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Wiimote Disassembled

Wii

IGN got its hands on specs for the Wii controller. Yeah, that's right. Specs for a controller. The Wiimote will run on standard AA batteries for at least 30 hours, increases to 60 if the motion-sensing is off (say, for VC games).

The controllers 'speaks' to the Wii using Bluetooth (on a 2.4GHz band), and includes a whopping 6KB of memory. Get excited. Presumably this could be used for the speaker, or to store settings for each user (sensitivy and the like).

The mysterious sensor bar, which is meant to situated above or below your TV, is about 20cm long, and contains a sensor at each end. The lights at the bottom of the Wiimote show battery life when the system is started (one bar is 25% or less, two bars is 25-50%, three is 50-75% and four is 75-100% full), and then become your controller number (from 1-4, obviously).

There's a SYNCHRO button on both the console and in the battery compartment of the remote which are obviously used to connect the two. Each remote will get a different frequency. Now to the interesting stuff.

The remote can also 'see' like an eye, in a sense, through the sensor bar. The tip can apparently sense a mexapixel image through the end, which qualifies previous reports that mirrors/fluorescent or halogen lighting/plastic could interfere with performance. It's unknown whether any games will utilise this 'eye'.

Every button on the controllers is digital (except the analog stick, of course), and the rumble has only one setting - on or off. Apparently, by quickly flipping between the two settings, the feedback given will be more significant - a handy tip for developers.

The VC console controller is expected to be in developer hands by September, which I guess throws doubt on a Wii release that early. Some very cool news, nonetheless.

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