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.

Tennis?

[dzafez]

Man, I would like them to rerelease the golf and bowling with support, so it actually works.

Re:Swordfighting

[interkin3tic]

FPS is a hard core genre. That's not the Wii's core demographic.

That's just a bunch of marketing buzzwords. A game can ONLY target a "core demographic?" I don't think so. Reguardless of the average wii owner, there's still a huge number of wii owners who play games besides wii fit. I've never been exactly clear as to what "hard core" mean when referring to gamer types, it seems to just be people who play a lot of games. I don't see why you have to play a lot of games to enjoy FPS, especially not if the controls are right.

yes, tennis is fascinating

[Punto]

so is bowling and golf. Where's my lightsaber?

Re:Wii catches up with PS3 SixAxis then..

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why the ps3 is known for such great uses of motions as Lair, Warhawk?

Re:No plans to support older titles

[Anonymous Coward]

But what the MotionPlus probably does is add a second gyroscope to the Wiimote and send the data directly to the Wii. The Wii would then be able to determine the orientation of the Wiimote more accurately by comparing the data of both gyroscopes. Any other setup would automatically give backwards-compatibility (but it seems like it wouldn't work).

The original Wii controller does not use gyroscopic sensors. It uses accelerometers, which measure gravity and changes in velocity (not changes in position). The big problem with the Wii controller was that a programmer could (approximately) measure the orientation, but only if the controller was not moving. The MotionPlus is different because the gyroscopic sensors can measure orientation regardless of the velocity or acceleration of the controller. Once the orientation is known, then the accelerometers of the original controller can be used to detect movement. Previously, one could detect either movement or approximate orientation, but not both. The MotionPlus remedies that problem, which is a HUGE step forward for the Wii.

This is also the reason why older titles cannot make use of the MotionPlus. The type of data returned from the gyroscopes of the MotionPlus is fundamentally different from the type of data returned from the accelerometers of the WiiMote. There is no means of automatically translating the MotionPlus data into something that older titles expect.

Can't wait for the next step: 3 BT receivers to triangulate the position of the wiimotes. I'd love to get rid of that barely-functional sensorbar setup.

I haven't looked into it, but this is almost certainly not feasible. It would require extremely precise determination of signal latency. As far as I know, the BlueTooth interface is not designed a manner that allows this, and even if it were, the Wii would need very specially designed BlueTooth receivers.
The most succesful setups for small range position detection of this sort have historically usually relied on magnetic field detectors (for example the Polhemus Fastrak or the Ascension Flock of Birds).

Re:The Wii MotionPlus is an expansion device

[meist3r]

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.

Re:Breakthrough? Maybe not!

[KDR_11k]

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.

Re:It should've been like this in the beginning.

[socrplayr813]

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?

Re:Water Warfare

[bFusion]

They already have a nerf gun one too.

Saying FPS is "hardcore only" is ridiculous.

Re:ill never understand

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldnt it be cheaper [...] to get off your ass, pick up a golf club

You've never bought golf equipment or played golf on a course before, have you?

try my new "total reality" game where you buy a tennis racket and some balls

Again, not cheaper than a Wii.

the wii, at the risk of a trollmod, seems like a toy for fat lazy kids

What's wrong with that? At least they're getting SOME exercise if they play the sports games.

By the way, the Wii has other games than Wii Sports. You deserve the troll mod that you're asking for.

Re:Swordfighting

[Toonol]

All that said, a title like Resident Evil 4 or the new Metroid Prime in my opinion show the Wii to be an EXCELLENT platform for FPS and hard core games. The control scheme when done well is infinitely superior to the xbox/ps3 analog stick controllers.

RE4 proved that the Wii controls were vastly superior than a standard gamepad for aiming, when done right... in the same sense that a mouse is superior to a gamepad for some types of games. Developers promptly learned nothing from that example, though.