XBox360 Wiimote???

So, apparently there is rampant speculation that MS will be coming out with a knock-off of the Wiimote. Well, I don't have any problem with them coming out with motion controls. As an owner of a Wii, I can honestly say that - at the very least for certain genre's of games - the motion controls are some of the most intuitive and fun controls I have ever used. But my concern is that MS will rush this through and fuck it up. The PS3's motion controls were rushed and generally disliked by both developers and gamers, so making the same mistakes would be costly.

I've thought some about how I would approach bringing motion control to the 360. First, the 360's controller is incredibly comfortable. Easily the best of the three current generation consoles, with the caveat that the Wii nunchuk is on par. In fact, both have a similar palm profile. Look at the following images (which will hopefully not be borked or goatse'd):




Not the best images to tell, but you can see they have the same sort of elegant, curvy form-factor. These things just nestle into your palms so nicely. The wiimote itself suffers from the same sort of comfort issues that A/V remotes are plagued with...a rectangle being pointed forward isn't comfortable in the hand. But, the nunchuck is very nice.


Anyway, back to the 360 controller. If I were to try to convert it into a motion controller, I would take some of the best aspects of the current 360 controller and combine them with the best of the wii's controller(s). First, split the unit into two parts like the Wii. Obviously, this gives you two distinct sets of gyros to work with to implement left and right motion 'sticks'. Second, carry over the 360's buttons, triggers and analog sticks. I don't think the Wii controller has the 360's pressure trigger and button sensitivity, so we definitely want to keep those from 360. The 360's analog sticks, with their concave tops, are really good, so we keep those. One thing we steal from the wii for the analog sticks is the octagonal base frame. This makes it easier for you to find the 8 absolute directional positions. Unlike the Wii, we keep the two part untethered. The D-pad would definitely need to be better than the 360's, which is pretty bad. Just make the guts like every other D-pad on the market instead of the weird internal arrangement they have now (google for more info).


So, I went ahead and used Google Sketchup to quickly draw up some mock-ups. I am, however, not great with 3D modeling tools, so I wasn't able to put in the nice curvy shape of the nunchuck/360 palm rests, but hopefully you will get the gist. Here are the images:







As you can see, the shoulder buttons and triggers of the 360 are retained. Also, on the right controller, the offset analog stick is also retained. Notice that both units have a base. This would be where you could connect batteries and also store gyros or whatever. They also make a convenient resting base. A friend of mine also suggested making the base have a rounded bottom so the controller could be rested on a knee or whatever and used like a flight control stick.



Anyway, this is my thinking of how I would go about it. Guess we'll have to see how MS goes.