Invensense, one of the two companies that sold their technology to Nintendo for their Wii MotionPlus Wiimote add-on, has just announced that they're NOT exclusive to Nintendo and are fielding offers from other companies. One person with the company says, "I can't get into details about other folks that are interested in this technology, but as you might imagine of course there is more interest out there." The other company is AiLive, which hasn't said anything about licensing their tech to anyone else.

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Nintendo's President Iwata, the man who wants US customers to believe that there will be a Wii shortage this Christmas not caused by Nintendo themselves, has just said that they want the Wii MotionPlus to be as cheap as possible because it doesn't cost too much to manufacture. How cheap? They're not sure yet. We did the calculations, and if the MotionPlus is is US$15, that'll bump the Wii up to in between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in terms of "total" pricing. Will you be forced to buy one?

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AiLive, the company that collaborated with Nintendo on the MotionPlus controller add-on, has released a video demonstrating the full capabilities of the new hardware with a set of 3D tools called LiveMove2. An obvious but effective rendering of the controller shows that the touted 1:1 tracking is, in fact, 1:1 and that the response time is almost instant. They've also had some fun with the software, mapping a light saber to the WiiMote to fight off physics-enabled Seeker Drones (which caused our own Adrian Covert to "make a mess in his pants"). To top it all off, the "Snap-to-fit" technology can map incredibly complex motions to more specific commands, recognising everything from throwing a lasso to specific sword slashes.

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As we pointed out this week, the Wii's MotionPlus gyroscope add-on could tip the total 4-player price of the system above or equal to the 360 and PS3. Speaking to that point, Nintendo's Katsuya Eguchi told PC Mag that an embedded MotionPlus in future Wiimotes is "something we'll be looking at," which is unfortunately a non-answer. More interesting is that they may instead decide to limit the number of games that can use the accessory. As Mark found out in his hands-on, the 1:1 motion detecting is fantastic, so the plan to embed the tiny gyroscope into the Wiimote itself (at no additional cost to us, right?) seems to be the best scenario for the future rather than put a cap on the games that can take advantage of it. Let's hope. [PC Mag]

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The Nintendo Wii broke my heart. It wooed me with cute, clever marketing and the promise of unbelievable technology. But it was a scam, a hoax, a hoodwink. The Wii's main revolutionary component, the Wiimote, did not work nearly as well as a many of us expected (like when swinging a golf club in WiiSports or a sword in Red Steel). And that was a real blow, because there was no one more excited about the system than me.

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The Wii's US$249 base price always allowed it to be known as both the cheapest console and the best deal in town for next-gen gaming. Even at a price of US$60 a pop for the WiiMote and Nunchuk, the cumulative price of the system and four controllers would still be under the cumulative price for the Xbox 360 and PS3. This all changes with the Wii MotionPlus.

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A Nintendo exec told us that the Wii Sports Resort will be US$49.99 when it's released next Spring. This next version of Wii Sports comes with the MotionPlus accessory, which gives people a true 1:1 motion mirroring on their WiiMotes. The price of the MotionPlus accessory on its own is undetermined, but it seems like Wii Sports Resort is the new Wii Play in that people will buy it because they want the accessory it comes with.

When Nintendo revealed the Wii MotionPlus dongle, they talked about how the snappier response time and 1:1 motion accuracy it provided would let you do crazy stuff like swing swords (or lightsabers) and ride a jet ski—demoed live at E3. But they didn't tell us how it worked. Turns out, it's got a multi-axis gyroscope inside, made by InvenSense.

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