58 Facts About Wii

Wii is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo.

The primary controller for the Wii is the 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.

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.

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

Total lifetime sales of the Wii had reached over 101 million units, making it Nintendo's best-selling home console until it was surpassed by the Nintendo Switch in 2021.

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Wii repositioned Nintendo as a key player in the video game console marketplace.

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

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

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

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

Nintendo's spelling of "Wii" was intended to represent both two people standing side by side, and the Wii Remote and its Nunchuk.

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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.

The European version of the limited-edition red Wii bundle was released on October 29, 2010, which includes the original Donkey Kong game pre-installed onto the console, New Super Mario Bros.

The red Wii bundle was released in North America on November 7, 2010, with New Super Mario Bros.

Cost-reduced variant of the 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.

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

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

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

Wii introduced the use of player-customized avatars called Miis, which have been continued to be used by Nintendo in the Wii U, the Nintendo 3DS family, and, to a lesser extent, the Nintendo Switch.

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

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

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

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

Original launch Wii consoles are backward-compatible with all Nintendo GameCube software, Nintendo GameCube Memory Cards and controllers, although Korean Wii consoles are not backwards compatible at all.

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

Miyamoto originally defended Nintendo's decision to not include HD graphics in the Wii, stating that the number of HDTV's in people's homes at the time was "really not that high, yet.

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

Online connectivity of the Wii was criticized; Matt Casamassina of IGN compared it to the "entirely unintuitive" service provided for the Nintendo DS.

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.

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.

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 Wii to be a fad that will eventually die down in popularity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The Wii U was first released on November 18, 2012 in North America; November 30, 2012 in Europe and Australia, and December 8, 2012 in Japan.

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Support for online multiplayer games via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection were discontinued in May 2014, while the Wii Shop was closed in January 2019, effectively ending all online services for the console.

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

Wii has been recognized as Nintendo's "blue ocean" strategy to differ itself from its competitors Sony and Microsoft for the next several years.

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

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

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.

Iwata stated they were able to keep the game price lower since the 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Music written for the 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.