In November 2006, a small white console measuring just 44 millimeters wide, 157 millimeters tall, and 215 millimeters deep arrived in living rooms across North America, defying the industry's desperate race for high-definition graphics. This device, codenamed Revolution before its final reveal, was not built to outperform the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, but to outmaneuver them by ignoring their rules entirely. Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo who had taken the helm in May 2002, had made a radical decision to stop competing on raw computational power and instead focus on a new form of interaction that would bring video games to people who had never considered themselves gamers. The console was designed to be affordable, with a manufacturing cost that allowed Nintendo to sell it at a price point of 249 dollars, significantly lower than its competitors, and to generate a profit margin on every unit sold. The result was a social phenomenon that would sell over 101 million units, making it the best-selling home console of its generation and a cultural touchstone that redefined what a video game could be.
The Revolution That Wasn't
The journey to the Wii began in 2001, shortly after the release of the GameCube, when Nintendo started conceptual development on its next console under the placeholder name GameCube Next. By the 24th of September 2001, the company had begun collaborating with Gyration Inc., a firm holding several patents in motion-sensing technology, to prototype motion-based input devices. The project was initially referred to as Revolution, a name that reflected Iwata's belief that the console would revolutionize the gaming industry, but the true revolution was not in the hardware specifications. In 2003, Iwata met with Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda to discuss the company's market strategy, directing Takeda to go off the tech roadmap in designing the new console. The goal was to create a system that was accessible to non-traditional audiences, including mothers, and to reduce household clutter by maintaining backward compatibility with earlier Nintendo games. An initial prototype was completed within six months, and the team observed that the Nintendo DS, a dual-screen handheld console with a touchscreen, had attracted non-traditional players. They even considered copying the DS's touch-panel interface, but the idea was ultimately abandoned to avoid redundancy between the two systems. Miyamoto later remarked that if the DS had flopped, they might have taken the Wii back to the drawing board.The Name That Divided The World
At E3 2004, Iwata first unveiled some details of the project under its new codename, Revolution, but the console's official name, Wii, was not announced until April 2006, a month ahead of the E3 2006 show. The stylized spelling, with two lowercase i's, was designed to represent both two people standing side by side and the pairing of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. In its announcement, Nintendo explained that Wii sounds like we, which emphasizes that the console is for everyone, and that it can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. The name drew widespread mockery and criticism, with Forbes reporting that Nintendo fans feared the name would perpetuate the perception that Nintendo made consoles primarily for children. BBC News reported the day after the name was announced that a long list of puerile jokes, based on the name, had appeared on the Internet. Some video game developers and journalists expressed a preference for the codename Revolution, but President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aimé defended the name, saying that the company chose it over Revolution because they wanted something short, distinctive, and easily pronounceable in all cultures. The console was made available for press demonstrations at E3 2006, where Nintendo also revealed several planned launch games, reaffirming its intention to release the console by the end of 2006.The Killer App That Broke The Internet
The Wii's launch in the United States on the 19th of November 2006, was considered the largest console launch by Nintendo in the Americas, Japan, Europe, and Australia, with the console outselling combined sales of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in several regions during its launch period. The pack-in game, Wii Sports, became the Wii's killer app, drawing those that typically did not play video games to the system and selling 82.90 million units globally, including pack-in copies. The console was in short supply through the first year, with the company having already shipped nearly 3.2 million units worldwide by the end of 2006, and working to raise production amounts to 17.5 million through 2007. The launch campaign in North America was directed by Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan, featuring slogans like Wii would like to play and Experience a new way to play, with a budget exceeding 100 million dollars for the year. The strategy proved successful as the Wii became a global social phenomenon throughout 2007, with sales surpassing Xbox 360 sales by September 2007. To meet further demand, Nintendo increased production rates of the Wii from 1.6 million to around 2.4 million units per month in 2008, planning to meet the continued demand for the console.The Controller That Shook The World
The Wii Remote is the primary controller for the console, containing a MEMS-based three-dimension accelerometer and infrared detection sensors located at the far end of the controller. The accelerometers allow the Wii Remote to recognize its orientation after being moved from a resting position, translating that motion into gesture recognition for a game. For example, the pack-in game Wii Sports includes a ten-pin bowling game that has the player hold the Wii Remote and deliver a ball, with the Wii Remote accounting for the player's position relative to the Sensor Bar, and their arm and wrist rotation to apply speed and spin to the virtual ball's delivery on screen. The infrared detectors are used to track emissions from LEDs in the included Sensor Bar, which is placed above or below the television display, as to track the relative orientation of the Wii Remote towards the screen. This allows the Wii Remote to act as a pointing device like a computer mouse on the television screen, with an approximate range of 5 meters for accurate detection. A wrist-mounted strap is included with the Wii Remote, with one end affixed to the bottom of the unit, and Nintendo strongly encouraged players to use the strap in case the Wii Remote accidentally slipped out of their hands. Nintendo recalled the original straps in December 2006 and provided a free, stronger strap as a replacement, as well as packaging the new strap in future bundles after the company faced legal challenges from users that reported damage to their homes from the Wii Remote slipping from their hands while playing.The Health Revolution That Never Was
One of Iwata's initiatives at Nintendo 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. The Wii Balance Board was released alongside Wii Fit in December 2007, a wireless balance board accessory for the Wii, with multiple pressure sensors used to measure the user's center of balance. 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. In addition to use in Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus that expanded the range of exercises using the Wii Balance Board, the accessory can be used in other third-party games that translated the player's balance on the unit into in-game controls such as Shaun White Snowboarding and Skate It. At E3 2009, Nintendo 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. In a 2013 Q&A, Satoru Iwata revealed that the Vitality Sensor had been shelved, as internal testing found that the device did not work with all users, and its use cases were too narrow. Despite this, Nintendo has continued Iwata's quality of life program with further products on later consoles and games, and the Wii has been used in physical rehabilitation for stroke, cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, and for balance training.The Legacy That Outlived The Console
The Wii was discontinued in October 2013 after selling over 100 million units worldwide, though the company continued to produce the Wii Mini unit primarily for the North American market. The WiiConnect24 service and several channels based on that service were shuttered in June 2013, and 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 its online services. Despite the Wii's discontinuation, some developers continued to produce Wii games, with Ubisoft releasing Just Dance games for the Wii up to Just Dance 2020 in 2019, and Vblank Entertainment's Shakedown: Hawaii along with Retro City Rampage DX being the most recent Wii games, released on the 9th of July 2020, more than 13 years after the Wii's launch. The Wii has become a popular target for homebrewing new functionality and video games since its discontinuation, with homebrew projects able to add DVD playback to unmodified Wii consoles. The Wii Remote also became a popular unit to hack for other applications, with programmers able to reverse engineer the communications protocol and develop application programming interfaces for the Wii Remote for other operating systems. The open-source Dolphin project has been able to successfully emulate the Wii and GameCube through several years of cleanroom efforts, and the music composed by Kazumi Totaka for the console has taken on a new life as a cultural touchstone, with covers and memes featuring music from the Wii everywhere on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter.In November 2006, a small white console measuring just 44 millimeters wide, 157 millimeters tall, and 215 millimeters deep arrived in living rooms across North America, defying the industry's desperate race for high-definition graphics. This device, codenamed Revolution before its final reveal, was not built to outperform the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, but to outmaneuver them by ignoring their rules entirely. Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo who had taken the helm in May 2002, had made a radical decision to stop competing on raw computational power and instead focus on a new form of interaction that would bring video games to people who had never considered themselves gamers. The console was designed to be affordable, with a manufacturing cost that allowed Nintendo to sell it at a price point of 249 dollars, significantly lower than its competitors, and to generate a profit margin on every unit sold. The result was a social phenomenon that would sell over 101 million units, making it the best-selling home console of its generation and a cultural touchstone that redefined what a video game could be.
The Revolution That Wasn't
The journey to the Wii began in 2001, shortly after the release of the GameCube, when Nintendo started conceptual development on its next console under the placeholder name GameCube Next. By the 24th of September 2001, the company had begun collaborating with Gyration Inc., a firm holding several patents in motion-sensing technology, to prototype motion-based input devices. The project was initially referred to as Revolution, a name that reflected Iwata's belief that the console would revolutionize the gaming industry, but the true revolution was not in the hardware specifications. In 2003, Iwata met with Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda to discuss the company's market strategy, directing Takeda to go off the tech roadmap in designing the new console. The goal was to create a system that was accessible to non-traditional audiences, including mothers, and to reduce household clutter by maintaining backward compatibility with earlier Nintendo games. An initial prototype was completed within six months, and the team observed that the Nintendo DS, a dual-screen handheld console with a touchscreen, had attracted non-traditional players. They even considered copying the DS's touch-panel interface, but the idea was ultimately abandoned to avoid redundancy between the two systems. Miyamoto later remarked that if the DS had flopped, they might have taken the Wii back to the drawing board.
The Name That Divided The World
At E3 2004, Iwata first unveiled some details of the project under its new codename, Revolution, but the console's official name, Wii, was not announced until April 2006, a month ahead of the E3 2006 show. The stylized spelling, with two lowercase i's, was designed to represent both two people standing side by side and the pairing of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. In its announcement, Nintendo explained that Wii sounds like we, which emphasizes that the console is for everyone, and that it can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. The name drew widespread mockery and criticism, with Forbes reporting that Nintendo fans feared the name would perpetuate the perception that Nintendo made consoles primarily for children. BBC News reported the day after the name was announced that a long list of puerile jokes, based on the name, had appeared on the Internet. Some video game developers and journalists expressed a preference for the codename Revolution, but President of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aimé defended the name, saying that the company chose it over Revolution because they wanted something short, distinctive, and easily pronounceable in all cultures. The console was made available for press demonstrations at E3 2006, where Nintendo also revealed several planned launch games, reaffirming its intention to release the console by the end of 2006.
The Killer App That Broke The Internet
The Wii's launch in the United States on the 19th of November 2006, was considered the largest console launch by Nintendo in the Americas, Japan, Europe, and Australia, with the console outselling combined sales of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in several regions during its launch period. The pack-in game, Wii Sports, became the Wii's killer app, drawing those that typically did not play video games to the system and selling 82.90 million units globally, including pack-in copies. The console was in short supply through the first year, with the company having already shipped nearly 3.2 million units worldwide by the end of 2006, and working to raise production amounts to 17.5 million through 2007. The launch campaign in North America was directed by Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan, featuring slogans like Wii would like to play and Experience a new way to play, with a budget exceeding 100 million dollars for the year. The strategy proved successful as the Wii became a global social phenomenon throughout 2007, with sales surpassing Xbox 360 sales by September 2007. To meet further demand, Nintendo increased production rates of the Wii from 1.6 million to around 2.4 million units per month in 2008, planning to meet the continued demand for the console.
The Controller That Shook The World
The Wii Remote is the primary controller for the console, containing a MEMS-based three-dimension accelerometer and infrared detection sensors located at the far end of the controller. The accelerometers allow the Wii Remote to recognize its orientation after being moved from a resting position, translating that motion into gesture recognition for a game. For example, the pack-in game Wii Sports includes a ten-pin bowling game that has the player hold the Wii Remote and deliver a ball, with the Wii Remote accounting for the player's position relative to the Sensor Bar, and their arm and wrist rotation to apply speed and spin to the virtual ball's delivery on screen. The infrared detectors are used to track emissions from LEDs in the included Sensor Bar, which is placed above or below the television display, as to track the relative orientation of the Wii Remote towards the screen. This allows the Wii Remote to act as a pointing device like a computer mouse on the television screen, with an approximate range of 5 meters for accurate detection. A wrist-mounted strap is included with the Wii Remote, with one end affixed to the bottom of the unit, and Nintendo strongly encouraged players to use the strap in case the Wii Remote accidentally slipped out of their hands. Nintendo recalled the original straps in December 2006 and provided a free, stronger strap as a replacement, as well as packaging the new strap in future bundles after the company faced legal challenges from users that reported damage to their homes from the Wii Remote slipping from their hands while playing.
The Health Revolution That Never Was
One of Iwata's initiatives at Nintendo 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. The Wii Balance Board was released alongside Wii Fit in December 2007, a wireless balance board accessory for the Wii, with multiple pressure sensors used to measure the user's center of balance. 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. In addition to use in Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus that expanded the range of exercises using the Wii Balance Board, the accessory can be used in other third-party games that translated the player's balance on the unit into in-game controls such as Shaun White Snowboarding and Skate It. At E3 2009, Nintendo 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. In a 2013 Q&A, Satoru Iwata revealed that the Vitality Sensor had been shelved, as internal testing found that the device did not work with all users, and its use cases were too narrow. Despite this, Nintendo has continued Iwata's quality of life program with further products on later consoles and games, and the Wii has been used in physical rehabilitation for stroke, cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, and for balance training.
The Legacy That Outlived The Console
The Wii was discontinued in October 2013 after selling over 100 million units worldwide, though the company continued to produce the Wii Mini unit primarily for the North American market. The WiiConnect24 service and several channels based on that service were shuttered in June 2013, and 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 its online services. Despite the Wii's discontinuation, some developers continued to produce Wii games, with Ubisoft releasing Just Dance games for the Wii up to Just Dance 2020 in 2019, and Vblank Entertainment's Shakedown: Hawaii along with Retro City Rampage DX being the most recent Wii games, released on the 9th of July 2020, more than 13 years after the Wii's launch. The Wii has become a popular target for homebrewing new functionality and video games since its discontinuation, with homebrew projects able to add DVD playback to unmodified Wii consoles. The Wii Remote also became a popular unit to hack for other applications, with programmers able to reverse engineer the communications protocol and develop application programming interfaces for the Wii Remote for other operating systems. The open-source Dolphin project has been able to successfully emulate the Wii and GameCube through several years of cleanroom efforts, and the music composed by Kazumi Totaka for the console has taken on a new life as a cultural touchstone, with covers and memes featuring music from the Wii everywhere on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter.