Whilst a crowd of savvy gaming consumers remains buying for the Wii, they have quickly become the minority. Essentially from an economic perspective it simply doesn’t make sense for publishers to invest money into making great games for the Wii in the same way it does for third parties to invest in the 360, where owners tend to have strong previous gaming knowledge and base their purchases more heavily on critical opinion. To make the waters darker for third party publishers looking to release expensive games on the Wii, the Nintendo hardcore market tends to be dominated quite heavily by fervent fans of Nintendo’s own franchises; over the last year many fans have complained about the lack of quality titles available on the system and despite this turn often their noses up at anything that isn’t Zelda or Mario.

Again, looking at things from a less business oriented perspective, extensive motion controls are probably not of much interest to your average Wii owner, many of whom are likely happy enough to buy games with which they can have a few drinks then swing their arms about. It’s difficult not to come across as snarky when talking about this new wave of gamers, but it’s really not fair to begrudge them for having much more simple desires than those of us who’ve been playing games for years. Many seem convinced that these casuals will magically evolve into hardcore gamers over time, but I remain far from convinced: By the same merit, if you were to watch twenty Adam Sandler films would you suddenly find yourself inspired to attend Sundance and Cannes?

Taking these points into account it’s hard to refute the suggestion that when you look at the actual majority rather than simply the opinions of those voiced on the internet it’s really not in anyone’s interest for developers to make the effort to push motion controls to their limits on the Wii. Whilst we should never forget the importance of Nintendo’s original innovation and continue to embrace the new masses it has introduced to the world of videogames, it seems clear that the only way we’re ever going to see the potential of motion controlled gaming reach a level at which it truly begins to entirely reinvent the way we play games is when the technology finds a new home on a system which caters predominantly for the more experienced and savvy gamer.