Same thing I thought when they announced it...

I am disappointed that it has taken Nintendo this long to get their technology correct, personally.

I also wonder what effect this is going to have on a) previous games released (will it drastically alter the control experience enough to warrant better reviews/experiences?) b) and every single god damn Wiimote peripheral like the Mario Kart racing wheel, the Zapper, and other games that may be able to otherwise benefit from such a change but won't be able to.

Stoopid Nintendo is stoopid.

The Wii came over a year and a half ago. You can't fault them for not having the tech in the original Wiimote (especially when you figure the design was probably finalized a solid year before release). I'm guessing a lot of the reception will probably depend on the pricing, has that been announced yet? $10 or $20 a piece, not a big deal. Another $40 a piece and that becomes a problem.

Yeah, even as big of a Nintendo fan that I am, I don't really care about it. I think that they're just trying to whore out the Wii and what it does to make even MORE money.

I agree with entrager.

On a seperate note, I'm personally dog ass tired of complaining about games. I dunno who's fault that is: developers for making things to complain about, my fellow blogging-gamers that make a practice of finding fault for analysis purposes, or maybe my job as a pro game complainer. All I know is that:

1) I'm getting things over the next year that I've wanted for a while. (New Mega Man, 1:1 controls)
2) Its going to cost me some money, and someone will acquire that money. (MotionPlus, more Portal levsls, New W-OW expansion, Champions Online are not free)
3) I haven't been this excited about actual, non-theoretical "things" in a while. (Seeing in-game footage of Mirror's Edge, I'm seeing 1:1 motion tracking in action)

"Console Wars" and company posturing aside, I've seen a bunch of things that I like, so far. And that makes me pretty happy.

I can understand the progress of technology and fine tuning the hardware. My question isn't so much 'why now' as it is 'why this'. I can understand a plug to adapt my existing remotes, but it sounds like they aren't bothering to stuff this into a revised wiimote, otherwise it would've been mentioned by now.

"feel this should have been a part of my preexisting Wiimote"

I agree 100%. Hopefully, this thing does well, so it'll be supported across the board, by third parties.

Yeah, I love my Wii and all, it's the only console I own, but I'm still a little pissed about Wii Motion Plus, I don't care how accurate it is, I went out and bought 4 Wii Remotes to play with friends, and now their all essentially obsolete, as they stated that this new peripheral will likely become the new standard. I do not want to buy 4 more additions, its absurd.

I feel like many here do, it's like Nintendo is saying, "We developed shotty hardware, lets sell it anyway, and rape them later when we fix it"

Bullshit.

I love you Destructoid, you shiny, robotic bastard, but I HATE your auto-play videos. HATE them. Did I mention that I HATE them? Yeah, I HATE them................HATE them!

gotta say...why do I have to pay for a little accessory...why doesn't my wiimote do what Reggie's new wiimote does.

either way Wii + Accessories = sales

nintendo is doing what they've seen works.

I hate people. I truly do.

"Man, Nintendo is being such a whore. Who do they think they are, trying to make money? They're turning into Microsoft when they should be like Apple (you know, that company that doesn't make any money at all by re-releasing the same white MP3 player every 8 months?) and just give people what they want."

I can't condescendingly defend this tech release because I can't say for a fact that it didn't exist at Wii launch or that it would've cost too much to package or something but I can say that people are just bitching because they love to. I love bitching as much as the next guy (I'm bitching about people bitching; talk about meta-bitching) but for gods sake when did it not only become common but utterly standard practice to have news or an announcement come from anywhere and have people just adjust their monocles and say "Indeed, this looks like an absolute piece of shit. Don't you agree Reginald?" I'm betting that these cost no more than $15 a piece and most games won't even support them for the next few months. Obviously, you could take the stance that "It shouldn't be a question of 'can I afford it or not' it should be one of why I should be forced to shell out more money" but that's just lazy bullshit. You paid $300 for your console and get games $10 cheaper than the other two options so learn to suck it up and stop crying about how Nintendo gouges you all the time.

Ranting aside (this is very quickly becoming my most used segue) I think this looks cool. I think it might look a bit better if down the line they just re-released the Wiimote with the motion pack built in or something but the cost point of doing so would be too much for even my rantings to defend. Once they announce a motion control Zelda or motion control Kingdom Hearts 3 or something then I'll run out to buy it but as it stands I'll take a wait and see and possibly pick one up once a game that uses it looks decent. If something crazy gets announced I'll get at least two for multiplay purposes.

Not too late, and might just reinvigorate the Wii games library, which had a danger of dying out from being too crappy.

Here is what I said in the previous post about MotionPlus: http://www.destructoid.com/e3-08-nintendo-reveals-new-accessory-the-wii-motionplus-95139.phtml

I was just thinking yesterday that this is exactly what the Wii needs. The current remote does not have the right hardware to do 1:1 orientation, since acceleration sensed by the accelerometer is tricked by motion and gravity, which are physically equivalent. And the IR sensor just helps orient based on a small cone of sensing pointed at the display.

What's really needed is a way for the remote to sense its orientation relative to a display or a starting point accurately, and it seems this fits the bill! I wonder what the tech is, gyrocopes, or something else.

This was likely not included in the original because the technology did not yet exist. A small attachment like this is a great solution, and I don't think it's Nintendo's fault for not including it originally.

@entrager Yeah, I use firefox and they autoplay all the time. This site's videos are the only ones that I've come across that autoplay. On the second page, there are 3 - THREE - nintendo videos and they are all autoplaying at the same time. My ears do bleed.

What I don't quite understand is...is there a connection slot underneath it for when you wish to attach accessories after it's already plugged in? I mean, if I were playing RE4 and wanted to use the nunchuk (I hear it's useful sometimes), can I even connect it in if I decide I want precision aiming via the WiiMotionPlus? It'd be kinda shitty if it'd only be useful for strictly Wiimote games.

":Since not everyone is going to have this thing, how willing are 3rd parties going to be to make games that only work with it?"

Well, it's not like they're never going to offer it standalone, but trust me, everyone is going to line up to buy Wii Sports Resort, just to get MotionPlus.

A lot of Wii games boil the motion sensing down to "wave the damn thing around and something will happen." You can even wave it in the wrong direction and it will probably accept it. While it's nice to see that Nintendo is overcoming the limitations of the technology they used, it may be too little, too late. How are developers supposed to support this, now? Not everybody is going to pick up one of these things.

Wow, the blogpost title reads like it is directly out of Summa's policy of "Nintendo Flamebait Talking-Point Posting For Traffic Whoring". Give me a break. Yeah, it would have been just dandy if that capability was released at launch, because what we were all excited about was the possibility of true 1:1 motion (which some of us predicted wasn't going to be possible anyway but still saw a glimmer of hope in the possibilities with the system), but we didn't get it. Now, a year and a half later, being told that it WILL be available that suddenly interest has been lost? Pfft, that's anti-fanboy ranting if I've ever seen it. I'm excited for the possibilities it will offer.

Blind Assassin and I'm OK are exactly right; when company X announces something, it will never be good enough for the spoiled gaming masses. Get over yourselves.

Nintendo didn't do this from the get go because they can do it now and charge people moneeze for extra crap. I recently realized that that is what Nintendo's business plan is all about. Make a cheap thing that's kinda neat and then charge people mediocre amounts of money to constantly buy more and more shit for it. Shit in different colours or for vaguely different functionality.

In my humble opinion we should not cut Nintendo any slack, not only should the Wii have had this MotionPlus thing already at launch but the wii should have shipped with a fully-fledged holodeck like in Star Trek since that is what the Wii's ultimate point actually is. How dare they hold back on this awesome technology, no doubt that their evil plan is to charge us extra money when they ship Nintendo HoloWii later on while this technology should've been part of the original Wii.