Ubisoft takes hitting things while imagining you are holding a racquet to a whole new level with Racquet Sports, due out in March of 2010 for the Nintendo Wii. Composed of several racquet-centric sporting events, multiple game modes from party to championship, and support for the Wii MotionPlus and Ubisoft's own Motion Tracking Camera, I fully expect the injuries stemming from this family-friendly game will be quite exquisite indeed.

"Ubisoft and Nintendo continue to reach new gamers with innovative casual experiences that push the industry forward," said Adam Novickas, director of brand marketing at Ubisoft. "As racquet sports are some of the most popular sporting activities throughout the world, we are excited to bring a realistic interactive game experience for the entire family."

Check out the game's official web page for a trailer of the realistic interactive game experience in action.

Fils-Aime and I had been discussing the shorter hype cycles Nintendo has been using for games such as The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. The Nintendo executive told me he hasn't seen Nintendo's short hype cycles hurting sales of the company's games, noting that Wii Sports Resort sold almost two million copies since its July launch despite the company keeping quiet about most of the game's details until the month before its launch. (The game had been shown a year before, but few details had been offered in the intervening 12 months.)

I mentioned to Fils-Aime that I've seen Kotaku readers lament that Nintendo's short promotional cycles might be hurting smaller Wii games. The short strategy seemed to not offer much of a boost for lower-profile titles, such as Metriod Prime Trilogy, Fire Emblem or Battalion Wars, which haven't sold close to the millions of a Wii Sports Resort. The complaint, I conveyed, was that Nintendo hadn't tried to push those games.

"I'm not satisfied with the volumes that we do on a Fire Emblem, for example, or a Battalion Wars," Fils-Aime responded. "These are high-quality games that I have challenged the team to think about: How do we up our marketing on these types of titles to do a more effective job?

"And I think you are going to see that more with a title like [2010 Wii shooter] Sin & Punishment 2, where it is much more targeted to the active gamer. It is a title that I believe we need to do a better job getting out in front of." (That's Sin & Punishment 2 pictured atop this post.)

Fils-Aime cited the company's new Nintendo Week 12-minute weekly video shows as one way to get more information out.

Curious about other things Nintendo has been quiet about, I asked for an update on the MotionPlus add-on which launched in June, enjoyed some third-party support then but has only had one Nintendo-made game, July's Wii Sports Resort, released for it since then. I asked: Is this the roll-out you guys planned?

"Our hope was that Red Steel 2 would have launched in this holiday season," Fils-Aime said, referring to Ubisoft's now-2010 first-person shooter/swordplay game. "That's a title that we had always looked at to be a key part of the strategy to drive the installed base of Wii MotionPlus. Having said that, even without the benefit of that launch, we've sold over four million at this point in time. That's a very strong start."

Fils-Aime confirmed that Nintendo is developing games that use MotionPlus, but did not detail them.

And what of Nintendo's next major add-on, the Vitality Sensor? The device, which reads biometric data from a person's finger, debuted at E3 in June, but Nintendo has yet to explain the kinds of games or software the company will release with it.

No news on that yet, Fils-Aime said, offering only "E3 2010" as a timeframe for more. "We will show off the Vitality Sensor with software [at the show]."

I asked: Would that include games?

"I'm not going to give you any more hints beyond that."

I recently, briefly, tried the revised boxing game programmed into November's Wii sequel EA Sports Active More Workouts. And I was chided, kindly, by the EA trainer showing me the game.

He said I was throwing my punches like a programmer.

I wasn't jabbing and hooking, Wii Remote and Nunchuk in hands, with gusto. I was, I didn't realize, just making short moves.

Just this past spring, different EA representatives had trained me out of the bad habits of shortening my Wii-playing gestures. They did this while demoing the extra-sensitive modes of EA's latest tennis and Tiger Woods games. These modes proved how a Wii Remote enhanced with the Motion-Plus add-on, could detect the difference between a player who swung their arm fully and those who just flicked their wrist. The Wii Remote's acceleration sensors could be fooled by those two types of motion. But the position-detection in the MotionPlus could not. It could not be tricked. It would recognize a wrist-flick into a chip shot in Tiger and reserve big drives for full-arm swings.

What I learned in the spring I must have un-learned for the fall.

With no MotionPlus engaged for EA Sports Active More Workouts, I was back to my cheating ways. My punches were short. Can we say I was just trying not to hurt anyone at a public event? Apparently my EA-public-demo punching style is also the fighting style of EA programmers. Presumably this is not because they are lazy but because it is easier to test and replay a fitness game by taking a motion shortcut than by knocking oneself out throughout the day.

The new EA fitness game doesn't support the Wii add-on, but it does have a host of other features to distinguish it from its recent predecessor, June's EA Sports Active.

It includes a six-week workout program and a more interactive fitness calendar. It includes core/ab workouts, something the first game omitted. It has an overall count of 35 new exercises. Yoga-stretching has been added as well, by popular demand, EA claims — though it does cost them the talking point from the first game that EA Sports Active is the sweat-inducing Western complement to the gentler strain of Wii Fit's Eastern balance-based routine.

The new game has plenty to exercise the player who wants it. As proof, a public relations specialist working on the game answered Kotaku's challenge and demonstrated the game's new obstacle course mode. She ran (in place) until her avatar reached a lunge station. She lunged until she was prompted to run more. Then she hit another upper-body exercise. She finished, mildly winded.

There may well have been ways to cheat all the exercises I saw. But that's how it goes with games and fitness — users are pulled by the gravity to find shortcuts, be they cheat codes or less-than-complete sit-ups.

The lack of MotionPlus support may make it harder for users of the new game to resist temptations to cut their moves short and cheat, but as with the use of all fitness products, the user would just be cheating themselves. Oh, this is how it is for all kinds of fitness training, right? You need to want it.

But if you're sick of us telling you that — or you'd just prefer to hear it in the developer's own words — check out Ubisoft's new Red Steel 2 Insider video. You not only get the background technical explanation of why MotionPlus is a must, but some actual footage of sword-swinging gameplay.

Red Steel 2 is out sometime next year.

I wanted the technical answer, of course.

But first Jason VandenBerghe, a man who was soon to impress me with the fact that he lead the team that developed my favorite post-GoldenEye James Bond game, Everything or Nothing, gave me the marketing answer.

He adopted his marketing voice, which was higher than his normal tone, and accompanied by waving of arms and the wobbly body language of a dishonest man. The marketing answer was that it would make the game more amazing, more terrific, more awesome.

He straightened himself out and took the Wii Remote from my hand. I was about to get the technological answer.

This was all happening in the basement floor of a downtown hotel in New York, last week during a rainstorm that stabbed the sky with lightning and flipped my umbrella inside out. In from the storm and amid the Ubisoft holiday line-up, I was playing the early portion of Red Steel 2. It's a cartoon-shaded first-person-shooter/sword-fighter. The opening bit had my character being dragged on his belly by a guy on a motorcycle. I shot free and was in a gunfight, pointing the MotionPlus at the TV running the game, feeling my hand movements match the arm and gun movements of the character in the first-person game.

"Without MotionPlus, I couldn't do this," he said with the Remote now in his hand and me stepped off to the side to observe. He pointed the Remote at the screen as if to shoot. Then he moved his arm, pointing the Remote toward the left side of the screen... then he turned it more until it wasn't pointing at the TV any more.

Wii first-person-shooter owners know what VandenBerghe's gesture would normally cause. The Wii sensor bar would lose track of the Wii Remote's pointer, causing the game's first-person camera to either keep turning uncontrollably, or the camera would stop. This would be a frustration for players who were just trying to turn and had turned a tad too much. Either way, the gamer would then have to point back at the screen to get the Remote noticed again.

When VandenBerghe moved his Remote away from the TV something different happened. The camera in the game did keep turning. But as VandenBerghe turned his hand and the Remote back to the TV, the camera swiveled back with him. MotionPlus had taken over for the Remote's pointer. The Wii never lost track of its player.

MotionPlus had made these controls smarter. The swings to the side could even allow the developers to map a quick-turn.

This wasn't marketing. Technically, that's what MotionPlus added to the shooting of Red Steel 2. Otherwise, VandenBerghe said, no, MotionPlus was not essential for Red Steel's shooting gameplay.

But remember, Red Steel 2 fans, the essence of the franchise is guns and swords.

MotionPlus is essential to the sword-fighting in the game, I was told. VandenBerghe has been on the project for a year and a half. He remembers riskily informing his bosses that the game had to use it. He remembers expecting MotionPlus to birth a lightsaber game at this E3 that would steal his game's thunder. He remembers being shocked that no such game shows up. And he maintains that it would be pointless to make a game with sword-fighting without MotionPlus — unless, as with a No More Heroes, the intention wasn't to emulate the feel of actually swinging a sword.

To sword-fight is to swing your arm. Vigorously. In real life or the game.

Red Steel 2's sword combat involves big swings, short swings, blocks, combos. And without MotionPlus, Vandenberghe told me, it would have involved a six-to-10-frame lag between player motion and the action on the screen. That would be too slow to make the game worth making, he told me.

In Red Steel 2, the switch from gunplay to sword combat isn't activated by a button. There's no weapons toggle. The change is activated by the rapidity of arm movement. The gun is the game's default, but swing your arm sharply and the sword comes out — and stays out until the Remote is leveled and shots are again ready to be fired.

I swung the virtual sword in the game. I almost had to wallop Vandenberghe and other people standing by to get some of the best strikes on the game's enemies.

VandenBerghe told me that he keeps getting quoted as proclaiming himself to be the man who killed waggle. Kill waggle with this? These controls felt right.

The game was recently delayed to 2010, a move VandenBerghe said is designed to balance the quality of the adventure. When released, Red Steel 2 will be bundled with a MotionPlus.

First there was Wii Sports and then came Wii Play, which sweetened the deal with a free remote. Now we have Wii Sports Resort which comes with a whole new piece of technology and a chance to play Swordplay, Wakeboarding, Archery, Frisbee, Basketball, Power Cruising, Cycling, Golf, Table Tennis, Bowling, Canoeing and Air Sports.

Are the games a new enough experience to make Wii Sports Resort worth picking up or is this just a glorified accessory?

Loved
Sword and Archery: My two favorite games in the collection are Swordplay and Archery. In Swordplay you swing the remote like a sword, holding the B button to block in four directions, or swing in the same directions to attack. It sounds simple but can make for some pretty intense battles. The mode includes two-player duels, and a speed slicing contest, but my favorite is the showdown which pits a player against a horde of enemy Mii as you work your way along a map. The game includes ten maps, which can then be played in reverse. While Archery only includes one mode, there are three difficulty settings. To play righties hold their remote in their left hand and the nunchuk in the right and then pull back the nunchuk like it's the string and release the Z button to fire. The object is to hit distant, sometimes moving or occasionally blocked targets. The sensitivity of the controls make the game equal parts difficult and rewarding.

Air Sports: Air Sports has you hold the remote like a paper airplay and guide it around to either control a skydiving Mii or a plane. This sport is broken down into three modes: Skydiving, Island Flyover and Dogfight. Skydiving is pretty straight forward, and a little dull. The Island Flyover essentially lets you practice flying a plane while collecting site-seeing points. The real fun in this mode is Dogfighting, where you and a friend fly around the island with balloons in tow, trying to blast away each others balloons away to win. The game is responsive enough to make this quite a bit of fun.

Table Tennis and Bowling: Both of these sports offer enough nuance to make competition fun. In Table Tennis, you play against a Wii-controlled Mii or a friend in the classic paddle game. The controls are fairly similar to the original Wii Sports Tennis, though this time around the game can sense the angle of your paddle, meaning you can put some pretty wicked spin on the ball. Bowling is also like the original, though now with the addition of MotionPlus players will feel like they have a bit more control of the ball's spin. The inclusion of an easier to unlock version of a 100-pin game mode, adds just enough to Bowling to make it worth playing again.

Cycling: In Cycling, your hold your remote and nunchuk as if they were the handles of a bike and then take turns sort of swinging them down and up as if they were pedals. To steer, you tilt both controllers back and forth. The sport includes one or two player road races against a pack of Mii and a head-to-head two-player race. The game is a bit simple, but when you factor in drafting, and the fact that you can tire out and have to pace yourself, it makes the game an amusing diversion.

Frisbee: I wasn't a fan of Frisbee initially. To play you hold your remote like a Frisbee and snap it like your throwing the disc. Then a dog runs and catches it. The object is to make it as close to the glowing circle as possible. But, once you play Frisbee Dog you unlock Frisbee Golf which lets you play with up to four players on the game's golf courses with three discs. Plenty of fun here and expect lots of practice to perfect your throw.

Basketball: Basketball was another game that didn't really catch my interest initially. You play by swinging the remote down, pushing the B button and then pulling up the remote and making a shooting motion. The object is to sink as many baskets as you can in the time limit from the different positions. But, once you play the 3-point contest mode it unlocks the pick-up game. In the one to two-player pick-up game you control three Mii as you try to out dribble, pass and shoot. And yes, there are Mii slam dunks. The controls are fairly rudimentary, relying heavily on button pushes and motion (you don't ever actually control the Mii's movement) but it's a ton of fun, and dunking on someone with a Mii is hilarious.

Hated
Constant Calibration: Constant may be a bit of an overstatement, but as you move between sports there will be plenty of times when the game tells you to put the controller on a flat surface for a few seconds so it can recalibrate. The game also has the option to pause at any time so you can do this manually. I think this calibration paranoia is more about being overly careful that the experience always delivers, but it can get annoying at times. I was interested to discover that there is an option in the game to let it also use the Sensor Bar to help refine the motion control detection.

Golf: This feels as phoned in as it likely was. The experience really hasn't changed much at all from the one you find on Wii Sports. Sure, it can better detect hooks and slices, but no extra modes and no bells and whistles makes for a pretty mundane experience.

Water Sports: Most of Wii Sports Resort's dozen games deliver, but Canoeing, Power Cruising and Wakeboarding all felt a bit wet behind the ears. In Canoeing you use the remote as a paddle, working your way along a water course either against a clock or a friend. The mode felt more like a workout than fun. Power Cruising should have been a no-brainer, but the controls are awkward, and the Mii version of a Jet Ski underpowered. Lacking any real opportunity to do tricks, the races are a bit boring. Wakeboarding has you hold the remote sideways and use it to tilt your Mii back and forth across the water, hitting the wake of the boat pulling you to jump. With the tricks automated, the game boils down to keeping the remote level at the right time.

Single MotionPlus Add-On: The game ships with a single Wii MotionPlus accessory, but to play any of those multiplayer games you're going to need two or more MotionPlus controllers. Not deal breaking, but a little disappointing.

MotionPlus works, and it works well. If nothing else, the games of Wii Sports Resort make that abundantly clear. This is the promise of the Wii remote finally delivered. Now lets see what third-party developers can do with it.

With a dozen sports and a total of two dozen ways to play them, Wii Sports Resort packs in the play with mostly fun games. You'd think that Wii Sports and Wii Play would have exhausted the minigame catalog for the Wii, but these mostly new games are a worthwhile addition to anyone's Wii. Even without the MotionPlus add-on, Wii Sports Resort is a must-have, must-play for anyone wanting to get the most out of their Nintendo console.

Wii Sports Resort was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Wii on July 26. Retails for $49.99 USD. Played all games and game modes both alone and with my son.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

This was a tricky week, as two of our finest, McWhertor and Fahey, were off to Comic-Con and working odd hours because of it. So I wrote more posts and therefore did a little less reporting and left less on the cutting room floor. But still, here are some scraps...

A Rare Studio Visit: You might think that an experienced video game reporter like myself would have visited a lot of game development studios. Unfortunately, I haven't. Blame my being based in the studio-light New York or not barging into enough development company offices or whatever. When I stepped into the Gameloft studio in New York on Tuesday, where I witnessed games actually being developed, well, that was unusual. (I was there to play Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, a GTA-like iPhone game.) I've covered games full-time for a little over four years and my visit to an active game development part of Gameloft adds to a short list that includes a visit at Retro in Austin, Midway's recently-shuttered Austin studio, the recently-shuttered Gamelab in New York, Yukes in Yokohama, EA in Redwood Shores and Double Fine in San Francisco. That's it, though I think having Kenta Cho show me stuff on his laptop counts too. I've been in meeting-room areas at Rockstar (NYC), Nintendo of America (Redwood Shores), Tecmo (Tokyo), Sony (Tokyo), Sega (San Francisco), Konami (San Francisco), EA (Los Angeles) and probably a few others. But if we're talking strictly visits to places where people are at computers developing stuff, it's just that short list.

MotionPlus Calibration Needs Still A Question: Chatting with Nintendo reps in Times Square on Thursday did not help answer one lingering question from my fun time playing Wii Sports Resort on Saturday: Why does the game ask for the controller to be re-calibrated - sometimes by having it placed upside down on a table — before any new mini-game is played? (EDIT: As readers noted below, what I wrote was a little bit of overstatement. Based on my experience and others' the re-calibration is needed several times an hour, of you're playing lots of different sports in the game — but it doesn't need to be re-set for each and very switch. Apologies for not being more clear about that. I phrased the question properly to the Nintendo folks but over-simplified it in this article.) Nintendo's corporate affairs v.p Denise Kaigler referred me to the company's product expert Bill Trinen. He said that he believed the designers required that in order to ensure that each of the diverse sports in Wii Sports Resort can be controlled with fine and accurate motions. But I wondered if this signaled a limitation for the MotionPlus. Could it be used without any interruption for re-calibration, in longer, continuous games that might mix up motion styles? It's a hypothetical question and one Trinen couldn't address at the moment. He sounded confident in the technology, but, as I suggested to him, it's something I guess we'll have to wait and see about, when games that try to do what I'm talking about, come along. Maybe Red Steel 2 will be a test case.

Nutcracker Notes: Finally, I guess it pays to mention in Twitter the games you are playing for review. While I know some reviewers don't like to read other reviews for fear of being prematurely influenced, I appreciated the e-mail from a reader this week who saw that I was playing Little King's Story and sent me some information about it. His note expanded my understanding of how the game's developers were influenced by things like the Nutcracker Suite. I can't say I caught all that on my own, and I'm a fan of learning this extra stuff to make what I do more informed. That added info may not make it into a post or even my review, but it's good stuff to know. Makes me feel smarter. That review was supposed to run today, but I haven't finished the game yet, so it bounces to next week.

That's all for today. Comic-Con madness subsides next week, I book some trips, some more embargoes lift and I get to check out the full holiday line-ups from Ubisoft and Sony, with some Majesco mixed in. Should be fun. Happy weekend, everyone.

As you can see in this video, the biggest addition to the game is the ability for it to detect your wrists position and translate that into the angle you are holding the club. What that means is that if you twist your wrist or body during a swing you'll end up with unintentional fade or bank shots.

It didn't appear that the actual swing detection was any more precise than it is with just the remote, but that makes sense.

Playing through several rounds of golf both ways, I can say without hesitation that MotionPlus adds a whole new facet to the experience, making it much more precise and a bit more dependent on player skill.

Small things I observed:

-MotionPlus Shouldn't Stay Attached: Like the Nunchuck, Nintendo's MotionPlus Wii Remote add-on can get in the way while playing some games. Take New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which is played by holding the Remote sideways as if it's an NES controller. MotionPlus isn't utilized, but if it's plugged in, it adds to the Remote's length, requiring one's right thumb to reach too far to press the 1 and 2 buttons. So be prepared to remove MotionPlus for games that don't need it, especially those played NES-style.

-New Stop-Playing Images: I've heard people complain that Wii games' graphics aren't good enough, but I've never heard anyone complain that the images that appear in Wii games to remind players to go outside and get fresh air aren't good enough. Well, Nintendo has improved them. While playing Wii Sports Resort I noticed that the reminder to get fresh air was new and improved, with an added dash of color and a more accurately rendered and jacketed Wii Remote sitting on a table while wind blew in from an open window.

-Re-Calibration Recommendations: MotionPlus undoubtedly improves the Wii Remote's motion-sensitivity, but there are signs that the device may have sensitivities of its own. While playing Wii Sports Resort I saw multiple recommendations to press the Remote's plus button in order to re-calibrate the MotionPlus add-on.

-Minimum Motion: For every Wii Sports or Wii Music that Nintendo makes with full motion-control support, there are at least as many games from the company that use motion sparingly. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is one of those. You shake the Remote to pick up a nearby player's character or, if you've fallen and return in a floating bubble, to drift your character toward an active one so you can re-join the action. For gamers skeptical about the applicability of motion control to all gaming mechanics, Nintendo's restraint from motion in key titles speaks volumes.

There's one other game I played with the folks from Nintendo yesterday, in addition to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Style Savvy, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort. More on that one tomorrow.

Away from the chaos of E3, we've gotten a chance to swing a MotionPlus-appended Wii Remote to control Wii Sports Resort, the showcase game for Nintendo's latest controller add-on. Yes, the chaos of the big show was absent, but present were guys from Nintendo.

And here's the thing: the more one spends time chatting with guys from Nintendo of America, the more one feels that parts of their headquarters must feel like a gamer variation of a varsity locker room, where the jocks walk around with swelled chests bragging not about how much they can bench press but how many more times they can return a serve in Wii Sports Resort table tennis.

With meager skills and a willing attitude, Kotaku took a swing.

What Is It?
Wii Sports Resort is the sequel to Wii Sports, which is, Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft notwithstanding, the most-discussed game of the last five years. The original Wii Sports was packed in with every Wii sold in North America. The new Wii Sports comes bundled with MotionPlus, the required add-on that enables a more direct relationship between a player's hand movements and those rendered on-screen. Wii Sports had four five sports. (Edit: sorry about that.) Wii Sports Resort has 12 — well, more than 12 given some of the unlockable variations of the core dozen.

What We Saw
We binged and played five sports: archery, basketball, table tennis, swordplay and skydiving.

How Far Along Is It?
Wii Sports Resort is out in mere weeks. It's done.

What Needs Improvement?
Uh, nothing? This game's quite good. Maybe we should complain about how simple these Miis look. Or about how there's no online play. Or how some of the sports, like bowling, are built upon (or recycled) from what was in Wii Sports. Or how the game would be cooler if it came bundled with two MotionPlusses instead of one to more easily enable multiplayer gaming. But such criticisms would be like yelling at a cute puppy to put on a hat: an ineffectual recommendation and one hardly guaranteed to improve something that's already plenty capable of providing delight.

What Should Stay The Same?

Archery: Seen at E3, previewed by many. Hold the Wii Remote vertical as one would hold a bow and yank back with the nunchuck to pull back the arrow. Hold steady. Account for wind and how gravity will tug on a long-flying arrow. Release. After the easy levels, a batch of new areas and harder difficulty options open up.

Basketball: Select three-point contest (other variations are offered). Hold the remote sideways. Tap the b-button to grab a ball from a rack. Make a flicking motion. Put some spring in your toes. Work through racks all around the half court, just like the pros. It feels perfect, though somewhere a Sony designer is growling that they already did this with Sixaxis for the first NBA game on PS3. Sorry, dude.

Table Tennis: It controls like Wii Sports tennis but plays faster. The variation on head-to-head is a challenge to return serves. Kotaku army, try to beat Nintendo man Melvin's 352 points. That's an order. And don't call the Achievement-like things in this game Achievements. They're Accomplishments. It's unclear, though, whether the times one hits the computer character on the other side of the table with a ball to the head is an Accomplishment or not.

Swordplay: One on one? Played it at E3 last year. Alternate mode involving chopping stalks of bamboo? It's probably dandy. But if there's a trophy for Mini-Game Of The Year, polish it for whatever Nintendo is calling Wii Sports Resort's light variation of Gears of War Horde. You are your Mii. You're holding a sword. And those waves of sword-wielding Miis coming down that rope bridge toward you need to be whacked. Batter them off the bridge and a balloon lifts them to some sort of Wii Sports Resort heaven. Boss Miis with extra health hearts and better blocking abilities await. By the way, imagine if those Miis rushing at you resemble your friends, family and favorite celebrity Miis.

Skydiving: Hold the Wii Remote like it's a small doll and tilt it to make him dive. Shades of the Pilotwings sequel we behaved so well to get but Nintendo never made. Points are taken for linking the diver to other divers, which sends a photographer down to snap a shot. Parachutes open automatically to prevent that Pilotwings pastime of planting skydiver into ground. The unlockable modes for this one include an airplane dogfighting mode, stretching the definition of sport in a manner few will protest.

Final Thoughts
What originally could have been accused as a cash-in or pointless sequel instead appears to boast more depth than any game Nintendo's internal teams have made in a couple of years. There's little to complain about from last night's preview session. In short bursts these games control splendidly.

This is one of those Nintendo games that, when you play early, feels like it's going to both intimidate and inspire game creators. For gamers it will need to prove its depth is equaled by longevity. A healthy sampling of what's on the game's menu suggests that it will. Things are looking up for this one.

The BBC asked if Ninty was "in danger of getting left behind by the competition." Laughter has no translation, but if Shiggy's did, it might be "The f—k you talking about ...?"

Go up to 3:50 for the relevant segment, or read the transcript below:

Not worried at all. The fact that both of those companies are looking at finding ways to get the gamer off the couch, taking advantage of MC, and really getting the gamer to control the game by moving their body, shows that No. 1 they've looked at what we've done with Wii, and seen the value in that. And now they're moving in the same direction that we have already established. ... We've been experimenting with motion control for over five years now. Based on the announcements we've seen here at E3, it seems these other two companies have really only been experimenting with this only very recently. ... It looks like they're still in their initial stages and are trying to create experiences that at this point don't have the type of depth that we're able to provide with Wii Motion Plus.

Miyamoto sang a similar tune of feigned flattery three years ago when asked about the SixAxis. But he does make a fair point, that controls, no matter how innovative, need games that are developed to exploit them.

NIntendo Unmoved by Rivals' Plans [BBC via GoNintendo]

Developers are adding MotionPlus controls to their Wii games as you read this. They're making their controls more responsive thanks to Nintendo's add-on.

But what if they went another way?

What if MotionPlus wasn't about introducing an extra control scheme?

Darly Allison, producer of upcoming Capcom Wii game Spyborgs told Kotaku last week that the game's development team is still considering how they might implement MotionPlus to the co-op beat-em-up, which doesn't currently support it. Once idea the team is considering is to add an extra playable character that would take advantage of MotionPlus's sensitivity.

This seemed like a promising idea and got Allison and Kotaku riffing: why not add another character that's controllable just with the Balance Board? And one just with the Wii Zapper or Wii Wheel? OK, those last two wouldn't apply, because those peripherals don't add functionality to the Wii Remote.

But this still seems like a novel idea: instead of tweaking controls to fit a peripheral not every consumer might have, why not just add alternate playable characters that only play with the add-on?

If anyone is ready to pursue that, bring on the guitar-controlled bonus character as well.

At a recent showcase for EA's upcoming sports games in New York City, I got a chance to play EA's Tiger Woods PGA 10 for the Wii with Nintendo's MotionPlus add-on and watch a developer use the device to swing through the company's Grand Slam Tennis.

And I got to grill the creators on how MotionPlus works in these games. It's optional in both.

And, get this, the developers say it won't give you a competitive gameplay advantage.

"We didn't want to make it more beneficial for players who have MotionPlus," Grand Slam Tennis producer Thomas Singleton explained to me as we talked about multiplayer modes. "It's just different."

MotionPlus certainly allows games supporting it to be played differently. Take Tiger: The MotionPlus attachment allows games to identify the relative position of the Wii Remote even when it is still. So a golf game like Tiger Woods can determine whether a player is really swinging their arm back to drive a golf ball or just flicking their wrist – and render those two very different actions as the two different kinds of shots that they would be in real life.

That kind of difference would seem to imbalance the playing field of MotionPlus gamers against non-MotionPlus gamers, but EA says that is not the case. That would be good, if correct, for players who can't afford to arm every one of their Wii Remotes with a MotionPlus. A MotionPlus player could be an even match against their non-MotionPlus friends.

The more basic MotionPlus-less controls of Grand Slam Tennis are still more complex than the tennis in Wii Sports. The MotionPlus-enabled version will let players get closer to feeling that their body and arm movements are being matched on-screen.

That better feel comes through different mechanics. With the add-on, a gamer's tennis player will be able to wind their body up for a swing as the MotionPlus-enabled Wii Remote is moved back for a swing.

Without MotionPlus, the tennis player's body stays square until a swing is made. With the MotionPlus, players can aim their shots to any part of the tennis court. Without it, they will apply an angle to their shot by timing their swing to the movement of an arrow back and forth across the net. (Singleton demonstrates some of this at the game's official site)

Players can attach or remove the MotionPlus in the middle of a tennis match and the controls will automatically switch.

If Singleton is right, then, by design, neither playing method will allow a gamer to play better. They will just be able to play differently. Head-to-head games of a MotionPlus player against a non-MotionPlus player are not discouraged.

They should be balanced just fine, the producer said.

EA's first two MotionPlus games, Tiger and Tennis, will be released in June.

The following pics were spotted on a European Union trademarks database, and show the progression of the device, from early prototype to production model.

Fascinating, no? Imagine if they'd gone with the marginally more rounded case instead of the fractionally less rounded case! It could have spelled the end of Wii dominance! The ruin of Nintendo!

Opinions differ on just which of these is which, but this is the order which we think they go in:

[via NeoGAF & Go Nintendo]

Responding to speculation that developers would be doing just that, Nintendo have told GameDaily "The Wii MotionPlus accessory is only for games that are designed to make use of its abilities."

Now, that's not a "no, not ever, never". But it's certainly not promising. Very negative tone, that. So if you were quietly hoping MotionPlus would improve, say, the putting in Wii Golf, or crank-turning in Zack & Wiki, you might be better off trying to enjoy them for what they are, not what they could be.

Is Wii MotionPlus Support Coming to Wii Sports? [GameDaily]

Yes, Nintendo needed to get a "new" jacket out there for insurance/legal reasons. And yes, like the old jacket, we're sure MotionPlus just pops right out. But still.

Hopefully this is just a temporary stop-gap, and Nintendo start shipping a new Wii Remote with this technology built-in.

[via Go Nintendo]

But Nintendo's first MotionPlus-supporting game, Wii Sports Resort, won't hit stores until a month and a half later for $50 for the game and add-on. So what's a gamer to do in the meantime.

As of now there are three third-party games coming out prior to the release of Wii Sports Resort that will support MotionPlus.

Sega's Virtua Tennis 2009 hits on May 19, Electronic Arts' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 hits on June 16 and EA's Grand Slam Tennis hits on June 18.

Nintendo reconfirmed that Wii Sports Resort will still be the first title they make to support the add-on controller. And what about a new Wii Remote with MotionPlus built in?

"We have no plans for that at this time," Nintendo a rep tells us.

Perhaps more importantly, the Wii Motion Plus controller, and a Wii Sports 2 Resort, bundled with the controller, have drop dates of July 10.

We've reached out to Ninty PR in Europe to see if they want to say anything.

RUMOR: Wii Fit Plus Coming, More Evidence of MotionPlus/Wii Sports Resort Bundle+July Release [GoNintendo]

The producer of the upcoming EA tennis game - which will be one of the first titles available to make use of the peripheral - has told British site TechRadar:

It truly is giving you that one-to-one control movement of your arm motion and then mapping it directly to that one-to-one movement of your character on screen.

At times it's overly responsive. It had so much fidelity that at times we have limited that fidelity to make it a compelling experience and giving you full total control.

Much rather have a tech that's too accurate, and can be toned down be developers, than a tech that's not accurate enough and can't be fixed.

EA: Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus is 'over responsive' [TechRadar]