The long-term impact of motion control

video games played standing up, using Wii motion control

If someone’s not complaining about Wii in the short term, they’re complaining about Wii in the long term. G4 on Wednesday ran a shallow piece about the effect that Wii, and to a larger extent, standing up to play games may have on future generations. A father of three wrote in, citing the tired “Wii is for kids, real gamers play 360/PS3” elitist slant, but he jokingly shared something that I thought was pretty funny.

“In ten years I’m going to be telling my kids about the old days when all video games were played by sitting on the couch and pressing buttons. They are going to make fun of me and call me an old man.”

The telling part, though, is in the open question G4 poised to its readers to end the article: “Does that scare you?” Why the crap would standing up to play games scare anyone? Is the old guard really that obsolete now? Regardless, I just lost an epic five set match online last night, followed by a little Tiger 10, while standing up.

It was a blast.