Buzzin Games

Cast your mind back to November 2006, when those of you forward thinking to pre-order a Wii will have had your brand new consoles delivered. Remember putting the Wii Sports disk in the drive for the first time, standing in the middle of the room and making a wild, elaborate swing with the remote and seeing your Mii do the same with the golf club?

Now cast your minds back to a few days later, when the initial amazement wore off and you discovered that exactly the same action could be created by lazily slouching on the sofa and flicking the wrist.

MotionPlus promises the end of that. It’s a little attachment that you place on the end of the Wii remote which replicates full 1:1 movement. Appropriately, it’s going to be bundled with Wii Sports Resort, the sequel to the game that made the grandparents play videogames. It’s a lot of fancy tech, and Wikipedia will tell you more about it.

But does it make that much of a difference? Well, yes, if you believe the hyperbole coming from EA executive Peter Moore’s mouth. Speaking to FirstCuts, he spoke positively about MotionPlus’ ability to transform good games (the upcoming Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10) into something “spectacular”:

“What the Wii Motion plus allows you to do is do a true authentic sports motion. When you swing the racquet and you bring it back for an overhead lob or smash, then that is reflected. The amount of sensitivity that now brings allows true sports motion. It’s the same with golf. What you can do with Wii Motion Plus is truly bring it back, swing through the club and then it allows you to hit draws, fades and hooks. The really astute golfer can address the ball as he or she would in a real golf game.

While the game will play as well as any other game with the current Wii remote, when you get it with the motion plus device, it becomes spectacular. I’ve hit spins, lobs and drop shots playing Tennis in Vancouver.”

While it’s difficult not to take this with a massive shaker of salt, it’s equally hard not to be excited by something which promises to bring the initial wonderment and innovation of Wii Sports to us all over again.

I think over the last 18 months, everyone has become a bit jaded towards the Wii remote thanks to some pretty shoddy implementation alongside some over ambition about what it can actually do. With any luck, MotionPlus will allow these more ambitious ideas to become reality and help the Wii become a ‘hardcore gaming console’ again.

Either way, we’ll find out sometime before the Summer when the MotionPlus peripheral is rumoured to be coming out.