It may be the understatement of the year but lets face it; Motion gaming is here to stay. The E3 expo has come and gone, leaving in its wake a slew of  games to salivate over for the coming months. It’s clear that most developers are beginning to invest some serious time into the concept. Not just for the casual market but for the Hardcore also.  In an obvious effort to increase the console life-cycle, Sony and Microsoft have announced  motion control devices to complement their current devices, launching (we hope) this fall. Both of these companies are approaching motion gaming differently, but both are using these new technologies as a way to re-launch their respective consoles. This is in no small way due to the huge success Nintendo and Apple has had with their answer to motion gaming.

In part one of four, we take an in-depth look at the WiiMote; the pioneer of modern motion gaming. Part two deals with Sony’s highly precise but slightly whacky-looking “Ball-on-a-stick”; PlayStation Move. The third part will deal with the newly christened Kinect, Microsoft’s “hands-off” approach to the future. Finally, the fourth part will deal with Apples combined effort (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad) to take a bite out of the motion gaming market.

Having been the first to emerge, the Wii is an old favourite. Nintendo have done wonders to market the technology and  as result have been ruling the roost for the last three years. Having been around for that long now, gamers have become very familiar with it. Nintendo’s bigwigs have been able to tap into our vestigial child, our inner Mario. In that sense, the Wii (and Nintendo itself) are beginning to enter the kid-friendly domain that Disney has occupied since it’s inception. Let’s take a look at how it does just that.

THE TECH

Analysis:

WiiMote Dissected

“Let’s establish some facts with the precursor: the WiiMote. WiiMote is a two sensor system made of one 3-axis rotation sensor and one optical (IR) sensor located in the pointer lens. This tracks where on the screen the WiiMote is pointing, relative to the sensor bar that comes with the console. An additional Nunchuck that also contains a motion sensor can be connected by a cable to the WiiMote. The recently introduced Wii Motion Plus is an add-on to the WiiMote that contains an angular rate sensor that can help differentiate between “twisting” and linear movement motion, thus making the overall motion sensing and interpretation more accurate.

Note that all these sensors only know what’s happening (rotation, acceleration) relative to their own position. They are the center of their small universe. Because of that, every Wii game is using some sort of context to “guess” how to interpret the data. They often need a “start position” that will tell them what the point of origin is (archery or golf are good examples) or games like Tennis sense simple swings and mostly adapt themselves, depending on the player’s position on screen. It’s robust because there are no external factor that can interfere and it’s arguably an efficient way to tackle the problem.”

Pros:

Gaming on Wii

• Cheapest Console – Its no secret that Nintendo has always gone for the affordable slightly out-dated tech over hi-end mechanics in their consoles. The Wii and WiiMote are no different. The console still retains the cheapest out-of-the-box motion gaming experience compared to it’s competition.

• Ease-of-Use – The whole control scheme is perfect in terms of aesthetics. Buttons are easily accessible and the motion gestures are easy to preform. It would have to be, given its install base consisting of three year-old kids up to eighty year old pensioners (apparently).

• Promotes family Gaming – For ‘core gamers this is seen as less of an advantage and more of a disadvantage (the nightmare of five year old sisters taking up the HDTV to play Barbie Adventures comes to mind here) but in the grand scheme of things, it only serves Nintendo. Never before have families so avidly played a console. With first party titles like WiiFit, WiiSports, WiiPlay and (the admittedly poor) WiiMusic, Nintendo holds an iron grip on family-friendly fun in the living room.

Cons:

Nintendo Announce the Wii

• Magnitude of lacklustre games – This perhaps is the biggest disadvantage to the Wii experience. It appears that the licensing and development process for Wii software is one that is neither long nor complicated. Gamers are faced with a growing mass of, what appears to be, cheap, quickly-produced,”Ben10″ – like titles appearing on the Wii shelves on a weekly basis. This trend, sadly, does not seem to have reached critical mass just yet.

• Lack of  true 1:1 experience – While the Wii is capable of true 1:1 motion, we’ve yet to see it employed effectively in a game other than WiiSports Resort. Nintendo’s marketing of WiiMotion Plus left a lot to be desired and as a result a considerable amount of the Wii’s market is completely oblivious to the add-ons existence. Alas, hope remains, as the recently announced “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” promises to take advantage of the extra sensors in WiiMotion Plus, hopefully setting the bar for all other releases.

• Hardcore barely catered for – While Nintendo’s recent E3 showing seems to have eradicated this shortcoming, the validity of this con, at this moment in time, still stands. Nintendo, up until now, did an abysmal job at providing ‘core gamers something to waggle their controllers at. Third-party developers have also tried without much success to provide to the audience with games such as No More Heroes and Madworld. But because of Nintendo’s family-orientated approach to advertising, the audience just is not there. Since the Wii’s launch, Nintendo got away with releasing one to two strong software titles a year. However, with the recent influx of games promised to “cater for all gamer types” at E3 we will hopefully see this become a thing of the past.

Games that take advantage of Motion Control:

Metacritic Score 80

Metacritic Score 80

Metacritic Score 88

Finally..

It’s quite obvious. The Wii revolution has succeeded. Both the console and it’s controller have, undeniably, taken the videogame world by storm since their arrival in late 2006. This is despite being derided as a kid’s toy, being graphically inferior, and suffering from a severe lack of real first class games. However, the technology is there to make keep it in the race to be centre of the Motion Gaming experience in the living room. The ball is, most definitely,  in Nintendo’s court.

Next time we’ll be assessing Sony’s recent efforts with their PlayStation Move peripheral.