Ever since the Nintendo Wii was launched, patient gamers have been waiting for news on a Star Wars title that will allow them to use the Wii Remote as a lightsaber, with their real-time motions being mimicked onscreen. However, Jonathan Smith from TT games, the firm behind LEGO Star Wars didn’t sound too confident about it ever happening in a way that millions expect.

During the recent GameCity Festival in Nottingham, he told GamesRadar:

“It’s partly to do with the technical limitations of how the Wii actually works, but mostly to do with how difficult the task actually is, for both design and technical reasons… the way you have to tackle the animation for a character that can mimic your movements is quite intimidating.”

He acknowledged that while it is possible, it might not be the fun gaming experience that everyone thinks it could be:

“When I play a game I want to feel like I’m a Jedi, not like I’m some kind of imbecile who just keeps on stabbing stuff in the guts. You’re not going to be able to fight with style because you won’t know how to put the moves together. There’s always got to be some sort of interface between what you’re doing and how the character’s making you feel cool. That’s a design problem on top of the technical problem.”

Smith concluded by saying that a Wii lightsaber certainly isn’t impossible, either technically or in terms of developers and their imaginations; rather that it’s just a waiting game to see what happens with Star Wars: Force Unleashed:

“I don’t know how Force Unleashed is tackling it or what will happen in the future with Star Wars or other sword-based games. There’s smarter people than me working on the platform, so…”

We can understand where Smith is coming from, but we really do hope that something special can be pulled out of the bag. After all, there is so much expectation for it, and it would be a horrible shame for it not to happen in this generation.