim they're making money on games. Which is it?
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Because the Wii Motion Plus has a pass-through to accept a Nunchuck, but most (all?) of the current Wii Zapper designs won't work w/ a dongle in place (I've got a wireless Kama Nuncuck replacement and had to make a Wii Zapper to use it in pistol mode) --- and IME there're a lot of times when the control of the Wii Zapper isn't quite fine enough to get perfectly centered on target w/o some twitching, so if the Wii Motion Plus would allow more precise targeting a new Wii Zapper would be welcome.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Please don't give me 'the tech wasn't available' or 'the tech was too expensive at the time'
Okay I won't tell you the uncomfortable truth that you don't want to accept. Unless that sentence counts.
Firstly, Nintendo was making a profit on the Wii hardware from the get go! They should've put it in even if it reduced that margin, other manufacturers make a loss out of the gate.
Up until this generation, no they didn't. Microsoft lost money on the XBOX, because they believed the urban legend that all console makers used the console itself as a loss leader. Halfway through the generation, both Sony and Nintendo revealed that no, they didn't, but were happy to have Microsoft design their console strategy around it. This generation, both Sony and Microsoft decided to go balls-out on the hardware necessitating their per-unit losses. They do this by subsidizing their games business with profits from other business units.
Nintendo can't subsidize their game consoles. You're basically saying they should have risked going out of business if the "lose money on the console and make money on games" model, which hasn't worked out for Microsoft yet, didn't work out for them.
But yeah, those greedy bastards wanting to sell their only product at a profit!
Secondly, the Wii motion plus is rumoured to be a 20$ item or included with several upcoming Wii motion plus games, so how can it go from being 'too expensive' only a few years ago to being a 'throwaway item' now?
[Insert any of a thousand graphs showing price decreases in technology over time]
The enemies of Democracy are
They already have a nerf gun one too.
Saying FPS is "hardcore only" is ridiculous.