Wii
The Wii[g] (/ˈwiː/, WEE) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006 in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, following the GameCube and is a seventh-generation console alongside Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.
This article is about the video game console. For other uses, see WII.Also known as
- Revolution (pre-release)
- RVL (codename)
101.63 million (as of September 30, 2019) (details)
24 MB 1T-SRAM @ 324 MHz (2.7 GB/s) + 64 MB GDDR3 SDRAM
512 MB NAND flash memory
- Composite video (480i, 576i (PAL))
- S-Video (480i (NTSC consoles only))
- RGB SCART (576i (PAL consoles only))
- Component video (YPBPR) (480i, 576i (PAL), 480p)
- Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g
- Bluetooth 2.0
- 2 × USB 2.0[16]
- LAN adaptor (via USB 2.0)[17]
- Width: 157 mm (6.2 in)
- Height: 60 mm (2.4 in)
- Depth: 197 mm (7.8 in)
- Revisions
- RVL-101
- Same
- Mini
- Width: 160 mm (6.3 in)
- Height: 46 mm (1.8 in)
- Depth: 193 mm (7.6 in)
- RVL-101
- 1,220 g (43 oz)
- Revisions
- RVL-101
1,130 g (40 oz) - Mini
724 g (25.5 oz)
- RVL-101
- Pack-in:[f] Wii Sports, 82.90 million
- Stand-alone: Mario Kart Wii, 37.32 million (as of March 31, 2020)
GameCube
In developing the Wii, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata directed the company to avoid competing with Microsoft and Sony on computational graphics and power and instead to target a broader demographic of players through novel gameplay. Game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda led the console's development under the codename Revolution. 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 also supports wireless connectivity with the Nintendo DS handheld console for selected games. Initial Wii models included full backward compatibility support for GameCube games and most accessories. Later in its lifecycle, two lower-cost Wii models were produced: a revised model with the same design as the original Wii but removed the GameCube compatibility features and the Wii Mini, a compact, budget redesign of the Wii which further removed features including online connectivity and SD card storage.
Because of Nintendo's reduced focus on computational power, the Wii and its games were less expensive to produce than its competitors. The Wii was extremely popular at launch, causing the system to be in short supply in some markets. A bundled game, Wii Sports, was considered the killer app for the console; other flagship games included entries in the Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Metroid series. Within a year of launch, the Wii became the best-selling seventh-generation console, and by 2013, had surpassed over 100 million units sold. 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.[h] As of 2022, the Wii is the fifth-best-selling home console of all time.
The 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's successor, the Wii U, sought to recapture the core gamer market with additional features atop the Wii. The Wii U was released in 2012, and Nintendo continued to sell both units through the following year. 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.
Reception
Critical reviews
The system was well received after its exhibition at E3 2006, winning the Game Critics Awards for Best of Show and Best Hardware.[177] Later in December, Popular Science named the console a Grand Award Winner in home entertainment.[178] The game proceeded to win multiple awards; the console was awarded Spike TV's Video Games Award,[179] a Golden Joystick from the Golden Joystick Awards,[180] and an Emmy Award for game controller innovation from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.[181] IGN and The Guardian named the Wii the 10th greatest video game console of all time out of 25,[182][183] and GameSpot chose the console as having the best hardware in its "Best and Worst 2006" awards.[184]
The Wii was praised for its simple yet responsive controls, as well as its simplicity that appeals to broader audiences. Although Dan Grabham of Tech Radar enjoyed its simple mechanics, stating how "even grandparents can pick things up pretty quickly", he also enjoyed the depth of content carried over from the GameCube.[185] CNET likened the "no-brainer" setup and the easy to navigate home screen.[186] Will Wright, the creator of The Sims, called the Wii "the only next gen system I've seen", and rather considered the PS3 and the Xbox 360 as simply successors with "incremental improvement". He believed that the Wii did not only improve on graphics, but also complimented how it "hits a completely different demographic".[187] Reviewers were fond of the compact design,[186] with Ars Technica comparing it to an Apple product.[188]
By 2008, two years after the Wii's release,[189] Nintendo acknowledged several limitations and challenges with the system (such as the perception that the system catered primarily to a "casual" audience[190] and was unpopular among hardcore gamers).[191] Miyamoto admitted that the lack of support for high-definition video output on the Wii and its limited network infrastructure also contributed to the system being regarded separately from its competitors' systems, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.[192] 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. Of course I think five years down the road it would be pretty much a given that Nintendo would create an HD system, but right now the predominant television set in the world is a non-HD set."[193] In 2013, Miyamoto said in an interview with Japanese video game website 4Gamer that "Even for the Wii, no matter how much it made the system cost, it would have been great if it were HD in the first place."[194]
At the same time, criticism of the Wii Remote and Wii hardware specifications had surfaced. Former GameSpot editor and Giantbomb.com founder Jeff Gerstmann stated that the controller's speaker produces low-quality sound,[195] while Factor 5 co-founder Julian Eggebrecht stated that the console has inferior audio capabilities and graphics.[196] 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.[197] Online connectivity of the Wii was also criticized; Matt Casamassina of IGN compared it to the "entirely unintuitive" service provided for the Nintendo DS.[198]
Although the Wii Mini was met with praise for being cheap, considering it was bundled with a Wii Remote, Nunchuk and a copy of Mario Kart Wii,[199][200] it was considered inferior compared to the original console. Critics were disappointed in the lack of online play and backward compatibility with GameCube games,[199][201][202] and also believed the hardware was still rather quite large, being about half the size of the Wii;[199] Eurogamer's Richard Leadbetter thought the Wii Mini was not any more "living room friendly", as he believed the "bright red plastics make it stand out much more than the more neutral blacks and whites of existing model's casing." He stated that the overall design was rough in texture, and seemed to have been built with emphasis on durability.[200] 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.[201] CNET criticized the pop-open lid for inserting disks to be "cheap-feeling".[199]
Third-party development
The 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. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot and Alain Corre admitted that they made a mistake in rushing out their launch titles, promising to take future projects more seriously.[203] An executive for Frontline Studios stated that major publishers were wary of releasing exclusive titles for the Wii, due to the perception that third-party companies were not strongly supported by consumers.[204] 1UP.com editor Jeremy Parish stated that Nintendo was the biggest disappointment for him in 2007. Commenting on the lack of quality third-party support, he stated that the content was worse than its predecessors, resulting in "bargain-bin trash".[205]
Additionally, the lack of third-party support also came from the fact that first-party games released by Nintendo were too successful, and developers were having issues with competing. Game developers, such as Rod Cousens, CEO of Codemasters were having issues with the slow sales on the Wii. 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.[206] Nintendo considered why this was the case was due to the fact that they "know the Wii's special characteristics better than anyone", and began developing the games for the console long before its release, giving them a head start.[207]
Due to struggling sales during 2010, developers began creating alternative options. Capcom took note of the difficulty of making money on the Wii, and shifted their content to making less games, but with higher quality.[208] According to Sony, many third-party developers originally making games for the Wii started focusing attention more of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.[209]
Legacy
Impact on Nintendo
The Wii has been recognized as Nintendo's "blue ocean" strategy to differentiate itself from its competitors Sony and Microsoft for the next several years.[246] The Wii has since become seen as a prime example of an effective blue ocean approach. While Sony and Microsoft continued to innovate their consoles on hardware improvements to provide more computational and graphics power, Nintendo put more effort towards developing hardware that facilitated new ways to play games. This was considered a key part to the success of the console, measured by sales over its competitors during that console generation.[247][248] 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. These factors partially contributed towards weak sales of the Wii U.[248]
Part of the Wii's success was attributed to its lower cost compared to the other consoles. While Microsoft and Sony have experienced losses producing their consoles in the hopes of making a long-term profit on software sales, Nintendo reportedly had optimized production costs to obtain a significant profit margin with each Wii unit sold.[249] Soichiro Fukuda, a games analyst at Nikko Citigroup, estimated that in 2007, Nintendo's optimized production gave them a profit from each unit sold ranging from $13 in Japan to $49 in the United States and $74 in Europe.[250][251] The console's final price at launch of $249.99 made it comparatively cheaper than the Xbox 360 (which had been available in two models priced at $299 and $399) and the then-upcoming PlayStation 3 (also to be available in two models priced at $499 and $599). Further, Nintendo's first-party games for the Wii were set at an retail price of $50, about $10 less expensive than average games for Nintendo's competitors.[49] 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 $5 million per game compared to $20 million required for developing on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.[252][74]
Health effects
The Wii was marketed to promote a healthy lifestyle via physical activity. It has been used in physical rehabilitation, and its health effects have been studied for several conditions.[253][254] The most studied uses of Wii for rehabilitation therapy are for stroke, cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease,[253][255][256] and for balance training.[254][257][258][259] The potential for adverse effects from video game rehabilitation therapy (for example, from falls) has not been well studied as of 2016.[253]
A study published in the British Medical Journal stated that Wii players use more energy than they do playing sedentary computer games, but Wii playing was not an adequate replacement for regular exercise.[260][261] Some Wii players have experienced musculoskeletal injuries known as Wiiitis, Wii knee, Wii elbow (similar to tennis elbow) or nintendinitis from repetitive play; a small number of serious injuries have occurred, but injuries are infrequent and most are mild.[262][263]
In May 2010, Nintendo gave the American Heart Association (AHA) a $1.5 million gift;[264] the AHA endorsed the Wii with its Healthy Check icon, covering the console and two of its more active games, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort.[265][266]
