62 Facts About Nintendo Wii

1.

The primary controller for the Nintendo Wii is the Nintendo Wii Remote, a wireless controller with both motion sensing and traditional controls which can be used as a pointing device towards the television screen or for gesture recognition.

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2.

The Wii was Nintendo's first home console to directly support Internet connectivity, supporting both online games and for digital distribution of games and media applications through the Wii Shop Channel.

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3.

The Nintendo Wii was extremely popular at launch, causing the system to be in short supply in some markets.

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4.

The introduction of motion-controlled games via the Nintendo Wii Remote led both Microsoft and Sony to develop their own competing products—the Kinect and PlayStation Move, respectively.

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5.

Nintendo found that, while the Wii had broadened the demographics that they wanted, the core gamer audience had shunned the Wii.

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6.

The Wii U was released in 2012, and Nintendo continued to sell both units through the following year.

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7.

The Wii was formally discontinued in October 2013, though Nintendo continued to produce and market the Wii Mini through 2017, and offered a subset of the Wii's online services through 2019.

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8.

Around this time, Nintendo Wii began working with Gyration Inc, a firm that had developed several patents related to motion detection, to prototype future controllers using their licensed patents.

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9.

Nintendo Wii thought that video gaming had become too exclusive and wanted Nintendo to pursue gaming hardware and software that would appeal to all demographics.

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10.

Nintendo Wii was made available for a press demonstration at E3 2006.

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11.

Nintendo Wii hoped that its console would appeal to a wider demographic than that of others in the seventh generation.

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12.

In December 2006, Satoru Iwata said that Nintendo Wii did not think of themselves as "fighting Sony", but were focused on how they could expand the gaming demographic.

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13.

In building the Wii, Nintendo did not aim to outpace the performance of their competitors.

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14.

Nintendo Wii reads games from an optical media drive located in the front of the device.

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15.

The Nintendo Wii Remote includes an internal speaker and a rumble pack that can be triggered by a game to provide feedback directly to the player's hand.

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16.

In October 2007, Nintendo added a silicon-based Wii Remote Jacket to shipments of the Wii and Wii Remote, as well as a free offering for existing users.

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17.

In 2009, Nintendo released the Wii Classic Controller Pro, which was modelled after the GameCube's form factor and included two analog sticks.

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18.

Nintendo Wii Fit offers a number of different exercise modes which monitored the player's position on the board, as well as exercise gamification, as to encourage players to exercise daily.

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19.

One of Iwata's initiatives at Nintendo Wii was focused on "quality of life" products, those that encouraged players to do other activities beyond simply sitting and playing video games as to promote physical wellbeing.

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20.

The use of motion controls in the Wii served part of this, but Nintendo developed additional accessories to give awareness of one's health as a lead-in for the company to break into the health care field.

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21.

At E3 2009, Nintendo Wii had presented a "Vitality Sensor" accessory that would be used to measure a player's pulse as a lead-in to a larger quality of life initiative, but this product was never released.

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22.

Cost-reduced variant of the Nintendo Wii, sometimes referred to as the Family Edition as the name given to bundles it was featured in, was released late into the platform's lifespan that removed all GameCube functionality, including the GameCube controller ports and memory card slots found on the original model.

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23.

Nintendo Wii Mini is a smaller, redesigned Nintendo Wii with a top-loading disc drive.

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24.

The Nintendo Wii Mini is styled in matte black with a red border, and includes a red Nintendo Wii Remote Plus and Nunchuk.

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25.

The Canadian and European releases did not include a game, while Mario Kart Nintendo Wii had been included in all launch bundles in the United States.

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26.

Nintendo added several best-selling and critically acclaimed Wii games to its Nintendo Selects label and marketed those alongside the Wii Mini's release.

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27.

Shortly after launch, other free channels created by Nintendo were made available to users, including the Internet Channel, a modified version of the Opera web browser for the Wii which supports USB keyboard input and Adobe Flash Player.

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28.

Each player on a Nintendo Wii console was encouraged to create their own Mii via the Mii Channel to be used in games like Nintendo Wii Sports and some of the system software like the Mii Channel.

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29.

Nintendo Wii console connects to the Internet through its built-in 802.

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30.

In January 2019, Nintendo ended support for all streaming services on the Wii.

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31.

Nintendo Wii includes a system that records the playtime based on any game or app on the system.

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32.

New Wii games included those from Nintendo's flagship franchises such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Pokemon, and Metroid.

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33.

The service allowed players to purchase games digitally through the Nintendo Wii Shop, downloading the games to their local memory cards to be run from them.

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34.

Nintendo Wii was praised for its simple yet responsive controls, as well as its simplicity that appeals to broader audiences.

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35.

UK-based developer Free Radical Design stated that the Nintendo Wii hardware lacks the power necessary to run the software it scheduled for release on other seventh-generation consoles.

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36.

Nintendo Life reviewer Damien McFerran said that the lightweight design of the Wii Mini makes it feel "a little cheaper and less dependable" with empty space inside the shell.

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37.

Nintendo Wii's success caught third-party developers by surprise due to constraints of the hardware's distinct limitations; this led to apologies for the quality of their early games.

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38.

Additionally, the lack of third-party support came from the fact that first-party games released by Nintendo Wii were too successful, and developers were having issues with competing.

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39.

The Nikkei Business Daily, a Japanese newspaper, claimed that companies were too nervous to start or continue making games for the console, some of which considering the Nintendo Wii to be a fad that will eventually die down in popularity.

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40.

Capcom took note of the difficulty of making money on the Nintendo Wii, and shifted their content to making less games, but with higher quality.

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41.

Nintendo Wii announced its first price reductions for the console in September 2009, dropping the MSRP from to.

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42.

Nintendo Wii stated that the price reduction was in anticipation of drawing in more consumers who still cautious about buying a video game console.

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43.

In 2010, sales of the Nintendo Wii began to decline, falling by 21 percent from the previous year.

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44.

Nintendo Wii sales weakened into 2011 as third-party support for the console waned; major publishers were passing over the Nintendo Wii which was underpowered and used non-standard development tools, and instead focused on games for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and personal computers.

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45.

Nintendo Wii sales continued to decline into 2012, falling by half from the previous year.

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46.

Nintendo Wii surpassed 100 million units sold worldwide during the second quarter of 2013.

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47.

The popularity of Nintendo Wii Sports was considered part of the console's success, making it a killer app for the Nintendo Wii as it drew those that typically did not play video games to the system.

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48.

Nintendo had recognized that the Wii had generally been shunned by the core gaming audience as it was perceived more as a casual gaming experience.

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49.

The Nintendo Wii U was aimed to draw the core audience back in with more advanced features atop the basic Nintendo Wii technology.

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50.

The Nintendo Wii Mini continued to be manufactured and sold until 2017.

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51.

The Nintendo Wii has since become seen as a prime example of an effective blue ocean approach.

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52.

However, Nintendo did not maintain this same "blue ocean" approach when it took towards designing the Wii U, by which point both Sony and Microsoft had caught up with similar features from the Wii.

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53.

Part of the Nintendo Wii's success was attributed to its lower cost compared to the other consoles.

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54.

Soichiro Fukuda, a games analyst at Nikko Citigroup, estimated that in 2007, Nintendo Wii's optimized production gave them a profit from each unit sold ranging from in Japan to in the United States and in Europe.

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55.

Further, Nintendo's first-party games for the Wii were set at an retail price of, about less expensive than average games for Nintendo's competitors.

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56.

Iwata stated they were able to keep the game price lower since the Nintendo Wii was not as focused on high-resolution graphics in comparison to the other consoles, thus keeping development costs lower, averaging about per game compared to required for developing on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

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57.

Nintendo Wii was marketed to promote a healthy lifestyle via physical activity.

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58.

Nintendo Wii has become a popular target for homebrewing new functionality and video games since its discontinuation.

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59.

The Nintendo Wii can be hacked to enable an owner to use the console for activities unintended by the manufacturer.

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60.

Nintendo Wii Remote became a popular unit to hack for other applications.

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61.

Wii has been a popular system for emulation; while the act of creating such emulators in a cleanroom-type approach have been determined to be legal, the actions of bringing the Wii system software and games to other systems has been of questionable legality and Nintendo has actively pursued legal action against those that distribute copies of their software.

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62.

Music written for the Nintendo Wii has taken on a new life as a cultural touchstone, and inspired people far beyond the confines of the little white wedge it was composed for.

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