Metallix87
Member
In the past few weeks and months, I've noticed numerous posters on here declaring motion controls dead and proclaiming the entire "movement", started by the Wii, to have been nothing more than a fad, and one that ended up being detrimental to the gaming industry as a whole. As such, I've decided to make this topic, analyzing the successes and failures of motion controls, speculating on the future of the technology, and also reminiscing on the Wii, which I think, despite all the vitriol from alleged core gamers, is one of the best game consoles of all times, both in terms of exclusive titles as well as impact on the industry as a whole. That being said, I'm hoping that this thread can lead towards some positive discussion about motion controls, and the positives they bring with them.
The Dawn of the Wii and the Age of Motion Gaming
"Nintendo Revolution" was the name that we had to work with early on when discussing the upcoming Nintendo system. The name indicated Nintendo's belief that changing the way we played games would lead to new types of gameplay to re-engage existing gamers while also attracting new individuals into gaming. There was certainly a lot of hype and speculation early on about what this would mean, with plenty of people believing that the system would have a touch screen on the controller to align it with the design of the Nintendo DS. There was even some speculation behind some kind of VR device, with the very neat hoax the Nintendo ON appearing to fuel speculation. What we got, was the Wii Remote, or Wiimote as it came to be known, and it would prove to be a very controversial controller moving forward.
The Wii launched in North America on November 19th, 2006. The system launched with big titles like Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Red Steel, and Call of Duty 3, as well as a great deal of shovelware. The system ended up selling out and remaining sold out for many months, primarily due to the hype behind Wii Sports, the proof-of-concept for motion controls in gaming. The Wii phenomenon spread quickly, as the system began appearing on news reports and talk shows. Motion controls were a clear hit, with the barrier of entry for Wii Sports being so low that anyone could enjoy gaming at long last. Unfortunately, this amazing success brought with it a great deal of "entrepreneurs" looking to turn the Wii into a way of making a quick buck with little-to-no real effort.
The Wii became the primary home of third party shovelware as well as what came to be known as "test games". Shovelware is something that most people should be familiar with. "Test games", for those unacquainted with that term, refers to the types of games that use a popular core license in a new, unique way to hope to appeal to the perceived gaming populace of the Wii and to see if there's an interest for those types of games on the platform. What are some prominent examples of test games? Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Dead Space: Extraction, and, to a lesser extent, Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers. The term was coined after Capcom repeatedly kept referring to their bizarre releases on the platform as tests to see if the market was viable.
Sales remained high, even despite all the crap being shoveled onto the system. It seemed like there was no stopping the Wii. Unfortunately, with time, the polluting of the Wii ecosystem would take it's toll, but before we get to that, there are two minor "stops" we have to make in the history of the system.
Light Gun Games! Rise from thy Ashes!
In a roundabout way, the Wii's Wiimote was the ideal device for rail shooters. IR pointing proved to be an absolute revolution, eliminating the need for a light gun peripheral, though such peripherals did appear with time regardless. Several key titles were able to take advantage of the technology and bring about a revival of the rail shooter genre on consoles. Key titles in this genre on the Wii were Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, The House of the Dead: Overkill, Dead Space: Extraction, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, as well as prominent ports like Sin & Punishment, Gunblade NY & LA Machineguns: Arcade Hits Pack, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, and Ghost Squad.
Unfortunately, as with most things about the Wii, the good brought about by this revival was soon blasted by the critics. Dead Space and Resident Evil appearing as rail shooters was used as a means to attack the system, declaring that the system was the home of crappy on-rails spin-offs, and suggesting the controls prevented a proper game experience like on the HD Twins from happening on the platform. That stigma lingered with the Wii, and in later years was still being used to declare the system as "lesser".
Dance and Exercise Your Way to Fun
This section will be relatively quick, as I don't want to linger on it more than I have to. I have nothing against these types of games, but they're not my cup of tea, and I doubt most people on here care much for them, but they deserve to be mentioned in this look back at motion gaming. Dance games were forever changed with the Wii, abandoning dance pads in favor of more free-form controls designed around the Wiimote.
Exercise games also rose to prominence thanks to the Wii and the Balance Board peripheral. The game that drove the hype was Wii Fit, a Nintendo title that aimed to make staying fit more fun and enjoyable for the average person. Shigeru Miyamoto drove the design, as he had become very fascinated with health and fitness at the time. In the end, Wii Fit and it's third party clones helped continue the hype behind the system, and helping the sales stay rock solid.
The Arrival of Imitators and the Decline of the King
As sales began to slow down a bit, third parties quickly declared the Wii dead and abandoned ship in a hurry, leaving Nintendo fending for themselves for the most part. Around this time, Nintendo announced the next evolution for their Wiimote, the Wii Motion Plus. Motion Plus allowed for even more accurate motion controls, which Nintendo claimed would final bring about the long-desired 1:1 motion controls. Unfortunately, this announcement came around the same time that the competition, tired of letting Nintendo hog up all the motion glory, decided to join in with their own motion devices.
Sony chose the direct route, creating the PS Move, a device that, for all intents and purposes, was basically a Wiimote clone. Microsoft chose a strange new path, the Kinect, which dropped all tactile controls in favor of free-form gaming. Both experienced a surge in sales, though the latter was better received for it's unique-ness. Still, both failed to reach anything near the heights of the Wii, and the Wii itself was in decline.
The Dream is Realized! Motion to the Max!
Before the Wii "died", there were two titles that emerged that felt like the fulfillment of the potential that many core gamers had dreamed about when the system was first announced. Those two titles were Red Steel 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, each a follow up to a Wii launch title. Each proved that, with the power of Wii Motion Plus, 1:1 sword play was possible, and that it was fun. These games came very late in the system's lifespan, though, and neither did the numbers of their predecessors, despite being far superior experiences that showed off just what motion could bring to a core game experience.
The Future of Motion Controls
Wii U was the first console to launch, and it seemingly dropped motion controls as the primary control mechanism in favor of a Tablet-esque Game Pad to appeal to modern gamers. It failed, of course, leaving me to believe that a more advanced Wiimote Plus would've been a superior option for a standard controller, especially as Wiimotes continue to be the multiplayer controller of the system. Sony and Microsoft have been more proactive in killing off motion controls, with Move being ignored and Kinect relegated to non-gaming applications primarily.
Fortunately, all is not lost! As the dawn of VR gaming approaches, motion controls will become more and more necessary to help us realize the dream. On top of that, with the Wiimote still supported strongly by the Wii U, it's clear that Nintendo is at least willing to keep exploring it's potential moving forward. I'm not sure what form the next big motion gaming craze will take, but it's obvious to me that it's going to come, either on PC or consoles, and will ideally get core gamers to once again see the potential that motion controls can bring when not squandered on cheap, gimmicky experiences.
Where does that leave us? I'm of the firm belief that motion gaming is here to stay, and it's only a matter of time before developers realize the best way to leverage 1:1 motion as well as pointer functionality. Will it become the standard controls for a platform again? I'm not sure, and I doubt it, but if VR gaming really takes off, I could see it potentially happening.
So what do I hope you walk away with from this lengthy thread? I'd like people to start questioning and discussing what the pros and cons of proper motion controls (not waggle) are for the games industry as a whole. I'd like people to at least question if the "fad" really died on it's own as is often suggested, or if third parties abandoned ship quickly and left consumers without content to consume. Most importantly, though, I'd like to see what your opinions are on the past and future of motion gaming. I think this is a discussion that needs to be had, as motion has become such a controversial talking point, both when discussing the Wii itself as well as whether or not it had a lasting effect on the industry at large.
The Dawn of the Wii and the Age of Motion Gaming
"Nintendo Revolution" was the name that we had to work with early on when discussing the upcoming Nintendo system. The name indicated Nintendo's belief that changing the way we played games would lead to new types of gameplay to re-engage existing gamers while also attracting new individuals into gaming. There was certainly a lot of hype and speculation early on about what this would mean, with plenty of people believing that the system would have a touch screen on the controller to align it with the design of the Nintendo DS. There was even some speculation behind some kind of VR device, with the very neat hoax the Nintendo ON appearing to fuel speculation. What we got, was the Wii Remote, or Wiimote as it came to be known, and it would prove to be a very controversial controller moving forward.
The Wii launched in North America on November 19th, 2006. The system launched with big titles like Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Red Steel, and Call of Duty 3, as well as a great deal of shovelware. The system ended up selling out and remaining sold out for many months, primarily due to the hype behind Wii Sports, the proof-of-concept for motion controls in gaming. The Wii phenomenon spread quickly, as the system began appearing on news reports and talk shows. Motion controls were a clear hit, with the barrier of entry for Wii Sports being so low that anyone could enjoy gaming at long last. Unfortunately, this amazing success brought with it a great deal of "entrepreneurs" looking to turn the Wii into a way of making a quick buck with little-to-no real effort.
The Wii became the primary home of third party shovelware as well as what came to be known as "test games". Shovelware is something that most people should be familiar with. "Test games", for those unacquainted with that term, refers to the types of games that use a popular core license in a new, unique way to hope to appeal to the perceived gaming populace of the Wii and to see if there's an interest for those types of games on the platform. What are some prominent examples of test games? Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Dead Space: Extraction, and, to a lesser extent, Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers. The term was coined after Capcom repeatedly kept referring to their bizarre releases on the platform as tests to see if the market was viable.
Sales remained high, even despite all the crap being shoveled onto the system. It seemed like there was no stopping the Wii. Unfortunately, with time, the polluting of the Wii ecosystem would take it's toll, but before we get to that, there are two minor "stops" we have to make in the history of the system.
Light Gun Games! Rise from thy Ashes!
In a roundabout way, the Wii's Wiimote was the ideal device for rail shooters. IR pointing proved to be an absolute revolution, eliminating the need for a light gun peripheral, though such peripherals did appear with time regardless. Several key titles were able to take advantage of the technology and bring about a revival of the rail shooter genre on consoles. Key titles in this genre on the Wii were Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, The House of the Dead: Overkill, Dead Space: Extraction, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, as well as prominent ports like Sin & Punishment, Gunblade NY & LA Machineguns: Arcade Hits Pack, The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return, and Ghost Squad.
Unfortunately, as with most things about the Wii, the good brought about by this revival was soon blasted by the critics. Dead Space and Resident Evil appearing as rail shooters was used as a means to attack the system, declaring that the system was the home of crappy on-rails spin-offs, and suggesting the controls prevented a proper game experience like on the HD Twins from happening on the platform. That stigma lingered with the Wii, and in later years was still being used to declare the system as "lesser".
Dance and Exercise Your Way to Fun
This section will be relatively quick, as I don't want to linger on it more than I have to. I have nothing against these types of games, but they're not my cup of tea, and I doubt most people on here care much for them, but they deserve to be mentioned in this look back at motion gaming. Dance games were forever changed with the Wii, abandoning dance pads in favor of more free-form controls designed around the Wiimote.
Exercise games also rose to prominence thanks to the Wii and the Balance Board peripheral. The game that drove the hype was Wii Fit, a Nintendo title that aimed to make staying fit more fun and enjoyable for the average person. Shigeru Miyamoto drove the design, as he had become very fascinated with health and fitness at the time. In the end, Wii Fit and it's third party clones helped continue the hype behind the system, and helping the sales stay rock solid.
The Arrival of Imitators and the Decline of the King
As sales began to slow down a bit, third parties quickly declared the Wii dead and abandoned ship in a hurry, leaving Nintendo fending for themselves for the most part. Around this time, Nintendo announced the next evolution for their Wiimote, the Wii Motion Plus. Motion Plus allowed for even more accurate motion controls, which Nintendo claimed would final bring about the long-desired 1:1 motion controls. Unfortunately, this announcement came around the same time that the competition, tired of letting Nintendo hog up all the motion glory, decided to join in with their own motion devices.
Sony chose the direct route, creating the PS Move, a device that, for all intents and purposes, was basically a Wiimote clone. Microsoft chose a strange new path, the Kinect, which dropped all tactile controls in favor of free-form gaming. Both experienced a surge in sales, though the latter was better received for it's unique-ness. Still, both failed to reach anything near the heights of the Wii, and the Wii itself was in decline.
The Dream is Realized! Motion to the Max!
Before the Wii "died", there were two titles that emerged that felt like the fulfillment of the potential that many core gamers had dreamed about when the system was first announced. Those two titles were Red Steel 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, each a follow up to a Wii launch title. Each proved that, with the power of Wii Motion Plus, 1:1 sword play was possible, and that it was fun. These games came very late in the system's lifespan, though, and neither did the numbers of their predecessors, despite being far superior experiences that showed off just what motion could bring to a core game experience.
The Future of Motion Controls
Wii U was the first console to launch, and it seemingly dropped motion controls as the primary control mechanism in favor of a Tablet-esque Game Pad to appeal to modern gamers. It failed, of course, leaving me to believe that a more advanced Wiimote Plus would've been a superior option for a standard controller, especially as Wiimotes continue to be the multiplayer controller of the system. Sony and Microsoft have been more proactive in killing off motion controls, with Move being ignored and Kinect relegated to non-gaming applications primarily.
Fortunately, all is not lost! As the dawn of VR gaming approaches, motion controls will become more and more necessary to help us realize the dream. On top of that, with the Wiimote still supported strongly by the Wii U, it's clear that Nintendo is at least willing to keep exploring it's potential moving forward. I'm not sure what form the next big motion gaming craze will take, but it's obvious to me that it's going to come, either on PC or consoles, and will ideally get core gamers to once again see the potential that motion controls can bring when not squandered on cheap, gimmicky experiences.
Where does that leave us? I'm of the firm belief that motion gaming is here to stay, and it's only a matter of time before developers realize the best way to leverage 1:1 motion as well as pointer functionality. Will it become the standard controls for a platform again? I'm not sure, and I doubt it, but if VR gaming really takes off, I could see it potentially happening.
So what do I hope you walk away with from this lengthy thread? I'd like people to start questioning and discussing what the pros and cons of proper motion controls (not waggle) are for the games industry as a whole. I'd like people to at least question if the "fad" really died on it's own as is often suggested, or if third parties abandoned ship quickly and left consumers without content to consume. Most importantly, though, I'd like to see what your opinions are on the past and future of motion gaming. I think this is a discussion that needs to be had, as motion has become such a controversial talking point, both when discussing the Wii itself as well as whether or not it had a lasting effect on the industry at large.
