The Under-explored Wii

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm getting disappointed with what developers have attempted so far in terms of "something new". In particular, I've been thinking a lot about the Wii, since
a) I own one, and
b) I've thoroughly enjoyed the new life it has injected into the industry

My problem is: Innovation of interface and interaction were the initial premise under which the Wii was created, marketted and sold. The use of gesture-based interaction brought a whole new way to play and vastly expanded the entire gaming market. However, it has been Nintendo itself that has been the large moving force in any innovations with the console.

Even so, their releases have started to thin out. It started with a greatly successful Zelda: Twilight Princess, which added the slash and bow-and-arrow mechanics to the traditional Zelda experience and offered a polished title beyond what other companies have even begun to create. This was followed by a list of other titles, with Wii Sports being one of the most revolutionary (and successful) games of the ages. Speaking for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed Wii Boxing, with its almost one-to-one correspondence of arm movement to character movement blowing my mind away.

This has been my greatest consideration for development at the moment. One-to-one correspondence in a game could provide an amazing amount of depth and allow players to relate to characters in ways they hadn't done before. But my idea is something beyond that of the tech demo Wii Sports.

The idea is to fully flesh out a combat system using a similar but expanded engine to that presented in Wii Boxing. Much of the industry has been crying out for, and expecting, this level of interaction since the Wii's release. As such, there is a guaranteed market available for such a game.

For instance, Mortal Kombat Armageddon was advertised saying that you could control the fighters using the Wii Remote and Nun-Chuck. This caused the gaming community to dream and desire control of their favourite MK characters, only physically executing the actions. What they received was half-baked: you controlled characters using the Wii Remote and Nun-Chuck, yes, but most of the moves could be done by simulating a joystick movement rather than an actual hand movement. While it was still a decent title, the lack of this one-to-one component left a disappointment in gamers' hearts.

It's just an idea I'm thinking of at the moment. Whether or not this could actually create a fun game, or if it will just give a lot of people a bad case of RSI is yet to be seen... as yet.