A recent post on a Dutch gaming website sparked a lot of discussion: is the 
Nintendo Wii nothing more than a Gamecube 2.0? Is the controller, and thereby the means of playing games on the Wii really that innovative and awesome as Nintendo wants you to believe?
I don’t think the Wii is all that great. The controls are fun, for a while, but then you start longing for a real controller, with two analog sticks and enough buttons to actually control your character.
And although the controls are innovative, they’ve been made into a gimmick in most games, where they seem added just because it’ll help sell the games instead of making the games more fun. Of course most games that’ve been ported from other systems (think: PS2, PS3, Xbox360) require the added ‘motions’ on the Wii because otherwise the games would become unplayable due to a lack of buttons and sticks.
This all got me thinking. The PS3 has basic motion-sensing technology in its controller, but does it really add anything to the games?
From what I’ve read, developers mostly use it in a gimmicky fashion, letting you ‘balance’ on beams or flying up/down/left/right by moving the controller in said direction.
So how can you get the best of both worlds?
By taking the Xbox360 controller (I prefer it over the PS3 controller) and cutting it so the right-hand side can be removed and used in the way the Wii’s controller is used. Add an IR-port and some gyroscopes (to sense motion and angles) to it, but leave the rest as it is and you’ve got the greatest thing ever.
The idea is so freakishly simple, with the only possible problem being the question “How do we keep it solid when both parts are connected?”. Because, let’s face it, you don’t want the controller ‘falling apart’ while playing a game.
The ‘sketch’ above pretty much shows the idea… not the shape though, I didn’t feel like doing any research on ergonomically correct shapes, existing controller shapes or anything like that.
