Peripherals have always been a double edged sword: Whilst they may well add a new gameplay gimmick or a heightened sense of immersion often there’s a hefty price to pay for this luxury, and this cost has been enough to put off all but a few affluent game collectors or sports enthusiasts. Light guns have just about managed over the years but up until fairly recently it wasn’t uncommon to see boxed up fishing rod peripherals gathering dust in Woolworths, whilst titles like Samba de Amigo never stood a chance. This is all changing however, whether you’re a serious gamer deciding on which items of furniture you’ll be able to live without in order to squeeze Rock Band into your living room or an overzealous parent buying chunks of plastic for your kids to clip onto their Wiimote, peripherals are starting to gain some serious ground in terms of people actually forking out hard earned cash.

The main issue people tend to take with peripheral-based games is for obvious reasons the rather steep costs that tend to be associated; those of us who’ve been gaming for years tend to have defined our own little benchmarks about how much we’re willing to fork out for a game. With the market being flooded with such a large number of truly excellent games those of us who don’t have disposable incomes often have to make tough decisions on which titles to grab and which to miss out on, and most of us have learnt to base these decisions on value for money. With traditional games this is easy: A short but intense story driven game might still weigh up as good value for money when compared to the costs of going to the cinema, whilst a solidly built football game may well provide months of post-pub entertainment. Even World of Warcraft can easily be justified because of its longevity - if you play it enough you’re essentially keeping yourself entertained at the price of just couple of pennies an hour (mind you, that’s only the financial cost).