Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Nintendo Wii launched in the United States on the 19th of November 2006. It was priced below both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at launch. Japan received it on the 2nd of December 2006, and most of Europe on the 8th of December 2006, at €249.99.
The Wii sold a total of 101.63 million units worldwide as of the 31st of March 2016, the last date Nintendo reported sales figures. At least 48 million were sold in North America, 12 million in Japan, and 40 million in all other regions combined. It remained Nintendo's best-selling home console until the Nintendo Switch surpassed it in late 2021.
Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda led development of the Wii under the direction of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Iwata instructed Takeda in 2003 to "go off the tech roadmap" and build a console accessible to non-traditional players. Miyamoto described his original cost goal as wanting a machine that would cost $100, spending nothing on console technology so all resources could go toward the interface and software.
The Wii Remote was the primary controller for the Wii, containing a MEMS-based three-dimensional accelerometer and infrared detection sensors. It communicated with a Sensor Bar placed near the television to track its orientation toward the screen, functioning as a pointing device with an accurate range of roughly 15 feet. The accelerometer translated movement from a resting position into gesture recognition, and the remote connected to the Wii via Bluetooth with a range of approximately 30 feet.
Nintendo discontinued the Wii in October 2013 after selling over 100 million units worldwide. Sales had been declining since 2010, falling 21 percent that year and roughly in half again by 2012. The arrival of Sony's PlayStation Move and Microsoft's Kinect on rival platforms reduced motion control as a competitive advantage, and third-party publishers shifted focus away from the Wii toward the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The music composed by Kazumi Totaka for the Wii's menu channels became a lasting cultural presence beyond the console itself. The Washington Post described the Mii Channel theme as "a cultural touchstone," and Eurogamer called the Wii Shop Channel theme "a song so infectious it went on to become a meme." Both tracks inspired jazz covers and spread widely across social video platforms long after the Wii was discontinued.