Nintendo Wii News | Motion Sensing Nunchuk Confirmed?

Senior vice president and group studio general manager of EA Canada John Schappert has let slip a secret that has been rumoured for the past few days about Nintendo Wii's unique controller. The thought that the nunchuk attachment, which houses the analogue stick and two shoulder buttons, would be motion sensitive has been been dotted about the Internet for a little while now, and an interview with IGN seems to have confirmed it.

Asked about the control method, Schappert had this to say:

When you first play it, it's completely different. When you go to hike the ball, for instance, as opposed to pressing a button you simply jerk the controller up. Boom, you snap the ball. When you want to pass the ball, you gesture a throwing motion while holding the button down to the intended receiver. When you want to stiff-arm left or right, you juke with the nunchuck controller literally. When you want to kick, you gesture the kick motion.

While this might've been excusable as a mistake and a slip of the tongue, just a question later he repeated the information in a clearer fashion:

IGN Wii: So you're using the free-hand style pointer. How are you using the nunchuck unit?

John Schappert: Well, it controls how you move your player.

IGN Wii: Does you use the trigger buttons on the nunchuck unit?

John Schappert: You know, the buttons are all still being mapped out. It does use the trigger buttons right now. I don't know how much we'll have locked in for you at E3 because we are still working on the final button layout, but it does use the trigger buttons, and it does use the accelerometer in the nunchuck unit as well for juking.

Whether this information is supposed to be out yet is unknown, but it appears that it is. An accelerometer would be similar to the device used in Wario Ware Twisted, which means that while it would not be as accurate as the freehand controller and it is unlikely to have the variety of techniques open to it as the remote, it could offer some extra motion capabilities to games.

The complete interview can be seen on IGN.

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