I just can't understand the hatred that motion controllers inspire in people. If you don't like them, you don't have to use them, but it's pretty weird that people are now trying to find all sorts of theoretical arguments for why they are objectively bad. It's pretty close-minded, actually, because once you find a theoretical argument you like you can dismiss them without even trying them out.
Firstly, there are some people who say they shouldn't be used until the technology driving them has been fully developed. How exactly do you see that technology getting developed if they're never used? Do you think a profit-seeking entity is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and 20 years developing a piece of technology and only then release it on the off chance that it might catch on? I think the controllers themselves work just fine, so I don't really understand what technological limitations you're talking about anyway--even without Wii-motion plus I never had a huge problem.
Secondly, for those of you who say it takes too much energy, are you serious? I've worked some pretty tough jobs in my day, but I have never been so exhausted by the day's labor that I couldn't move my hands around a little bit. On the contrary, one of the things I like about the Wii is that playing it gets my blood flowing and tends to wake me up and make me feel more energetic, unlike controller based games where I just kind of veg out and lose many more hours to the game than I intended.
Thirdly, I think Yahtzee has had some pretty deep and fascinating opinions in the past, but his whole "motion controls are bad because they won't lead to anything in the future" argument is pretty silly. These are games. They are fun, entertaining, and if we're lucky some of them might even be a little bit enlightening. But they're supposed to be a way to make the time you spend on them have more interest than it might have otherwise. Do you people really play a game today and think "curse the imperfect present! This game would be so much better if my brain was wired in and I was fully immersed in its virtual world!" Is playing a game really just technological research that you pay someone else to perform for them? There are many cases where we must sacrifice the moment to ensure a better future. But isn't having fun supposed to be about enjoying the moment without worrying about the future?
I remember in one of Yahtzee's earlier videos, he argued against companies like EA who would drop titles because they didn't see them having the potential to generate sequels that could be released year after year. Basically, even if a game was good now, if it couldn't be good (or at least profitable) years and years into the future then it wasn't worth having. Yet the same thing he argued against he now seems to be arguing for.
There are some kinds of games that motion controls aren't very good for. But there are others that it works wonderfully for--are you going to tell me that Resident Evil 4 wasn't much more fun on the Wii? I think the problem is not with the controllers, but with the fact that game companies want to make one game and release it on all the consoles with minimal changes. This means that most of the games that are made are not going to really explore the potential of motion controls because they have to work well on normal controllers, too.
