Nintendo has announced the date and price of its new MotionPlus controller. On June 8th, you’ll be able to get your hot little hands on the wiimote add-on, which clips to the bottom of your existing controller and provides a “dual-axis tuning fork angular rate sensor”, which apparently adds to the motion-sensing goodness by determining angular motion. From what they’re claiming, with MotionPlus, you get true motion-sensing of the sort we’d originally expected from the Wii.

Nintendo’s initial first-party offering that supports MotionPlus comes out on July 26th, and amongst other things, it includes a swordfighting game. If this turns out to work like myself and so many other people hope, it will open up a floodgate of similar swordfighting games. Personally, I’ve voiced my doubts about the viability of such a game, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. Who doesn’t want to be an Obi-Wan in their own living room? Well, I guess my mom doesn’t… but still!

While the $250 for a Wii is significantly less expensive than the $300 for a XBox 360 or the $400 for a Playstation 3, when you tack on the extra $40 per controller, $20 per nunchuck, and now the extra $20 per MotionPlus add-on, that’s a potential extra $80 per person. Suddenly, the Wii isn’t so inexpensive.

Aside from Wii Sports Resort, EA has announced that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, and EA Sports Active will support the new MotionPlus controller add-on, and there have also been a lot of rumors about Red Steel 2. While the original Red Steel was a bit of a joke when it came to motion-controlled swordplay, this one might actually be somewhat less awful.