Hey guys, first post here, but I wanted to discuss the RFN crew's answer to my question so I signed up.
First things first, thanks for reading my question! I couldn't have asked for a more spirited discussion. Great stuff.
I do want to clarify a few things, if possible. Jonny did indeed say what I attributed to him, that the Wii U Gamepad can do everything Wiimotion Plus can and that he didn't want to see any games that required Wii Motion Plus on the system. I went back to check and make sure before I sent my letter in case I had misheard.
I also want to make clear that I have no problem with dual analog controls. They're not my favorite for FPS, as I grew up playing those games on PC, but they're not the worst thing in the world. I played hundreds of hours of Halo in college, I'm a proud owner of an Xbox360 and I use a 360 controller on my PC in lots of games. I'd be happy to challenge anyone to some Deathmatch if they think I'm a n00b
. My point wasn't that dual analog controls shouldn't be used, of course they should. They should certainly be an option in FPS games since some people do clearly prefer them. And I'm fine with them being the only choice in cross platform games where it doesn't make sense to slap together pointer controls, like Jonny's example of Assassin's Creed.
But my example, Metroid Prime, has never used dual analog. So it shouldn't be heresy to want to see the pointer controls that worked quite well (for me at least) in Prime 3 and Prime Trilogy continued on the Wii U. And I'm surprised no one stuck up more for Skyward Sword, the combat of which I know many people find to be a huge step up from previous 3D Zelda games.
And despite the hint of snark I detected in the mention of the "fertile ground of motion control", I think the possibilities for innovation next generation are fertile indeed. We were dealing with a completely new technology this generation. For all intents and purposes this was the NES of motion control (or Atari even). You can't expect these types of gameplay to be perfectly refined by now. And as James said, the improvement from Dragon Quest Swords to Skyward Sword was quite drastic. There's no reason to think with a continued focus that couldn't be improved upon more and more. But if motion control is not the focus of the next Zelda, but just one option alongside the Wii U Gamepad, with an emphasis on completely different types of innovation, I do think it's very unrealistic to think that we'll get to see that improvement come to fruition.
Another thing to consider is not innovation, but cultivation. James pointed out that no game after Wii Sports really made swinging a golf club much fun. But Nintendo barely tried. The best we got was Wii Sports Resort, which was still just one part of ten different modes. If someone had told me that there wouldn't be a full, blown out Mario Golf or Mario Tennis on Wii, I would have thought they were crazy. Hell, I would happily take a Mario Bowling. If these games are to come, they should focus on the Wiimotion Plus to deliver on the untapped potential we all thought about when we first picked up the Wiimote.
I agree that motion controls don't belong in every game, and that one of the Wii's problem was how many games tried to shoehorn them in. The Wii U provides an opportunity to completely ignore motion controls in favor of the tablet functions, or ignore those too and go with just the Wii U Pro controller, when the game calls for it. That's great. But some percentage of games should continue to explore motion controls and when they do, the developer should embrace them fully.