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[Mawy_Golomb]

I really don't see any point in consoles adapting to new designs for controllers, especially if they feel that just by making them gimmicky, they will guarantee to sell extremely well, and at the same time, to bring forth innovation into every single game that comes out.

When I first saw the DS, I actually was expecting something really unique, due to its touch screen functionality. In the end, it mostly ended up as nothing more of a console that has games with different controls and graphics that were growing more photo-realistic. As for the Wii, it didn't end up focusing much at all on graphics, but it did gamble with the idea that its new controller will make it sell extremely well. That part turned out successful, but the innovation part didn't. It had such a revolutionary controller design, but ended up feeling as nothing more than suitable mostly for FPSs and very few games really took advantage of it (i.e. Lost Winds, Zack & Wiki, etc.).

And this certainly tells me that Project Natal and the PS3's wand controller will only end up in the same way as the DS & the Wii. Those game designers that really believe in these "new experiences" are really shooting themselves in their own foots because most of them won't churn out any innovative titles.

Look at the PC. It has been ahead of consoles for as long as its existence, in terms of offering more genres and more innovation within those genres. MMOs and various other types of games on consoles have yet to match the scope of the PC.

As Chris put it, controls of games have been played around with over a million times, and that still wasn't enough to really bring in an explosion of new ideas. If you ask me, the future lies with programming because there's so much potential that has yet to be realized with procedurally-generated content, user-generated content, and sandbox design.

Ironically, with familiar controller designs or control schemes, innovation is that much easier to implement.

[Knightmare]

I think the innovation is impressive, but, it just seems to have little to no use sometimes.  I remember when I got my Wii I was really impressed with it, especially playing things that made a good use of the hardware (Super Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes, and Twilight Princess to name a few), but it just lost its novelty rather quickly and I craved more games that focused on...being good and not just overusing the peripherals.   

Watching E3, I was impressed with Natal and Sony's motion controller, but, its pretty hard to put the innovation into a REALLY superb game.  It will probably end up losing novelty quickly unless they really incorporate the 'casual' aspect into it so more people use it.

[Craig Stern]

I'm still holding out hope that MotionPlus will allow developers to do really innovative stuff with the Wii controller.

[Zest]

I think the tech's been there for developers to do amazing stuff- it's really down to effort and smart design. One of the most common problems seen in a bad Wii/DS game is an attempt to shoehorn in those extra features, such as extra waggle or using the microphone for some irritating minigame. If anything, these control options should be used to make a game more accessible. That's been Nintendo's strategy all along, and it's worked wonders for them.

In all honesty, the most innovatively fun control scheme I've seen in a while was EA's skate, and it has a lot in common with Nintendo's philosophy- it's intuitive, after a bit of unlearning if you're used to the Tony Hawk way, it leads to more complex gameplay without being overwhelming, and most importantly, it's fun. My cousin and I played the skate demo dozens of times, just because it was fun to move the character around the world. Then, we started learning how the timing and direction of the right analog stick could lead to different tricks, and we started challenging each other to see who could grind the longest on a rail, or get the most tricks without falling off. Simple controls lead to complex gameplay, as naturally as that. Compare it to, say, the Mario Bros. games- how complicated are the basic controls? And yet there's a depth to the gameplay, the clever level designs that everyone loves, the complex challenges that arrive out of that simple beginning point.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Not sure if anyone else has played Frets on Fire, but it uses the F1-F5 keys to corrospond to the colored keys from Guitar Hero, and return for fretting. I'm bringing this up because when you start getting really into it, you don't even notice it's a keyboard. It feels like you're playing a fucking instrument.

I think some of the most brilliant controller designs come from restricted yet open controller designs, such as the PC keyboard. With a lot of the new motion control stuff, I think too many people are latching onto the gimmick and not trying to exploit the controllers to their greatest ability. When it comes to modern controllers though (like the wii remote) the issue becomes that the controller is very hard to do anything with except for the gimmicky stuff it was designed for, since the design is so tight.

What would be really cool would be some sort of modular control system, where you could assemble the controller out of lego blocks into whatever is most suitable for the game you're playing. At first this sounds really gimmicky and restrictive, but what if the software couldn't check the controller's arrangement? Bob could design his guitar one way, and Terry could design it another. And all the game would know is that the right buttons are connected. You end up with a more organic design which fits whatever the player needs; not just what the developer needs.

I think that got off-topic, sorry.

[Craig Stern]

You know what game should have been totally amazing on the Wii? Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. But they had to ruin the perfectly good, simple, intuitive design they had in the first few SMB games with hair-pullingly annoying boss fights. I'm still hoping they come out with a Star Fox game that makes good use of the Wii controls.

[Triplefox]

I think the problem is essentially that most of the money in the console industry these days gets directed towards "low-risk" projects that don't depend on experimenting with input devices - really cheap knock-em-out licenses and mass-market games at the low end, and extremely polished, in-depth AAA games in well-known genres at the high end. Both of those don't leave room to go off in new directions, and the desired middle ground of games with a bit of budget and some space to take risks - that is missing in action(except for Nintendo). The others will stick to gimmick-only uses of input devices brought about by the publisher desiring to tack the feature on the back of the box.

It doesn't help that the "new" input technology is still mostly smoke+mirrors, working by playing to our perceptions. Buttons, sticks, and mice still give us the most precise and responsive inputs right now, and if that weren't the case, I'm sure developers would be flocking to this stuff. It's more of a case of "input technology developed at least a century ago is still top-of-the-line today." Which isn't too surprising, really. It's not like we evolve as fast as computers do.

[Vanguard]

Look at the PC. It has been ahead of consoles for as long as its existence, in terms of offering more genres and more innovation within those genres. MMOs and various other types of games on consoles have yet to match the scope of the PC.

I agree with your premise that the Wii and DS have been disappointments as far as innovation, and that natal and the new PS3 thing aren't going anywhere, but do you really think this is true?  I don't deny the advantages of the PC, they're definitely there and they're definitely strong, but as far as genres and innovation on the PC, you pretty much just have FPSs, RTSs, or MMOs for mainstream titles, all of which are horrifically stagnant.

I mean, an today's FPS games play the same as they did years ago, for RTSs... aren't people complaining about some minor changes between Starcraft 1 and 2, despite there being a decade between their releases?  And MMOs are the worst genre of all, there have been no meaningful changes to the genre since Everquest, and no good changes to the genre for even longer.

[Loren Schmidt]

I've played quite a few Wii games, and my opinion is that though the controller itself is a bit fiddly (as is, perhaps, to be expected from an early attempt), the potential is there. The software seems less even less mature than the hardware. For some reason software developers do some really really embarassing things when using the controller. There are some games that have fairly smooth motion controls, while others misread gestures constantly, are poorly tuned, or just plain have bad control schemes.

My general feeling is that alternate input devices have a lot of potential, but we haven't really seen any many decent uses of them yet. There is nothing out there (yet) that is as dependable or responsive as an old fashioned controller or a mouse. I am sure it can and will happen, though.

I've heard some good things about the Wii Motion Plus, has anyone had any hands on experience with it yet?

I do have pretty negative feelings about the sea of rearrangable controller components Wii owners are ending up with, though. People are starting to have an ocean of peripherals orbiting their Wii like little lost puppies. I'm surprised a company that puts as much work into usability as Nintendo does was willing to settle on such an inelegant system- I'd prefer a single controller, personally. I don't like the specialization.

[Jonp382]

I don't like Nintendo's 'innovations'. I prefer stick and buttons. The only thing better than that would be yourself imo.

My favorite controller right now is my Mad Catz Street Fighter IV gamepad. It's quite ergonomic and very precise. I love it. I just wish I could get a standard gamepad from Sony/Microsoft just as good.

[undertech]

When will games allow me to use *my* joystick? (for movement)

It's not a thumbstick, dammit (says I). Also, imagine the new wave of RSIs that could result.

[mewse]

I don't like Nintendo's 'innovations'. I prefer stick and buttons.

Nintendo was the first console manufacturer to provide an analog stick (That was on the N64);  Sony didn't add them to the PlayStation's standard controllers for another year afterward, after the huge success of Mario 64 proved the utility of the analog stick.  So if you like the analog stick, you like at least one of Nintendo's "innovations".

While we're on the topic, Nintendo was also the first to provide controller "rumble" (also on the N64).  Shoulder buttons?  Hey, those came from Nintendo too (SNES).  Not to mention the DPad itself, which comes from way back with the Game & Watch.  Hey, what about the centrally-mounted "Start" and "Select" buttons that are on both the 360 and PS3?  From the NES, baby.  (they've been renamed to '-' and '+' on Wii controllers.  But Nintendo's not fooling us;  we all know what those buttons actually are, under their labels)

Whether or not you like Nintendo's innovations, an awful lot of what's become standard hardware on modern game consoles was originally created by Nintendo.  This whole "trying out new things and see what works" thing is Nintendo's standard operating procedure.

Edit:  On further research, I'm not convinced that Nintendo was actually the first to provide an analog stick;  the release dates of Sony's and Nintendo's analog controllers are looking much closer to each other than I'd initially thought, and Sony had certainly announced that their dual analog controller was in development long before the release of the N64.  And of course, analog sticks had been around in the home computer world for a decade or more.  So take my "first analog stick" claim above with a nice big grain of salt.

[Mipe]

I am holding out for the alphawave controller, so that I don't have to employ my limbs, just the sheer power of mind. (The side effect of sudden heat burst would be nifty for that cold tea.)

[Jonp382]

I was referring to new controllers, specifically the Wii/DS, as in what this thread is discussing.

[Radix]

Experimenting with input is good, everyone had huge erections for the wiimote when it was announced. The problems with it stem from (a) the marketability of waggling, and (b) the design of the controller itself focusing on waggling to the detriment of traditional input, meaning there just aren't enough buttons to avoid having to jack off the nunchuck to reload or whatever.
So while I definitely understand any criticism the wii games get for overuse of gestures, that's just one case and we haven't seen a lot of "innovation" that extreme yet. Previous advances such as prongs, sticks and shoulder buttons were definitely for the better.

I am holding out for the alphawave controller, so that I don't have to employ my limbs, just the sheer power of mind. (The side effect of sudden heat burst would be nifty for that cold tea.)

I look forward to survival horror games which provide appropriate feedback to rectal clenching.

Edit:  On further research, I'm not convinced that Nintendo was actually the first to provide an analog stick;  the release dates of Sony's and Nintendo's analog controllers are looking much closer to each other than I'd initially thought, and Sony had certainly announced that their dual analog controller was in development long before the release of the N64.  And of course, analog sticks had been around in the home computer world for a decade or more.  So take my "first analog stick" claim above with a nice big grain of salt.

Further confusing things, didn't the Playstation start life as a proposed SNES addon?
Wikipedia currently claims the N64 had the first analogue thumbstick (with the 5200 having the first analogue joystick), but who knows.