Hardware Love(d) or Hate(d) motion controls on Wii?

[JeffRuLz]

I like using the pointer for menus and aiming. If they don't already, I wish smart TVs had remotes with pointers.
I do not like shaking the remote in place of a button. It was annoying at first, but now I'm older and it hurts my wrists.
Games designed around motion controls are fun, but too many tried to incorporate them where they don't belong, like Sonic and the Secret Rings.

Overall I'm glad that it happened and I'm glad that it's over. I remember being a kid and really wanted to play a Zelda game with real sword controls, and if the wii never happened then a lot of people would still be begging for it.

 

[tech3475]

PS3 also had lightgun games though, some that used Move some that used Guncon 3. You could argue that Move was a Wiimote ripoff though.

I did think of the Move, but then I thought the Move controller (likely) only exists as it is because of the Wii.

I had forgotten about Guncon 3 though, looking it up there was another gun as well released for the ps3.

VR seems to be keeping it going a little bit as well e.g. Rush of Blood.

Overall, I wouldn’t say the Wii alone killed the genre.

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

First experiences with the Wii Motion was great.I only known Pc Joysticks,Sega Mega Drive Pad,Controllers for PlayStation 1+2,Gamecube,Dreamcast (ok,that one is also a little "Special") and then this one.

First I thought the whole thing is broken of no reaction of the pointer on the screen.
And who needs a Wii "Manual".......
After a few hours of trying,I accidentally sat right in front of the TV and ... it worked.

Since then, I appreciate this type of "input" and control.
Just Dance with a Classic controller looks pretty stupid then.
For most of the Games it makes Fun and it just fits.

For the Homebrew Applications honestly I am very glad that the Gamecube Controller takes it over.Install Priiloader or a cIOS with an uncalibrated Wii Mote....

And what we never forget:

The Wii Motion was originally designed for the GAMECUBE.
So say,it "kills" the genre is not 100% correct in my personal Opinion.

I LOVE it.

Thank you.

 

[EmulateLife]

I did think of the Move, but then I thought the Move controller (likely) only exists as it is because of the Wii.

I had forgotten about Guncon 3 though, looking it up there was another gun as well released for the ps3.

VR seems to be keeping it going a little bit as well e.g. Rush of Blood.

Overall, I wouldn’t say the Wii alone killed the genre.

That's a good point that VR is kinda the new motion controls. I've still yet to play a VR game in my entire life so it slipped my mind.

The switch sorta has motion controls but it's not used in many games other than 1,2 Switch, and the new Switch Lite is reported to not support any motion controls. Mario Odyssey has limited motion controls but they're mostly optional. There's probably others that I don't know about.

 

[Reynardine]

I skipped the Wii because of the motion controls. I just couldn't get into it at all. I now have a Wii U to experience some of the Wii classics I missed back then.

I still prefer playing Twilight Princess on the Gamecube. As for Skyward Sword, well, I'm not sure how that could work without motion controls to be honest.

I prefer traditional controls, gimmicks get old really quick, if you ask me. And many Wii games used the motion gestures just for the sake of it without any real benefit. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, for example, would've been perfectly playable with a classic controller, but Nintendo didn't want us to do this.

 

[EmulateLife]

Here's a pretty interesting discussion about it https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/a0nj16/how_could_skyward_sword_be_playable_without/

Wonder if anyone ever played through it in Dolphin emulator.

 

[MercilessDeth]

I've been thinking about this a lot since I saw the question first posed--the Wii (and the Wii U) were an odd time for Nintendo. Commercially, the GCN was not a knockout success, though many of its games seem more revered today than at release...this could be somewhat situational though as I was in high school for most of the GCN's lifespan. Nintendo games were not really seen as being 'cool'. I owned one and enjoyed it, but many around me were much more interested in the Grand Theft Auto series, Halo, God Of War, Counter Strike etc and Nintendo games were viewed as being too kiddy in the general perception of my fellow 16 year olds at the time.

There are many good points brought up I wanna touch on though. Light Gun games didn't die with the Wii, as another poster mentioned, they died with the CRT television. The traditional style worked using a quirk of their operation. I have a GunCon 3 and a few Playstation Move controllers as well...I know you could play Killzone 3 with it but my god the controls were awkward. Nintendo was rather forward thinking in the pointing capabilities of the Wii (though it does certainly depend a lot on setup and distance/position from the TV) in that the Sensor bar has 2 'sensors' spaced a certain distance apart from one another. The sensor bar design would be improved for larger rooms if it were wider or if the sensors could be placed individually. The PS Move used the PS3 Eye, which was a pretty decent USB camera for the time, but any game that required pointing or tracking with 2 players simultaneously suffers a lot because there's only one sensor so to speak.

In fact, I've not tried a PSVR but I know that it uses multiple Move controllers at a time, and I've heard that there are tracking issues due to the PS4 camera. I have an Oculus Rift for my PC, which comes with two individual sensors by default, officially supports a third, and though some use more there are diminishing returns. Accurate tracking involves a lot of overlap between the sensors, and it helps a lot if the controller is in view of at least two sensors at all times.

Anyway, the point of the tangent is that motion controls of the Wii variety kind of lived and died before they were really ready for primetime. There's not really any hard and fast rule as to whether or not motion controls ruin a game; it entirely depends on how well the developers worked around the issues with implementation. Metroid Prime 3 works well enough (it would be better than 2 without motion controls at all though), yet Skyward Sword maps the button for recentering your pointer in a suspiciously accessible spot...like they just knew that something about their design was inherently poorly functioning (and Skyward Sword minus the motion controls really isn't a great Zelda game either). Donkey Kong Country Returns is best played with a controller hack hack, as the position you're expected to hold the remote in, while shaking and interacting with buttons is a total non-starter what were they thinking design. The issue with waggle controls isn't really 'could that be a button press' it's 'should that be a button press'. The waggle in Mario Galaxy doesn't bother me much for that reason...the action it performs is situational and there's a button that makes Mario jump thank god.

Hardware sales of the Wii definitely were through the roof though. I'm not sure if Nintendo purposefully kept the console cheap by making it essentially a Gamecube in terms of horsepower while dumping their R&D into motion controls, or if they did it just to ensnare the casual gamer who really wasn't interested in the PS3 or Xbox 360 at full launch price since they were considerably more expensive. The trouble is, hardware sales aren't really where the profit margin is (most consoles are really sold at a slight loss upon launch). Not that Nintendo's quantity of sales didn't make them money, but they're really more interested in selling the higher-margin software...and a lot of those fair weather Wii owners owned Wii Sports and little else before the novelty wore thin. I do wonder if Nintendo had some misplaced gambles--that HDTVs wouldn't be affordable and heavily adopted a few years into the system's life, and that phones weren't going to completely take over the casual games market with their Free to Ride->Pay to Win and advertisement-based revenue. Though I'm not sure that in 2006 anybody really was thinking that smart phones would overtake the world by spending 3 or 4 years as an expensive novelty toy before transitioning into 'necessity' in the span of about 2 years.

 

[MrCokeacola]

Really liked the motion controls on the Wii. My first time playing Call of Duty online was on the Wii and I loved using the Wiimote to play even when the later games added classic controller support. My Dad really enjoyed it as well and still uses my old hacked Wii sometimes to play Black Ops online with the small community that still plays.

 

[Draxikor]

@Upaluppa there is a cheat that allows to use the classic control and the move the shake do is assigned to one button.

 

[EmulateLife]

@Upaluppa there is a cheat that allows to use the classic control and the move the shake do is assigned to one button.

Are you talking about New Super Mario Bros Wii? Yeah I have a Wii U inject of it with classic controller support. The only thing not supported is tilt but I think you can unplug the cc and do it using the wiimote then plug it back in. There's only a few times in the entire game tilt is needed.

 

[H1B1Esquire]

I'm okay when it's Wii sports, but muh Zelda didn't need it.

 

[Reynardine]

Are you talking about New Super Mario Bros Wii? Yeah I have a Wii U inject of it with classic controller support. The only thing not supported is tilt but I think you can unplug the cc and do it using the wiimote then plug it back in. There's only a few times in the entire game tilt is needed.

I wish I could just map the controls to the Wii U gamepad. That would have been great for offscreen play.

Well, I can play NSMB Wii on the Switch via retroarch now with proper button controls, but for many other Wii games I'm stuck with the Wii remote which also eats batteries...

 

[EmulateLife]

Yeah no way to use Gamepad even on inject for NSMBW.

They could have added official classic controller support easily (which would have then allowed us to inject gamepad support), but they were in that phase of forcing every game to use wiimote even if it's sideways wiimote. I mean that was fine to have the option for that, but making it mandatory with no other controller option was foolish. I mean it's f'n Super Mario Bros, is it too much to ask to use a controller?

 

[Draxikor]

Yeah no way to use Gamepad even on inject for NSMBW.

They could have added official classic controller support easily (which would have then allowed us to inject gamepad support), but they were in that phase of forcing every game to use wiimote even if it's sideways wiimote. I mean that was fine to have the option for that, but making it mandatory with no other controller option was foolish. I mean it's f'n Super Mario Bros, is it too much to ask to use a controller?

Nintendo do the same on DS a lot of games could be played without the touch screen but they love to force it, the only ones i know are exclusive to that will be Rythm Heaven and the OSU ones