Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Gotta say, I have my concerns about the future of the 'mote as well. Two things bug me in particular: while Baseball uses the orientation-tracking to great effect (I *love* just waving around in little circles before a pitch and watching the bat move), Tennis basically substitutes a very poorly-defined (IMHO) mid-point in your swing for what could just as easily have been pushing a button. With Baseball, I feel like I'm in control of how hard and how fast I'm swinging, and better able to meet the ball accurately. With Tennis, it feels all squashy, like I don't know when my racket will actually intercept the ball, and thus I don't know where it's going to go. I'm concerned that future games could suffer from similar ill-defined movements. The second thing is, I read somewhere on a Wii-hacking (in the positive sense of the word, e.g. not piracy) forum that when they decoded the sensor output of the 'mote, it was found that the accellerometer has a low-ish cieling: it returns a floating-point value of something like 3.0 to -3.0 g's of acceleration, and it's very easy to max it out when you're swinging. This would limit how much you can do with it (IMHO) -- any time your normal range of input is "clipped" by the constraints of the system, you're losing potentially-valuable information. I'm concerned this could hamstring developers down the line. I guess we'll see how both these things play out...

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I thought that the main objective of the Wii was immersion through use of the Wii-mote. Don't ge me wrong, I love simple games like Wii Sports but I for one would love to see more complicated and true to life motions in some new Wii games.

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I think one thing Nintendo learned from the DS is that a game can be a blast without using every single feature of the console, something that applies to the Wii as well. While it's always nice to "max out" the potential of an input device, some games just don't need, nor do they call for it.

The judicious and creative use of these input methods is what will make a succesful game, not cramming every possible function into every game.

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"it's very easy to max it out when you're swinging"

Anyone who has played Wii Sports should know this. How fast you swing your arm has almost nothing to do with the speed of the pitch in baseball, or your bowl in bowling, or your hit in tennis, etc. etc.

People can't seem to wrap their heads around it, but most of the Wii Sports games are about *timing*, not speed.

Everyone keeps talking aboute "1 to 1 movement" and "real life motions" with the Wii controller, but that's not really the point. Can you imagine how frustrating Tennis or Baseball would be if you actually had to accurate aim the bat? All of those non-gamers would hate it, and most gamers would hate it to.

Why wouldn't it work? Well, basically because the Wii remote isn't a bat, or a tennis racket, or a golf club. Games have always been about approximating reality, and that's exactly what Wii Sports does, however to say that it's the same as pressing a button, well, it's simply not true - as I'm sure anyone who has played Wii Sports will agree.

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Another way to look at it; is to stay ahead of nintendo wannabes. Advanced features now solidifies originality of the the concept before the microsofts and apples catch on. Maybe.

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