Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus accessory up for pre-order
By Darren Murph 
posted May 4th 2009 12:19PM
posted May 4th 2009 12:19PM
Update: Good news, gamers. EA Sports just announced that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 and Grand Slam Tennis will now be released on June 8th alongside the Wii MotionPlus dongle.
For Nintendo's sake, this better actually improve gaming.
It will give deeper penetration.
Isn't it already the most expensive when fully equipped? Wiimote, $40, plus nunchuck, $20.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.blogcdn.com/playstation.joystiq.com/media/2007/11/bgrbling425.jpg&imgrefurl=http://playstation.joystiq.com/2007/11/28/the-ultimate-gaming-bling-diamond-encrusted-ps-controller/&usg=__V5y9wdn9Zv5sozXtkxpVOI5Xkyo=&h=319&w=425&sz=34&hl=en&start=2&sig2=MVoRBAWUDPsAt9b4bTQ8XA&tbnid=v6Yj2RP7c_H9dM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=126&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddiamond%2Bencrusted%2Bdual%2Bshock%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN&ei=HBj_SdDmOdGClAfp0ODmCg
That's the type of URL that tinyurl.com was invented for.
You have no idea how to post image, do you?
Does anybody know if they are going to integrate this into the controller or will it always be an add-on?
As much as I'd like to see this happen, it'd be annoying for all the people who bought extra Wii Remotes or shitty WiiPlay to probably buy the add-ons for Wii Sports Resort, and THEN have the fully integrated Remotes come out a while later.. I dunno.
@Level 5
Yeah, it would be crappy, but it sounds exactly like something Nintendo would do. They love hardware revisions. They'll claim that they have no plans for an all-in-one controller, then after this add on has hit market saturation, they'll release a new version for everyone to buy.
All I have to say is I better be personally fighting Ganon in 1:1 movements in the next zelda. As long as im dropping 80 bucks for a controller on an already overpriced system (all that talk about wanting it to be $99 was apparently crap once they started selling so many) this better be frieken amazing because all my wii is used for now is the marios/zeldas and the occasional drinking activity.
Well thats not true, the homebrew channel is opened frequently....
Agreed..... If theres a red steel sequel worth its weight then I better be able to do some tricky stuff.......
"all my wii is used for now is the marios/zeldas and the occasional drinking activity."
Ya know.. after all I the hunting I went through to get my Wii; I agree, I have to say I'm kind of disappointed in the library of games out for it. But.. I enjoyed Super Mario Galaxy so much; I'd go through it all again to play that game.
This will almost certainly disappoint too.
It will still use dead reckoning, so true 1:1 motion is not going to happen.
Basically, this almost certainly just adds a second translational motion sensor at the bottom of the wiimote, to supplement the one at the top.
What does this accomplish? Well it means now that any rotational motion except that around an axis through the two sensors can be measured reasonably accurately and cannot be mistaken for a translational movement (which was a big problem before).
What this will affect the most are reasonably rapid movements, for which before it was difficult to distinguish movement from rotation, and thus you had to add a lot of filtering (which means delay in processing) to try to tell them apart. Very large movements like the bowling motion will be nearly unaffected. Very small, delicate movements like putting in golf will relatively unaffected.
The biggest thing people want is for the device to know where it is in space for long periods of time, so that they can for example move a sword around in front of them. But due to the limitations of dead reckoning, this will probably underperform. Basically, the longer any sensing period (i.e. motion) lasts, the less accurate the projected position at the end of it is, the same problem dead reckoning has had for a thousand years (it was used for navigation on the high seas, just look at old distorted maps to see the cumulative effects of dead reckoning errors).
It's going to be possible to make games with better control than this. But sadly, I don't think it will fix putting in golf games (my personal pet peeve) and I don't think it will ever replace the precision of a joystick. On a joystick, there is very little unintended motion, so it is much easier to fliter it out and still leave a lot of useful data with which to use as game inputs.
Adding the motion control on the Wii was genius. Removing the other controls crippled the ability to do precise control in a way that will likely keep it in the "casual" box forever. Luckily for Nintendo, it's a pretty big box.
@why not the LS2LS7?
How about you first find out what you are talking about before rambling on, this isn't congress you know.
@LS2LS7?
Have you not seen the videos from last year's E3, or the numerous videos of the Golf or Tennis games that use MotionPlus? It's pretty clear the device offers, what appears to be, 1:1 controls (within the context they're shown, at least). You're right that, over time, errors should begin to build, but with clever programming and "recalibration" cycles, even that problem can be mitigated (EA's Tennis re-calibrates during load times, for instance. Other games could just have you point at the sensor bar on occasion.
And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that putting was fixed in the new Tiger Woods game, thanks to MotionPlus--so you should see it improve games regardless of whether the motion is small or large.
Andre:
If it "recenters", it's not 1:1. And you can't just "recalibrate" during load times, there will be noticeable errors within seconds. In a game like tennis where the racket will always be within arm's length, you can just recenter to a sphere the radius of your arm, presumably to a point kind of in front (a "rest" position).
Pointing at the sensor bar does not help recenter in translation, only in rotation, and even that is very approximate.
And again, if it recenters, it is not 1:1.
I work with motion sensors at work, I can tell you the kind of motions putting produces cannot be fixed. The problem isn't so much that the sensors suck, the problem is that it is difficult to tell small, gentle intentional movements from inadvertent ones, so you have to apply a filter, which makes the input laggy.
It will improve games, primarily because of what I said about being able to tell translation from rotation now. But not all games will get the same rotation and it will still be that you cannot get the same level of responsiveness and accuracy with motion sensing that you get with a joystick in many cases.
@LS2LS7?
I'll concede, maybe I'm talking beyond my knowledge. I'm not sure what you mean by "Pointing at the sensor bar does not help recenter in translation, only in rotation, and even that is very approximate."
Pointing at the sensor bar should convey to the Wii almost exactly where the Wiimote is in relation to the TV. From that base position, the Wiimote, with Wii MotionPlus should be able to offer "1:1" control, as it knows where and how the Wiimote is now deviating from that set positioning.
Is that not correct? That's the way it's been shown to have been implemented in the videos from Wii Sports Resort.
Rather, I think our argument is how we define "1:1." You're right, it won't be able to offer absolute positioning the entire time, but I don't think it has to in order to offer "1:1" or something close to that. When people (reporters for instance) use the term "1:1," it's defined as "what I'm doing is represented on-screen," regardless of whether it uses dead reckoning or not. Does it have limitations? Sure. But given the examples shown thus far, it clearly does offer "1:1," as the expression is commonly, within the context of the games (such as the sword demo, which I implore you to watch if you haven't already--look for Wii Sports Resort on youtube).
@Andre @LS2LS7 most civil conversation/comments on Engadget yet. congratulations for not resorting to name-calling, etc! well done!
The sensor bar isn't really a sensor bar. It's just two infrared emitters. The red lens on the front of the Wiimote has a simple camera behind it. You can see what it does by going to the calibration option in the Wii system menus. You'll see a black screen with two white dots on it. The image is the image the camera on the Wiimote is seeing, you can test this by putting your hand in front of one side of the sensor bar and see one dot wink out.
Anyway, go to that screen and start doing orientation tests for yourself. You will see that as you tilt the wiimote front up, the two dots get lower. As you pan it right the two dots move left. As you roll it left, the two dots turn clockwise. So you can see the sensor bar is good for picking up pointing (rotation in 3 axis, although it can't tell upside down from right side up in roll).
Now try walking around the room, that is, translating the Wiimote (moving it around without changing its attitude). You'll see this has much less of an effect than rotation (pointing). If you move closer or farther from the TV, you'll see the dots get farther apart and closer together. This is a crude measure of distance. However, moving up/down or left/right doesn't do much at all, in fact you'll notice that moving left and right also moves the dots closer together, as if you were moving farther away. And you can easily produce an image of two dots level and centered from any position in the room by pointing the Wiimote at the TV. And if you can't tell the images produced by being at two locations , the Wii can't either.
So you can see that the Wiimote pointing system is lousy at telling position, just really good at pointing (as long as you are pointing roughly at the sensor bar). In many cases this is very useful. It means you can use pointing-based UI from any location in the room without the developer having to go through a ton of calibration. But it also means that the ability of the sensor bar pointing system to "recalibrate" the motion-based system is very limited.
Most of correction for drift (errors in dead reckoning) will have to be done via a simple "recenter" system where the system slowly drifts its assumed position back to an initial start point (0,0,0) via a high pass filter (or tensors if you'd like).
It's actually really interesting topic, and one I could go on and on about how it affects what developers have to do to their games to make them work well despite the limitations. But the short version is that it's never going to be as precise as a joystick. It typically won't be as direct either. But of course it does allow things like Wii bowling that just aren't the same on a joystick.
Well, I understand how the sensor bar works (as in, I realize the name itself is a bit of a misnomer)--I've read a lot about the Wii's tech, so I'm quite familiar with its abilities and shortcomings as is (sans MotionPlus). The sensor bar conveys enough (I would think) for the MotionPlus to offer what is commonly accepted in the industry as "1:1"--that the Wii Remote is facing the TV. It shouldn't matter where in the room the controller is being physically held, as the movements you're performing are relative to the in-game character, and do not depend on existing within a completely accurate 3-Dimensional framework outside the game (again, at least in the contexts we've seen it used thus far).
"It's actually really interesting topic, and one I could go on and on about how it affects what developers have to do to their games to make them work well despite the limitations. But the short version is that it's never going to be as precise as a joystick. It typically won't be as direct either. But of course it does allow things like Wii bowling that just aren't the same on a joystick."
I'm not sure that's a completely apt comparison. You're right that it won't be as "precise" in the sense that it'll be more difficult to get the exact same response every single time, but the same could be said for the joystick compared to the D-Pad. Some accuracy has to be conceded for a much larger breadth of movement (Wii MotionPlus will enable as-true to 3D movement we've yet seen, that is far outside the limitations of a Joystiq, which exists on a 2-Dimensional plain.)
My point is that, in the examples it's been shown, MotionPlus does enable 1:1 within the framework it's been presented. I don't think anyone expects it to track you as you run around your room--and I'm not sure there'd be any need for it to. But from what I've seen and read of the device, it seems to offer something close enough to "1:1" that saying it doesn't offer such doesn't seem very meaningful, except in an absolute sense.
People that comment on engadget are just easily intimidated by long technical sounding comments, even if they don't have meri,t because people feel shy about judging if they have validity or not.
Nevertheless there are several occasions where such post are nothing but nonsense.
I do get the concept talked about, but the projection on this situation and assumptions about this addon are not based on factual data, and there is no need for high degrees of absolute positioning of the controller if the relative motions are of very highly increased accuracy and the game starts from a visual startposition interacting with the user..
i am so over the wii
WTF? I thought thoutgh TW10 was supposed to bundled with it as well.
meh. I was finally able to sell my Wii a couple of months ago. My Wii experience:
2 months calling every store every Saturday morning until I found one.
3 days playing Wii Sports.
2 weeks playing Super Mario Galaxy
3 weeks playing Zelda: Twighlight Princess (best game, IMO)
8 months of turning it on every few weeks to see if I had any new messages (never did)
4 months trying to sell it
It's not a bad system, if it's all you have. I think Nintendo needs to ramp it up next gen though. The Wii-mote is a novelty at best. I think the newness and wonder has worn off for most people. I doubt they'll have the same success with the same strategy.
"The Wii-mote is a novelty at best. I think the newness and wonder has worn off for most people."
As evidence by what? Hardware sales? Software sales? The Wii is beating the other consoles handily in both categories. Especially notable are the software sales. So-called "core" gamers love to say that the Wii is a novelty that has worn out and that Wii gamers don't buy games, but the evidence shows the opposite. FYI, here are the US top 20 software sales to date this year:
http://www.vgchartz.com/ayearly.php
There is not a single Wii game on that list that doesn't come with a controller pack-in. The top one comes with an entire console packed in!
True software-only sales of the Wii have been disappointing when compared to the installed base, especially for 3rd party developers.
Short version (percent of software sales this year to date):
Wii: 31%
DS: 28%
360: 20%
PS3: 11%
PSP: 6%
PS2: 5%
[previous attempt to post this ended up unattached from the thread... damn Engadget comment system....]
You are correct about those particular games (in the yearly chart) including pack-ins, but, aside from WiiPlay, where I think that argument is more valid, I don't see why this invalidates their sales. Why would someone, for example, buy Mario Kart Wii just for the wheel? Do you really think people buy WiiFit without the intent of playing the game included? But, for arguments sake, lets take those out of the equation. So, subtract WiiSports, WiiFit, WiiPlay, Mario Kart Wii and even Guitar Hero World Tour (which includes game-only copies) and guess what, you've still got sales of 20,274,724, more then any other console. Hmm
*gawd this comment system bite's ass!*
@SteveJ
On that site, the Top 50 games sold of all time breaks down as:
wii - 51,650,103
xbox360 - 53,840,986
This count excludes Wii Sports, since it comes with the console, although I'm sure it would sell quite well if it had been separate.
Having the Wiimote and it's price point are Nintedo's strongest points with the Wii. The next gen will probably still be sold for less and help sales, but people won't be flocking to it like they did the Wii. They'll need a different plan of attack.
sweet - I'm sure if you limited the stats to only games involving shooting people in the testicles, you'd find that the 360 comes out on top. If you want to, you can find a variant that puts the PSP top in sales. That the top 50 only variant comes out as it does wouldn't seem to indicate that Wii owners aren't buying games. If anything it might show that there is greater diversity in game sales on the Wii.
sweet - similarly the 360 comes out on top if you narrow your view to games involving testicle shooting, and by a wide margin. That limiting your view to only the top 50 games comes out as it does doesn't imply that Wii owners aren't buying games. If anything it might say that there is greater diversity in people who own a Wii - they are buying a greater variety of games. Or maybe it doesn't say even that. It sure doesn't say anything about total sales, nor give any evidence that Wii owners are dissatisfied with their console.
???
You were the one posting sales stats, nimrod. I even quoted from the same site you did.
And I quoted TOTAL sales, I didn't narrow it down to any particular category. Your argument under any name are not smrt.
@sweet greggo @SteveJ unfortunately, you guys didn't have the same civil conversation as Andre & LS2LS7 as you did resort to name-calling (at the very end at least). Thus, you do not receive props from me. that is all.
I don't recall having done any name calling. In any case, what I meant, sweet greggo, is that you narrowed it down to only looking at the top 50 games. OK, but it doesn't say anything about sales in general. Perhaps we should look only at the top 3? Then the Wii has 100% of sales. Woohoo! That's the narrowing I was referring to.
What's the internet without name calling? We're having fun here, no?
@stevej That list was the biggest one I found (I admit I didn't search THAT hard, it was labeled Total Sales so I went with it)
Regardless, it really doesn't have anything to do with my original comment. I never said the Wii wasn't a successful or popular system. My opinion is that this same strategy (an under powered system with original yet akward controllers for conventional gaming) will not work for Nintendo's next console. With the Wii, the newness wears off quickly after purchase. You're left with something that while pretty cool, simply can not do what more advanced consoles can.
...not sure that this make the most expensive remote... the PS3 + keypad is rather pricey too.
will i don't know how good this thing would be, N should be, at this point, making a second Gen remote to have this installed in it. THIS should only be for those who want to add this new functionality to the remotes the already owned.
Yet another way for Nintendo to extract more money from my poor, abused wallet. You'd think that the Super Scope 6, Virtual Boy and Game Boy iterations 1-659 would have taught me something, but no- I have learned nothing.
You are correct about those particular games (in the yearly chart) including pack-ins, but, aside from WiiPlay, where I think that argument is more valid, I don't see why this invalidates their sales. Why would someone, for example, buy Mario Kart Wii just for the wheel? Do you really think people buy WiiFit without the intent of playing the game included? But, for arguments sake, lets take those out of the equation. So, subtract WiiSports, WiiFit, WiiPlay, Mario Kart Wii and even Guitar Hero World Tour (which includes game-only copies) and guess what, you've still got sales of 20,274,724, more then any other console. Hmm.
@SteveJ
On that site, the Top 50 games sold of all time breaks down as:
wii - 51,650,103
xbox360 - 53,840,986
This count excludes Wii Sports, since it comes with the console, although I'm sure it would sell quite well if it had been separate.
Having the Wiimote and it's price point are Nintedo's strongest points with the Wii. The next gen will probably still be sold for less and help sales, but people won't be flocking to it like they did the Wii. They'll need a different plan of attack.
Since Wii Tennis is my favorite Wii game, I'm likely in for one of these. I only hope it lives up to the hype.
The Xbox 360 Wireless controller ($50) + Play N' Charge Kit ($20) + Chatpad Keyboard ($30) still holds the distinction as the most expensive "fully equipped" controller.
Who uses the chat pad? I thought that is what the headsets are for? (I dont have a 360, but I often use my roommates, and end up only using the headset if anything for communications)
plus the play n' charge kit shouldn't count as "equipping" the controller. then you'd also have to add in a rechargeable option for the wiimote and nunchuk which is another $20 on top of that.
i think the xbox 360 is the only console that's got the controller right from the start. ps3 had to add rumble to it's controllers later (fumbled with sixaxis) and the wiimote isn't accurate enough and is now getting the motionplus add on. the x360 controller is $37 on amazon, no additional parts needed. just my opinion. oh, i have a wii, don't have an xbox360 (yet).
To get back on topic... it's a bad idea to pre-order anything gaming related from Amazon. I preordered my Wii from them before launch, and it took them a month to actually get me one.
And just when the Wiimote couldn't get more phallic, they give it a condom...
I can't wait to get my hands on the Wii MotionPlus. I ordered it on Amazon and I think it is really great!
One thing I do look forward to with the Motion Plus is it's supposed ability to detect your moves well. This means that I won't need to cite hardware limitations if I make a crappy shot. That said I do think Nintendo should make old games backward compatible with the MotionPlus. It doesn't seem fair if we have to buy and keep buying new games just to take advantage of this functionality
Jack
http://www.motionplus-wii.com/