E3: Wiimote impressions round-up
The Nintendo Wii did itself proud at this year’s E3 stealing the most
attention from players and members of the press alike. Now that many
publications have had the chance to brave the baying mobs of the
Nintendo booth, it is possible to get a quick overall impression of how people
feel about the remote.
The Wiimote has been noted to be slightly smaller than expected but a
delightful design to behold and use; feedback has said that it and the
Wii console have a huge amount of potential but it was not quite met by
around half of the titles on show at E3. This doesn’t mean
there is anything wrong with the hardware – there are several months of
tweaking still on hand and this will be only the first round of titles
pioneering the new technology.
More basic batting games such as Wii Sports Tennis are seen to have
generally the best controls, but when the games and situations become
more complicated, it is harder to judge things like the required swing
speed accurately, simply because there is no real-world feedback to
your actions. The controller’s sensitivity has occasionally been
mentioned as an issue too, although all games will come with the chance
to optimise their own sensitivity settings. In a worse case scenario it
looks like you might have to spend time tweaking your personal
sensitivity settings to get it working perfectly.
All reports are positive – no one sees a disaster looming for Nintendo
– although there is a general consensus that it might take a little bit
of time for developers to truly master this novel technology and tap
the most potential from it. Nintendo, the Wii and its Wiimote are
definitely here to stay.
Read full impressions:
Joystiq
Gamespot
Eurogamer
