Platform Profile: Nintendo Wii
The Nintendo Wii is a 7th generation home videogame console from Nintendo which was first released in Japan in 2006. The console was the successor to Nintendo’s GameCube that had released 5 years earlier.
Famed Nintendo designer, and Mario and Zelda creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, was a key member of the Wii hardware development team and would play a key role in helping shape the console. Speaking to BusinessWeek in 2006, Miyamoto explained that work on the console began around 2001, following the release of the GameCube. With the GameCube, Nintendo had lost much of their videogame market share to competitors Sony and Microsoft, with their consoles the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. In response, Nintendo began investigating an entirely new, and innovative, approach to gaming. “We started with the idea that we wanted to come up with a unique game interface,” explained Miyamoto. “The consensus was that power isn’t everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles can’t coexist. It’s like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction.” By 2003, Nintendo began consulting with game designers and engineers. “We talked about basic concepts and goals,” shared Miyamoto, “not about the technical specifications of the console. This was the Wii’s first major step.”
The console would go by the codename, ‘Revolution’. Throughout 2004 and 2005, Nintendo would settle upon both the technology behind the new machine, as well as the wand-shaped motion controller. Motion controls were something Nintendo had actually experimented with during the life of the GameCube, with the company even patenting an early prototype motion controller for the console. (A prototype Wiimote controller, shown to attach to a GameCube console, would be discovered, and subsequently sell at auction, in 2018.)
Although Nintendo had originally planned to unveil their innovative new controller, along with the console itself, at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo, a number of technical issues resulted in the controller’s design and capabilities, instead, being showcased at the September Tokyo Game Show by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.
Just before E3 2006, Nintendo officially shared the console’s final name, the Wii. The official Nintendo Wii website, which launched at the same time, shared further details regarding the console’s unusual name. “Wii sounds like “we,” which emphasizes this console is for everyone,” it explained. “Wii has a distinctive “ii” spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.” Many further details were shared at this time including the chosen game media (Wii optical discs), the console’s backwards compatibility with all GameCube games, its SD card storage solution, Wi-Fi capabilities, and the Virtual Console, an online library of classic downloadable Nintendo games. Following E3 2006, the Wii would go on to win the Game Critics Awards for Best of Show and Best Hardware for the event.
Launching in November 2006, the Wii was a huge success, selling just over 3 million consoles by the end of that year alone. It would prove to be Nintendo’s largest-ever North American console launch (until the release of the Switch in 2017), their largest launch in Australia, and the fastest-selling console ever across Europe. By 2007, reports began to emerge suggesting that sales of the console had even overtaken those of the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s new platform that had debuted the previous year.
The vast majority of critics, gamers and developers would go on to praise the console for its innovative approach to gaming. Speaking with The Guardian in 2008, Sims creator Will Wright declared that, “The only next-gen system I’ve seen is the Wii — the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last.” However, some saw the console’s lack of power, particularly when compared to its main competitors the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, as a step back. At the 2007 Game Developers Conference, Spore developer, Chris Hecker, would go on to refer to the Wii as merely two GameCubes duct-taped together, a console unable to provide a next-gen experience.
Although Nintendo would officially announce, in October 2013, that production of the Wii was to cease, to allow the company to focus upon the console’s successor, the Wii U, which had released a year prior, the console would receive numerous game releases for several further years. The last officially released Wii game would be Just Dance 2020, released in 2019, the very same year that numerous video streaming services for the console, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, would also end. Support for the Wii Mini, first released in 2012, would even continue until 2017 in some regions. As of late-2019, the Wii had sold over 101 million consoles, easily surpassing the sales of both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
🕹Are you a fan of the Wii? What are your memories of the console? Which have been your favourite games for the system?🕹
