Shake, Rattle, Roll

The Wii teaches us an important lesson - you can't sell peripherals or hardware features to a wide audience. You have to sell games, and in that instance, you can turn peripherals or hardware features into a selling point. Wii Fit's balance board is one of the most successful peripherals in history, having an installed base comparable to the PS3 by some measures I've seen - but nobody bought it because a balance board is cool, they bought it because it comes packed with Wii Fit.

In other words, the hardware launch really isn't all that important, unless it's attached to a must-have piece of software. For an example of a somewhat botched launch, look no further than the cameras which can be attached to both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 - peripherals which patently failed to build on the success of the PS2's EyeToy software, presumably because somewhere along the line, someone decided that having a camera attached to the console was an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.

Today, those cameras' existence is generally justified by little-used video chat features and comedy gamer pictures. Had either company made the effort, they could have been providing a Nintendo-combating competitive difference right from the outset. It's probably too late now, and besides, motion control rather than video analysis technology is the buzzword of the moment. Yet these largely unused and unloved peripherals serve as a stark warning; it doesn't matter how much money is thrown at attaching motion controllers to the PS3 and Xbox 360, if they're sold as new controllers rather than as amazing new games which happen to use new controllers, they will find the market largely disinterested.

There's also, of course, some question over exactly who these new controllers would appeal to. Naysayers point out that Nintendo has already sewn up the casual market, with newcomers to gaming unlikely to drop money on yet another console in the next few years. However, it's important to realise that Nintendo's market is still less than half the size of the PS2's installed base, suggesting that the industry's tapping of the casual audience is still only in its infancy. It's also worth considering that supported by an excellent software title, a new peripheral can neatly sidestep the question of target audience - if the game is appealing enough, it will draw both new customers and those from the existing installed base.

It's a constant feature of that games industry that it obsesses over hardware and technology - a bizarre affliction for an industry whose creativity and, ultimately, profitability is grounded in software, design and artistry. Yet for decades we have seen that the most powerful console rarely ends up being the best-selling system, with the Wii being the most dramatic proof of that assertion yet.

If and when the other platform holders do announce new controllers, their manner of doing so will be a clear sign of future success. Motion control isn't magical hardware pixie dust which can be sprinkled over a console to make it appealing to the mainstream audience - aside from the basic "does it work" consideration, the hardware will matter little. The software needs to be right there, front and centre, at any announcement - if the firm has nothing but a few anaemic mini-games to demonstrate, then alarm bells need to be sounded about where these devices are headed.