Wiimote Plus... too little too late?

[Swamperon]

How did you arrive at that conclusion? There are 75 million + Wii's out there and probably well over 150 million Wiimotes, the vast majority of which don't have the Motion Plus attachment. Integrating it into future Wiimotes hardly erases the obvious fact that the vast majority of your consumer base doesn't have a Motion Plus add-on.

Well that actually is my 'argument'. The logic being that when M+ first came out if they had released the modular attachment and the new Wiimote Plus at the same time, existing Wiimotes could have been upgraded and all new owners would have had the new Wiimotes.

Given that the Wii install base was significantly less than 75million when M+ was released, a higher percentage of the customer base would have had M+ capabilities if this had been done (and there's no valid reason why both couldn't have been released). Therefore potentially making M+ games more common/the norm.

I'm arguing this may have been a missed point for Nintendo. Whether it was or not is now arguably immaterial, but I think they are a bit late in releasing this now.

[Bojay1997]

If you think they forgot the NES when the Super NES was released, then please explain why Kirby's Adventure, Startropics 2, Wario's Woods, etc. all exist.

Kirby's Adventure, Wario's Woods and Startropics 2 were not exactly considered "A" franchises at the same and they still aren't today. Nobody is arguing that Nintendo will immediately cease all support for Wii, but given their consistent past practice with other successful products, they will move all of their big franchises to the next platform and probably just release whatever is very close to being completed for the Wii. It's not the same as complete abandonment, but it's also not the slow taper down that Sony and in the old days Sega had traditionally employed.

[Icarus Moonsight]

Well that actually is my 'argument'. The logic being that when M+ first came out if they had released the modular attachment and the new Wiimote Plus at the same time, existing Wiimotes could have been upgraded and all new owners would have had the new Wiimotes.

Given that the Wii install base was significantly less than 75million when M+ was released, a higher percentage of the customer base would have had M+ capabilities if this had been done (and there's no valid reason why both couldn't have been released). Therefore potentially making M+ games more common/the norm.

I'm arguing this may have been a missed point for Nintendo. Whether it was or not is now arguably immaterial, but I think they are a bit late in releasing this now.

What if the consumers rejected M+? And they've retooled their Wiimote production process... Do you know how much planning, time and money your talking about playing with on non-required risk?

Why specifically do you think it's too late? I'm trying to understand, really I am.

[Swamperon]

Perhaps, but why would any consumer logically reject them? After all the M+ is just an extension of what people have already signed up for when buying the Wii. I would guess that the majority of the mass audience neither know or care about the details of M+, just that it improves the Wii. It would odd for them to reject it.

That argument would hold more water if say with the PS3/Xbox 360. If either company decided to entirely drop their standard controls in favour for their motion controls, then that could easily cause customer alienation as the control methods are entirely different, but M+ isn't.

I'm only saying that if Nintendo had released this new Wiimote the same time as M+ attachedment, then M+ attachment rates would have significantly increased. Therefore we could be seeing more M+ games and less people complaining about motion recognition on the Wii. And then perhaps less favourable comparisons to Move (whose release I'm guessing has prompted Nintendo to release the new Wiimote).

I say too late because the buzz of M+ has worn off and the Wii arguably only has another year, 2 at max, before we see Nintendo's successor console (or at least the announcement).

Then I could be entirely wrong and should Flingsmash/Zelda: SS go on to sell over, say, 10 million, it may convince developers to release more M+ games quickly.

[Icarus Moonsight]

Perhaps, but why would any consumer logically reject them? After all the M+ is just an extension of what people have already signed up for when buying the Wii. I would guess that the majority of the mass audience neither know or care about the details of M+, just that it improves the Wii. It would odd for them to reject it.

That argument would hold more water if say with the PS3/Xbox 360. If either company decided to entirely drop their standard controls in favour for their motion controls, then that could easily cause customer alienation as the control methods are entirely different, but M+ isn't.

I'm only saying that if Nintendo had released this new Wiimote the same time as M+ attachedment, then M+ attachment rates would have significantly increased. Therefore we could be seeing more M+ games and less people complaining about motion recognition on the Wii. And then perhaps less favourable comparisons to Move (whose release I'm guessing has prompted Nintendo to release the new Wiimote).

I say too late because the buzz of M+ has worn off and the Wii arguably only has another year, 2 at max, before we see Nintendo's successor console (or at least the announcement).

Then I could be entirely wrong and should Flingsmash/Zelda: SS go on to sell over, say, 10 million, it may convince developers to release more M+ games quickly.

Logically why reject? US consumers rejected the DeLorean... Just saying. Most people do not operate on logic, simply said. Though they should, but that's another matter entirely...

In this case the obvious methods are; the safe play - only offer the add-on to start, the mixed-risk play - offer both an integrated unit and an add-on from the beginning, and the (over)confident risk play - only offer the integrated unit from day 1. Trust me, they looked at these options and possibly others too. They have experts, and better information than we do and they chose the safe-play in the end. It's possible an outsider could make a better argument to go a different way, but they were not who they chose to listen to are they? Also, having the majority market share, risk is less attractive to them now than it was pre-Wii. Wii itself was a huge risk, so aggregated, their safe play involved more total risk than their competition is even willing to take now, since Nintendo wedged the market, they are simply following with their versions. Risk has to be mitigated and managed very carefully. And I can not see a proportional greater reward then they've achieved currently by adding more risk to the process. I'm assuming they couldn't see a probable risk/reward path for any other option either.

Sony and MS are also taking safe-plays making their motion control systems completely optional... That's actually safer for them than the add-on only M+ option was for Nintendo truth be told. I don't get what you're driving at. It's easy to say now that M+ would be adopted or even that the Wii would surely succeed. Unfortunately, that's not how the reality of the situation works. You can't operate backwards in time and take advantage of unknowns, until you go to the pound and adopt Mr. Peabody anyway.

Keep this in mind: How did six-axis integration work out for Sony? I bet they wish it hadn't integrated so they could have dropped it from Dual Shock 3... Also, apples and oranges there. Nintendo is in a unique position, unprecedented actually. Sony and MS just started taking this seriously a little over a year ago by what they've been saying at shows and interviews. How long did they maintain that they had no interest in motion control? They were obviously either wrong, or lying. The Wii scheme is the metric to compare their systems to now. Move should be getting favorable reviews compared to Wii even with M+. If it got bad or even indifferent reviews, it would be a worthless endeavor. Watching reaction to Kinect bear that in mind because it will only apply to them twice-fold. It will be compared to Wii and Move. If it gets mostly favorable reviews then it just might be the best system for motion control... If not, well, they goofed.

You can say these things all that you want, but can you make a logical induction that coincides with the facts to make a case? That's much more persuasive than, "I think it would have been better this way..." And even if you did, ultimately, it wouldn't matter outside of a fun little thought exercise for us.

[Bojay1997]

It's hardly anything so dramatic.

It's simply a logical step to integrate Motion Plus into future Wiimotes. Everyone knew this was eventually going to happen the minute we found out about Motion Plus.



How did you arrive at that conclusion? There are 75 million + Wii's out there and probably well over 150 million Wiimotes, the vast majority of which don't have the Motion Plus attachment. Integrating it into future Wiimotes hardly erases the obvious fact that the vast majority of your consumer base doesn't have a Motion Plus add-on.

The only games ever coming out that are Motion Plus compatible will be those where there is a compelling reason to support the attachment, such as in Skyward Sword. You will never see Motion Plus compatibility become anything near universal on this platform. It simply isn't needed and doesn't make any sense to support or require in the vast majority of games.

Strongly agree. This is just standard Nintendo tinkering with an existing product to see if they can grab some additional sales on a non-critical technology to their core strategy. They will move a million units at least with Flingsmash and probably more when they sell it separately. It won't convince any additional developers to support the technology most likely and if Skyward Sword does come out for Wii (I'm still skeptical and believe it may get pushed to the next iteration of Nintendo console), we'll probably see a bundle version or a strong consumer education campaign to push the integrated Motion Plus. Frankly, whether it catches on or not, Nintendo couldn't care less. They still have the two leading video game platforms and will likely continue to lead numerically at least for another few years until the next generation and the race starts again.