The Price

$35, available now. Package includes charger and two compatible batteries.

The Verdict

As we said in the lead, the Charge Base IC (which stands for "inductive charging") is the best solution for charging Wiimotes we've seen to date, if you can stand its 2-controller limit.
Yes, the stand is a cacophony of various plastics and LED, but you'll quickly disregard aesthetics the first time you hold the Wiimote up to the cradle and it just sticks. Attached through magnetism, it will be charged without the need for plugs or ports, without the need of pulling out the little stopper from the Wii MotionPlus adapter, and without even the need of removing the silicone case. (Should you be a non-case user such as myself, you'll find the ridged rubber backs on the batteries quite comfortable.)

The stand even includes a USB charging port, should you need it, and the AC adapter has an outlet plug on the back, meaning you won't waste a power outlet to recharge your Wiimotes.

There's room for improvement—an indicator that signaled the level of charge would be very handy. I'm not really sure how long it takes to charge the batteries to full because, at the moment, the charger always just glows blue (UPDATE: It wasn't in the manual, but the charger does go green when it's done—the initial charge took so many hours that I just assumed it had to be full already). The magnet could feel stronger through the silicone sleeve. And obviously, you can buy a basic 4-Wiimote charger for the price of this 2-Wiimote charger. Though I have a feeling that Nyko will announced a 4-controller unit if this first model is successful.

But for the ultra-lazy among us, the Charge Base IC is pretty great.

Contact charging is easy and practical

Works with real Wiimotes and generics

There's simply not a better design we've seen

Through sleeve, magnet still works, but could feel stickier

Charging indicator doesn't indicate much

Bundled with the upcoming Wii game Baby and Me (in Australia), this doll-mote uses the Wiimote's speaker to make the baby cry or laugh. Turn on the Wii Balance Board, and the simulation is taken to the next level, allowing you to burp the baby, rock the baby and teach "her" to walk. (Spoiler alert: the muscle-less, brain-less baby doll can never learn to walk.)

Personally, I could do without all the diaper changing, but I can't wait to score headshots in CoD with my new infant gun. [aussie-nintendo via GoNintendo via Kotaku]

Hand it to that guy, he does not deviate from the sales pitch after such a colossally embarrassing f—kup, even with his cohost laughing and, no doubt, a production crew trying to keep it together. And hats off to the director who switched over to the b-roll while they got the pitchman positioned perfectly in front of the TV to cover up the scar the Wiimote left.

Now, $329.90 for a standard Wii bundle and a doubled-up set of peripherals? That's a tragedy. Especially since they pretend it'd retail for $379.99.

Nintendo Wii Gaming System with Wii Sports and 15 Accessories [YouTube via Joystiq]

So will there be 1:1 movement, accelerometers, or IR bars? We don't know. All the product promises in terms of functionality is the full gamut of Dual Shock controls (though note one analog stick is missing), "three dimensional motion sensing" and "super sensitive movement sensors."

But somehow the Blaze PS3mote promises to be compatible with Sega Tennis and Tiger Woods. Without the full support of EA or Sega (which we're doubting they have), it's hard to imagine the controller working very well. But hey, we're happy to be proven right when it comes out at an undisclosed time for an undisclosed price. [Blaze via ubergizmo]

The $50 Darth Vader Nintendo Wii Sensor Bar Holder is essentially a sculpture that holds your sensor bar in the place of a lightsaber. So while you flail away at Wii Sports Resort, onlookers will enjoy the tacit implication that you are not only besting the game but the entire Dark Side of the force. Well, that, or your friends will realize that your fascination with a 30-year-old movie franchise is depleting your bank account and adversely affecting your overall grasp on reality, especially when playing Wii. [StarWarsShop via ChipChick]

The CTA Digital Football for Wii may look like some cheap, plastic container for your Wiimote. But it's so much more than that. This product is a manifestation of the way video games are going. Even in the digital realm, physical prowess will soon champion smarts, attention span and the sheer ass power to plant on a couch for days at a time. In the not so distant future, your real self may need to learn to throw a football so your virtual self can keep up.

And while the CTA Digital Football doesn't appear to be for sale just yet, let it serve as warning. It's only a matter of time before we're all getting wedgies during a minigame in Wii Sports. [Kotaku]

Holding two Wiimotes through the power of magnetism, the Charge Station can top off controllers via induction, whether they are wearing silicon sleeves or loaded with Wii Motion Plus add-ons (or whatever other crazy extensions Nintendo could add to the Wiimote). You'll also find an extra USB port in the back, should you want to charge anything else the old fashioned way.
There's no word on price/availability. But I'm gonna guess you'll see it for $30-40, like most smaller Wiimote charging stands. [Nyko]

Yes, those are the animals that a recently uncovered European Nintendo patent imagines you riding through your living room on this inflatable, Wiimote-implanted cushion. The Wiimote's accelerometers sense your rocking while the nunchuk, held in one's hand, serves as reins, a lasso or sword.

While the illustration is strange, the thought of a family of four group-dry-humping a pile of cushions during their next game night is downright repulsive. Of course a patent doesn't mean Nintendo will produce the thing. But they, at least for a moment, considered it. And that point alone is bad enough. [Siliconera via Kotaku]

In this clip, we see an OpenGL ES demo in which the Wiimote has been paired (over Bluetooth, of course) with the iPhone. The iPhone is then able to track the Wiimote's orientation in real time.

At the moment, this demo is nothing more than that—a taste of the Wiimote working on the iPhone. It'll be interesting to see if/how the project evolves from here. But imagine the potential of a game that used both the iPhone and Wiimote's accelerometers. Or heck, imagine playing a scaled down Wii Sports on your iPhone.

Let's make this happen, modders and coders who are working for free, risking Nintendo's wrath and have about 1000x more coding talent than me. I insist. [Flickr via MAKE]

Nintendo's North American President Reggie Fils-Aime explained that the Vitality Sensor is just the latest in a chain of products that are first misunderstood and ridiculed, gaining acceptance after having a chance to prove themselves, like the DS, or the Wii, or the Balance Board. Pretty much everything, actually:

[We] probably had a very similar conversation when we first showed the Nintendo DS: how is it going to work, why a touch screen, voice activation—I don't get it. We probably had a similar conversation about the Wii Remote: how is this going to work, how is it going to work with the games that I want to play—I don't get it. Now I'm hearing something similar for the Wii Vitality Sensor. And all I can tell you is, with the game developers that we have, we will bring forth an experience that you will say, "Wow, I get it."

There were surely plenty of folks who ridiculed the DS and Wiimote concepts, but they were shouted down by the rational majority who could easily see how a touchscreen handheld or a console motion controller could be awesome.

And besides, most interested people do have specific ideas in mind for the Vitality Sensor, which is precisely why they're not excited. It's not the nobody "gets" the product; it's that gamers are lamenting the Wii's accelerating change from a fun console to some kind of distinctly un-fun health device.

Of course Nintendo could blow us all away with some new kind of clever biometric game integration, akin to their previous attempt at a heartrate sensor (except hopefully better), but if they want us to expect—and get excited about—anything beyond Wii Fit II, we're going to need a little more information—games, clues, or frankly, anything at all. [Fast Company via TechRadar]

Its uses are limited—it exists solely to help train its user to throw a perfect serve height (A high, confident toss made 1 to 2 ft. inside the baseline allows the server to uncoil both upward and forward into the court, making contact at 1.5 times body height)—and it might not be terribly practical, but you have to admire the ingenuity. Preemptive sic:

I poped (ed note: this is my favorite new verb) open my wiimote soldered in a few wires to the minus key and then taped the wiimote to left arm (I am right handed).

Then I taped the other end of the wires to my thumb and wrapped a tennis ball in aluminum. So now when I had the ball in my hand it completed the circuit and pressed the button which registers the data in the software. I then toss the ball and when it leaves my hand it unpresses the button stopping the registry of the data from the accelerometer.

From here, our intrepid inventor is able to feed his data into a laptop to calculate his throw height and adjust accordingly. Clever. [Eyes on Tech—Thanks, Mans!]

This isn't the motion controller wand we saw at E3. It looks a little more like Microsoft's Project Natal, except you'd actually be using physical objects—anything you had lying around—as a motion controller.

The object (demonstrated in the diagram by that U-shaped-looking thing) is mapped into the system by rotating it in front of the camera, and saving it as a file.

If this sees the light of day, I give it 24 hours until we see the first YouTube video of someone playing Killzone with their Chihuahua.

I also wonder if Sony will comment on this patent when it coughs up more details on its E3 announcements at the Develop Conference on July 14.

[Siliconera via Kotaku]

Broken by Kotaku, Sony met with developers to better explain their motion controller follow E3. Here's what was passed along:

• Spring 2010 release schedule (still no price)
• Four motion controllers can be tracked at one time
• The PlayStation Eye will support voice input/recognition, face/head tracking
• Sony would like to combine motion controller and Dual Shock gameplay
• Motion control sucks some PS3 horsepower, so developers will need to accommodate it

While Sony has been developing all the aforementioned technologies for some time, we can't help but see a few capabilities pointed out here—voice/facial recognition/tracking—that were neglected in Sony's E3 presentation. Is it possible that the positive response to Natal has made Sony reassess which components of their system are most marketable to developers? Yeah, it's possible. [Kotaku]

This ultra-realistic accessory, allows you to mimic all the critical motions a ‘striking' performance requires. This Wii peripheral is the first of its kind to be fashioned after an authentic bowling ball, turning your wii-mote into the optimum performance-enhancing accessory! To operate simply press the release button to open the ball in half, place the Wii remote inside and close the ball. Once the remote is set inside, plug the three holes with your fingers, as you would a bowling ball.

The ball is compatible with just about any bowling game designed for the Wii, but there is no word yet on pricing or availability. [CTA via MTVU via OhGizmo]

The Products
Nyko Wand: $35
Mad Catz "Wireless Remote": $30
Nintendo Wiimote: $40

Testing Infrared
The Wiimote's pointer effect works for one reason: IR tracking. The Sensor Bar is really an infrared LED matrix, and the Wiimote reads its position relative to this bar. So to test IR tracking, I loaded the Home Menu and then House of the Dead Overkill.

In a light-challenging environment including open windows and artificial lighting, IR tracking was clearly superior on the Wiimote—pretty much perfect, actually. The cursor was simply more fluid and appeared onscreen with a more even frame rate than it did on either generic controller.

It wasn't that the Wii ever misread the position of either the Nyko Wand or the Mad Catz controller, it's that dragging the cursor with these remotes met occasional drops in frames. I'm nitpicking, but you can notice a real difference, side by side, in the menus. The Wiimote was the smoothest, then the Mad Catz, then the Nyko (though the generics were honestly pretty close). This principle proved consistent when playing HOTD later, as tracking the gun around with the Nyko or Mad Catz proved an ever so rougher experience than with the Wiimote. The game was still completely playable, the menus completely navigable. But the control went from an A to an A- on the non-Nintendo Wiimotes.

Then, after about an hour of play, the Mad Catz cursor failed to show on the screen—as if the remote could not track its position relative to the Sensor Bar. The accelerometer tracking was still working, however, which indicated that it wasn't a Bluetooth communication problem. And the other Wiimotes were functioning without problems. Reloading the Wii and swapping batteries could not fix this issue. Weird.

Winner: Wiimote
Testing Accelerometer
The Wiimote's 3-axis accelerometer is responsible for the other half of the Wiimote's motion tracking. It detects the general orientation of the controller, along with shakes, etc.

While I could tell in HOTD that the third party controllers were fine for sensing sudden motion (shaking to reload), I doubted their ability to track the subtle intricacies of pitch, yaw and roll. So for this test, I dusted off Super Monkey Ball in which slight movements to the Wiimote tilt the entire level. What did I find?

There was no discernible difference in motion control among the three controllers. I mean, maybe a computer strapped to a mechanical arm could detect minute subtleties, but I was able to play several levels on each remote without ever cursing a wonky controller. Maybe a Wii Sports addict would find their average bowling score to be ever so slightly different over 1000 games with a generic controller, but I'll hand it to Nyko and Mad Catz, I'd never have known I wasn't using a real Wiimote from gameplay alone. Then again, the Wiimote is pretty much only 85% accurate at any task to begin with.

Winner: 3-Way Tie

The Little Stuff
When I purchased a Mad Catz controller for PlayStation (original) years ago, I regretted the decision almost immediately. Doomed by my cheapness to wielding the bulky, awkward controller, I vowed to never go generic again. Times have changed. Both Wiimote alternatives feel perfect in your hand, and the vibration on each is remarkably close to the real thing. The Nyko Wand's speaker is a bit on the quiet side—probably about half the loudness of the Wiimote and Mad Catz controllers. Maybe this decibel difference matters in audio-heavy games. I dunno.

I wasn't able to test the remotes with Wii MotionPlus, but Mad Catz, with their 1:1 duplication of the Wiimote body, promises me that there are no possible compatibility issues. Nyko, with body dimensions ever so slightly different than the Nintendo Wiimote (something you'd never notice in your hand), has found that while sizing wasn't an issue Nintendo's final firmware caused some "minor issues." Nyko will be updating the Wand with Wii MotionPlus compatible firmware in "all future shipments" and offering consumers who've already purchased the device a free firmware upgrade option.
Nyko and Mad Catz are a virtual tie when it comes to buttons. As different as the buttons may look, neither set feels all that different from the Wiimote during play. I will say, I prefer the B button (triggers) on both third party remotes to the Wiimote's. There is a little more pull in each that feels just right for gun games like HOTD.

As for special tricks, Mad Catz includes none, but Nyko's Trans-Port technology allows their Wand to communicate with peripherals electronically. I've used their version of the Zapper, and without a mechanical link between peripheral and remote buttons, it feels better than Nintendo's official version. But we don't know how many peripherals will take advantage of Trans-Port, and besides, only Nyko will support the system.

Winner: Wiimote, Runner Up: Nyko Wand

After years without a proper fake Wiimote to suck some cash away from Nintendo, two titans of third party peripherals have produced their own respectable knockoffs. And I'm really glad this development has happened. Even if neither is cheap (the Nyko Wand is $35 while the Mad Catz Wireless Remote is $30), they do put at least a little pressure on Nintendo, who charges a straight up insulting $60 for their Wiimote/Nunchuk combo.

But given Mad Catz' sudden dealbreaker issue with the IR and Nyko's ever-so-less fluid IR experience and initial issues with Wii MotionPlus, we're still going to recommend the good old Nintendo Wiimote—that is, unless Mad Catz and Nyko get a little more price-competitive.

And who woulda thunk, our verdict had nothing to do with accelerometers?

Nyko Wand

Feels/Works Like the Wiimote

Quiet Speaker

Trans-Port Tech Is Promising But Underutilized

A Tad Ugly

Slightly Imperfect IR

Mad Catz Wireless Remote

Feels/Works Like the Wiimote

Looks Like the Wiimote

Very Troubling IR Issue During Testing, Probably Anomalous to Unit...But Still!

The stand is bundled with a special, contact-charging battery that replaces the standard AAs. You load the battery into the board, the board into the stand, and ZAMMO! Your Balance Board recharges. Mad Catz also used some of the stand's body to integrate two USB ports, in case you'd like to recharge any of your other gear. And a foot pedal makes for an easy board release.

Look for the Power Up Charging Stand this August for $40. [Mad Catz]