Still, the more subtle affordances (affordance! affordance affordance affordance!) offered by the remote are genuinely valuable. And just as importantly, there’s a platform that will last through this next/current generation of hardware offering a viable middle ground between “budget indie” and “We could build Jurassic Park with this money”.

Paragraph failure for the win!

I think one main fear or scepticism people had with the Wii controller was that random controls would be added on for the hell of it, instead of because it made it better to do so or just… made sense that way. Whilst this has happened to some degree, mostly it has been avoided, just like it was on the DS: New Super Mario Bros is not a frantic touch screen voice interaction, it’s Mario, Mario Kart is Mario Kart, etc.

As Marek mentions, the DS opened doors for new control experiences that make a lot of sense but also aren’t ridiculous… Trauma centre, Animal Crossing and Metroid Prime are good examples. Hopefully the Wii, once out of its initial Rub rabbits / Wario Ware controller demo mini game phase will continue this trend.

(Paragraph win or lose?)

It’s always tempting to imagine new control methods to magically transform every gameplay experience into something over-the-top-awesome. (I may have been swayed by that temptation myself once or twice.)

The pre-launch expectations for the Wii were very similar to those for the DS. When people were talking about “the unique possibilities of the DS”, I think most were referring to the use of the double screens as integral to the gameplay somehow, or weird gesture stuff with the stylus. But design generally isn’t about extremes, it’s about subtleties. The DS did in fact “change everything” but in much less sexy ways.

A game like Nintendogs would not have been such a phenomenon on the GBA because you wouldn’t be able to *touch the dogs*. Brain Training would not have been possible without intuitive touchscreen menus, circling and text recognition, and voice recognition. Even holding the DS vertically like a book is 100% part of why this game works so well. But these are not the things people think are at all significant, or they don’t even come to mind, until the device is actually in people’s hands.

(I mention two Touch! Generations games here because they make such great examples.)

I think there’s a ton of subtleties to the Wii-mote that are yet to be explored. It’s pretty much a swiss army knife controller and I’m expecting the Wii’s killer apps to have many subtle but extremely significant changes in the way they’re played.