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Reports of Wiimote Clone for Xbox 360 are Highly Plausible
The big rumor/story on the internet on monday was a MTV News report that Microsoft has been developing a Wiimote clone controller. From my perspective I find this report highly plausible for a number of reasons.
And I quote from the article.
The controller itself isn't much different in functionality or design from Nintendo's Wii remote, but comes with four face buttons, an analog stick and microphone. There are also plans for the controller to interact with the Xbox Live Vision Camera, the source said.
Microsoft's controller isn't just a response to "Wii Sports"; it's slightly more ambitious. "They want the usual assortment of 'Halo'/ 'Gears'/ 'Forza'/ whatever, just in waggle form," our source told us. Such idea-generation has not gone smoothly. "The whole thing is a colossal clusterf---," the source said. "[Microsoft] marketing just want it so they can match the Wii point for point. The biggest parts of their marketing materials outline how easy it would be for third parties to port their Wii games to the 360."
I know for a fact that Microsoft is currently developing at least four new accessories for 2008, the 60 Gig hard drive and the Blu-Ray player are two likely candidates and a motion sensing controller is a likely possibility. The external Xbox accessories market has been a surprising finacial success for them and putting a "Casual Motion Sensing" controller on the market would have another controller that they could market. They have had past job postings looking for hardware experience with motion sensors. Microsoft is really worried about the wide popularity of the Nintendo Wii and since there is motion sensing tilt sensors in the PS3 controller not having a similar controller makes them the odd duck.
They also had an awesome sketch.
I think that motion sensing controls if done right can be a wondrous addition to a video game but if done wrong they can ruin a game, take the PS3's Lair and all the cheap Wii shovel-ware games on the market right as an example.
Apparently the development of the project is not going as smoothly according to the MTV Games report and Rare is working on a Conker XBLA game called The Fast and the Furriest that is rumored to be played using the controller.
The timing is right, Microsoft is most likely to show off new hardware at the Tokyo Game Show, E3 and PAX, drum up hype and then release it in the fall just in time for the holiday shopping bonanza.
Now those of you out there that are ready to clamor that this is a rip off of the Nintendo Wii and to that I say "Yeah you are totally right". However having one giant tech company repurpose the innovative ideas of another giant tech company has been a pretty common practice in video games over the past decades. Case in point the Intellivision, Colecovision and the Atari 5200 all had big numeric keypads on the bottom of the controller and while it was considered a big innovation at the time it didn't catch on (Unless you want to count the Atari Jaguar).
Nintendo did not invent motion sensing controls in human/computer interface designs however they were the first to design a wildly successful video game system popularizing them. However Microsoft would never dream about making a product that was roughly based on the user interface developments of others... or would they?
Jake at April 7, 2008 
Games
