June 15th, 2009

Nintendo’s choice for Wii MotionPlus

Although Nintendo experimented in the area of the camera-based motin-sensing technology they had abandonded the project in favour of the accelerometer. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president, declared that they had found better results in that area, being ready to release the next iteration of that technology – Wii MotionPlus. He expressed his desire to see how the devices of Sony and Microsoft worked out, hoping that they would turn out to be different.

Nintendo’s president said that the results they got with the accelerometers were better, in this way they would be the next Nintendo’s choice for Wii MotionPlus. Mr. Iwata’s declaration challenges the Nintendo’s rivals as they announced motion-sensing controllers with camera-based technology to catch up with sales performed by Wii. The innovation that made Wii a sensation three years ago has turned into an industry standard., while the companies that had declared that motion-sensing wouldn’t work they were now going in the favour of motion sensors.

nintendoe28099s-choice-for-wii-motionplus

The catch of Wii feature is that the built-in accelerometer incorporated into Wii’s controller translates the motion into game commands. An upgrade consists in detecting subtler movements, and it would be a new Nintendo’ release. The Sony’s new controller, that is to be released next spring, is using a camera to detect the movements of a wand.

The president of Sony Computer Ent., Kazuo Hirai, said it was a better way to track motion directed to the screen, the PlayStation 3 doing that without any time delay. With the add of a camera and depth sensor, the new Microsoft’s controller will detect more accurately every motion of the player’s body. The results were demonstrated to the analysts, gamers and game designers, who saw it as highly innovative and one step behind what Wii had done till now.

Opinions on the Nintendo Wii MotionPlus differ; some players say that there is not much precision added to the moves reflected on the screen and the abstraction level, the one that define the distance between player’s actions and what happens on the screen; doen’s seem to offer a great feeling or satisfaction. Others say that they felt completely in control with the moves they made, the mimicking being displayed perfectly. The thumb up opinion comes also from the satisfatcion of the players that see the Nintendo’s software in MotionPlus as the masterpiece of its technology.

But mostly, the precision of the moves, their physics while simple yet completely naturally reproduced, are seen as satisfactory by the gamers, offering them a great experience, iNntendo’s choice for Wii MotionPlus being a definite win, both for the producers and the ardent players.