i would not call the wii a laughingstock, but i would call a great majority of the games made for it garbage.
Lets be clear the wii was purpose built for motion controls period. A vast majority of the games made for wii have dodgy motion controls or worse. Now microsoft and sony are going to tack on motion controls? And well while i did not follow e3 closely or the fates of either gimmic, all the early reviews i read of them had all the indication, that for all the claims to the contrary, that the controls lagged, that they did not feel responsive, that inputs did not always track properly, etc etc.
And while the wii did sell a billion units or whatever, the fact there are so few good games out for it at all, wiis spend a great deal of time taking up shelf space, and not much else. When you ask gamers the xbox and the ps3 get far more play time than their wiis if they have all systems.
Wii partially sold well because it was cheap and appealed to families as a family activity thing. Cause families do not mind looking goofy together, outside of their angst ridden teens. Now the angst ridden teens probably have mostly control over the xbox or the ps3 it is in their room or they bought it themselves, cause they want to game and mom and dad want to watch american idol.
Bottom line i do not think the marketing wizzes at ms or sony did do the proper research. Maybe i am wrong but i cannot see any of these motion add ons being overly popular for the cost and logistics involved.