Xbox gets a Wii makeover

Posted by Duncan Madden on Tue 8 Apr 2008

Motion sensitive remote in the offing for the 360

What does Nintendo have that Microsoft does not? Apart from a predicted lion's share of the global console market by the end of 2008 according to iSuppli (around 30.2million units sold), not much else. Because Microsoft has been developing its own Wiimote style controller that's rumoured to be hitting the market this very year.

This 360 remote interpretation is unerringly similar in appearance to the Wiimote and sports a microphone, speaker, four LEDs, A/B/X/Y buttons, an analogue stick and underside trigger. The illustration here has been drawn by a "source" who broke the story to MTV news.

With rumour mills spinning like tops, more info has come to light with the quote "Halo, Gears and Forza in waggle form" as an attempted description of what the controller will offer, though there are also suggestions of discord in the development over which direction they should head.

Some prefer to keep it as similar to the Wiimote as possible so games can be ported directly over from the Nintendo while others want to stretch the tech and make it as feature rich as possible. The only concern there is that inner squabbling could delay the touted oh-eight launch date, which would suck because we can't frickin' wait to get our sweaty mitts on it.