Due to the glut of shovelware that greets me everytime I walk down the isles at Best Buy it's become hard for me to love my Wii as of late. Still, that's not stopping me from being a tad excited about the possibilities that the MotionPlus controller could offer. For those just getting up to speed the MotionPlus adds depth perception to the standard Wii Remote and potentially adds a lot more interactivity to the games controls. The device finally got dated this morning with a June 8th release date in a Nintendo press release.
Also on the release was a date for Wii Sports Resort which is basically a refresh of Wii Sports, but at the beach or something. That game, which also showcases the MotionPlus' new moves is set to hit shelves on July 28th. Unless I'm missing something on the Wii release calendar essentially you've got a fancy new $20 brick you can hold for almost two months till some games make use of the new peripheral. (edit: LordAndrew correctly points out Grand Slam Tennis, which comes out in June and makes use of the device)
It'll be curious to see how a secondary control does in the market. While peripherals have traditionally sold well on Nintendo's platform, those have mostly been shells or add-ons to the standard Wii Remote. With developers now given the choice of opening up more functionality to part of the Wii user-base it will be interesting to see if gamers that don't upgrade will become the bastard children of the populace.
Then again, will the majority of the Wii userbase even be aware of such functionality? I know it seems too easy, but there are an awful lot of results returned when I search for "Wii Grandma" over at the YouTubes.
Ok, that was too easy. Now I feel guilty. I'm still excited for this thing... honest.