New Wii MotionPlus lets you play Tennis, Golf or Tennis

Josh
Wednesday
8:24 am

Ever since my wife sold a kidney, performed a daring cat burglary and pummeled a sea of 10 year-olds to score me a Wii during the Great Console Rush of ‘07, I’ve been a pretty staunch defender of the system.

But Nintendo keeps finding ways to push my defense to the breaking point. Take the aforementioned MotionPlus addon for the Wii. This little gizmo is going to make the controller REALLY motion sensitive, not just a little motion sensitive. And, of course, Nintendo says it’ll be a revolution. Again.

But, after Nintendo fooled me once with the Balance Board and lack of any interesting games, I’m going in fairly skeptical of their MotionPlus adapter. Here’s why:

Launch titles: The trend of mostly-crappy games continues. Nintendo’s Wii Sports Resort (which features such exciting mini-games as Frisbee and sword fighting) won’t ship for two months after the MotionPlus’ debut. So what can you play with your new little plastic nugget? Sega’s Virtua Tennis, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and EA’s Grand Slam Tennis.

Price: The MotionPlus addon ships in a giant box (see below) and sells for $20. Sure, $20 isn’t a ton of money, but when you count that, in order to play most games, you’ll need a controller ($50), a nunchuck attachment ($20) and now the MotionPlus ($20), and you’re up to a Benjamin in click-together widgets for your controller.

That &$#@ing prophylactic: I’m guessing that legal reasons forced Nintendo to release a longer version of that annoying rubber sleeve that retains sweat and grossness like a gym locker. But I don’t like it, and have two knotted up controller condoms parked permanently on the bottom shelf of my entertainment center.

Am I coming down too hard on the Nintendo crew? Is it better that Nintendo fixed their oversight later, and not never?