"Wii Would Like to Play."

— Tagline, English commercials for the Wii

By the end of the Nintendo GameCube's life, Nintendo was in an awkward place, to put it lightly. While the recent release of the Nintendo DS had proven that even Sony would have to try incredibly hard to wrestle away dominance of the handheld gaming market from them, the living room was a different story. The PlayStation 2 and Xbox were continuing to cement teens and young adults as the primary gaming audience in the West, craving violent, bloody, and mature fare; an image that was as far as you could get from the friendly-looking purple lunchbox filled with all-ages first-party software that was the GameCube. Nintendo was the "kiddy" console company; not only that, but they were the kiddy console company that was in third place behind the "new kid" to the industry that was Microsoft. And the situation wasn't much better in their home country of Japan, where the lack of interest in the Xbox just meant even more sales for the juggernaut that was the PS2.

The few gaming pundits that acknowledged that home consoles weren't everything believed that Nintendo's future may see them concentrate on their handheld dominion (just give it another decade). The vast majority who didn't, however, saw only one path forward for the company: the GameCube was clearly Nintendo's equivalent to the Dreamcast, and so Nintendo would be announcing any day now that they would be going third-party like former console makers Sega, Hudson Soft, Atari and SNK. As for Nintendo themselves? They agreed that going toe-to-toe with Sony and Microsoft in the escalating graphics race wasn't going to work, but if choosing innovative hardware design over power worked for the world of gaming handhelds... maybe it could work in the world of home consoles as well?

Enter the Wii, Nintendo's fifth home console, released on November 19, 2006 in North America, December 2 in Japan, December 7 in Australia, December 8 in Europe, and April 26, 2008 in South Korea.

It's a console known for its unique motion-based Wii Remote (or the Fan Nickname "Wiimote") controller that is best described as a fusion between an NES controller and a television remote control. The idea was simple. Usually, a beginning gamer would have to not only to learn how to control their character, but also learn how to control their controller: "'Hold X to perform action?' What's performing an action? What's X? Do I have to hug him? And is X doesn't afraid of anything?" ...Okay, maybe we're exaggerating it a little bit. But maybe we're not. After the Video Game 3D Leap, control schemes were getting more and more complex after all. Meanwhile, television had been around for the better half of a century by that point, and basically everyone knows how to use a TV remote: point it at the screen and press buttons. For all intents and purposes, anyone who picks up a Wii already has a grasp on how to use the controller, so you can see how clever this design trick can be in getting non-gamers to become new gamers.

The Wii also focused on a low price point (approximately US$199 in Japan with no game, and roughly US$249.99 elsewhere when bundled with Wii Sports), countering the escalating price tags on its competitors; a major boon considering the world was about to enter the Great Recession.^note Japan in particular was in the unfortunate situation of having just exited its "Lost Decade" only to fall right back into another recession. They did this by cutting out many features that the other consoles took for granted (DVD and CD playback,^note the console can still read and play video DVDs on model 1 units, but the feature is closed off without modding due to the high costs of royalties and the fact that Sony co-owned the rights to both the CD and DVD formats; whether or not the Wii can play CDs with modding hasn't been adequately determined, though most sources point to it not being possible high-definition support, and built-in ethernet capabilities) that weren't that important to the gaming experience. Nintendo then marketed the console as "for the whole family," and to further this, made it look as sleek as an iPod, with an (initially) white color scheme to boot.

Much to the surprise of the gaming press, doubters, and nay-sayers, it sold well. Ludicrously well. The Wii's crushing marketing victory, Day 1 profitability, and unprecedented sales numbers made it the most successful console of its generation.^note Just over 100 million units versus 78 million for the Xbox 360 and 75-78 million for the PlayStation 3. From its launch until late 2008 — a period of two years— the Wii was constantly backordered across retailers everywhere, as everyone and their grandparents (quite literally) wanted to get their hands on one. It worked so well that 4 years later, all hypocrisy broke loose and both Sony and Microsoft came up with copies of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, namely the Kinect and PlayStation Move, right after having their marketing team call it a useless gimmick meant for "casual gamers".

Much of the Wii's internals were based off the GameCube,^note Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford even referred to the Wii as a "supercharged GameCube" in an Electronic Gaming Monthly interview; and Chris Hecker of Maxis infamously called it "two GameCubes duct-taped together" at the 2007 Game Developers Conference an already pretty powerful piece of hardware (for its time), but made even more powerful. It had numerous fundamental differences to the PS3 and 360. The make a good analogy comparing the systems is that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are modern, top-of-the-line supercars, while the Wii is a tuned-up roadster from a decade ago, modified to yield higher horsepower. ^ex:The Wii had no internal hard drive for the sake of cost and reliability. It also lacked programmable pixel shaders, restricting it to simplistic, vertex-based shaders that could not be modified to yield higher resolution. Becoming obsolete with the arrival of Microsoft's DirectX 8 (used in the Xbox) and OpenGL 2. Simply put, in terms of shaders, the Wii and its competitors spoke completely different languages.

Nintendo's first true foray into internet-based play started on the Wii^ex:the company toyed with the concept a few years earlier with select DS titles and, much like the console itself, were a far cry from the other systems. These included the infamous friend code system that would be phased out in later generations in favor of more traditional usernames. The Wii did have a surprisingly deep online store like its competitors, and a separate Virtual Console store that essentially served as legal emulation. Unfortunately, it was not possible to download normal games, just smaller WiiWare ones, and patching wasn't feasible. Additionally, a true mass storage solution (like, say, an external hard drive) didn't appear until the end of March 2009, and only a limited number of demo versions of the games were available.

Sadly, in the case of third-parties, most developers would either ignore the system entirely, or toss in some quick-and-dirty ports of PlayStation 2 games (coupled with half-baked controls), with more serious efforts coming only after the system's continued popularity established it as a friendly environment. The low development costs compared to its HD cousins allowed for many unusual, financially risky games, often critical darlings but commercial failures. A common debate involving the Wii is whether a real-time strategy game slash life sim where the protagonist is a little boy or a spiritual successor to an equally cult PS2 beat 'em up would have done well on any other system. The lower development costs also meant the system ended up hosting large amounts of shovelware. The newfound audience of casual players didn't know any better, being more susceptible to buying cheaply-made games with motion controls slapped on. However, it would still see third-party successes such as Sonic Colors, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (while not an exclusive, it sold the best on the Wii), Monster Hunter 3 (Tri), Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, and most notably, No More Heroes (2007).

However, despite cries of "inferior" graphics and processing power, the Wii continued to sell better or as good as the other systems, depending on whether there was a recent Killer App release, with the Virtual Console being used as a way to offer re-releases of older games as effective stopgaps. Much of the early analysis of the console's inevitable failure comes across as And You Thought It Would Fail in light of its overall success, and the occasional April Fool's joke about the Wii being highly successful is now Hilarious in Hindsight.

Nintendo was engaged in a constant cat-and-mouse game with hackers over the Wii firmware since launch. Frequent system updates during the Wii's lifetime include patches to close loopholes known to be exploited by hackers, though Nintendo ultimately threw in the towel at the end, especially with Super Smash Bros. Brawl having an unpatchable hacking entry point within its Level Editor^note Nintendo did patch this on the Wii U's Wii mode by checking SD cards for specific files when loading Brawl in the Wii Menu. Of course, you can avoid this by...inserting the SD Card after the game has loaded. This lead to a proliferation of emulators and applications to load Wii and GameCube games off an external hard drive, as well as game mods developed during and after the Wii's life that are loaded through the SD card slot such as Project M (A Brawl mod to make it play more like Melee), CTGP Revolution (A custom track pack for Mario Kart Wii) and Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii (a fan-made expansion pack for New Super Mario Bros. Wii).

It is also possible to play DVDs on specific model 1 units (the ones with GameCube support) through unauthorized means. Nintendo has players believe the Wii would require a hardware upgrade because movie playback wears out the system's DVD drive very quickly. They're probably not lying — technically, the Wii has very little memory and storage space for buffering, so in order to avert Loads and Loads of Loading, it compensates by spinning the disc really, really fast for prolonged periods of time. This has an unfortunate tendency to shorten the lifespan of the optical drive quite significantly.

In 2011, Nintendo revised the Wii, releasing the Family Edition (with various colors coming with different pack-in games). While the same size and shape as the original, the GameCube ports were removed as a cost-saving measure, thus removing backward compatibility support ^note Officially, anyway and the ability to use GameCube controllers for games like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and GoldenEye 007.

In 2012, Canada received the Wii Mini in red. It's a cute little console, but to make it smaller (and cheaper), Nintendo cut out its network functionality as well as GameCube backwards compatibility and the SD card slot. This consequently removed practically all entry points for hackers to softmod the Wii Mini, though an exploit within its Bluetooth stack was eventually discovered in 2019.

The Wii was succeeded by the Wii U in 2012, and Nintendo ended Wi-Fi service for the Wii on May 20th, 2014. Though as with any popular Defunct Online Video Game and with the console cracked wide open by that point, the Wi-Fi shutdown hasn't deterred the modders as they have established the Wiimmfi and WiiLink private servers to keep the Wii's Wi-Fi multiplayer and online services respectively open.

It should never be confused with, or thought of as, a Wii-Wii. Trust us, the fans (and Nintendo themselves) surely don't.

Technical Specifications:

• CPU: IBM PowerPC 750CXe-based processor codenamed Broadway. Reportedly clocked at 729 MHz. It's a updated version of the GameCube's CPU and it uses Power4 tech when the GameCube's CPU uses Power3. However, the CPUs are in the same family, which explains its backwards compatibility; 64KB of L1 cache and 256KB of L2 cache.^note (Though contrary to what the "Two GameCubes duct-taped together" meme might have you believe, it's not a dual-core version of that console's CPU, and is still only single-core; the first Nintendo platform to have a multi-core CPU would be the 3DS). However, the GBA and DS both have multiple CP Us.
• GPU: ATi-designed GPU codenamed Hollywood reportedly clocked at 243 MHz. Based on the GPU used in the GameCube, it removes many features unused on the GameCube in favor of more polygons and more TEV units.
• There's also an I/O Controller codenamed Napa that handles communication between the GPU and the system, a DSP + 1T-SRAM chip called Vegas, and another processor called Starlet, which handles the external I/O and WiiConnect24 when the console is asleep.

Storage

• 24 MB internal 1T-SRAM integrated into graphics package
• 64 MB external GDDR3 SDRAM
• 3 MB internal EDRAM to the GPU itself for framebuffer and texture storage.
• 512 MB of internal Flash Memory.
  • The front has an SD Card slot, which can support up to 32 GB.^note Officially, at least - larger cards MAY work but Nintendo only claims up to 32 GB support. FAT32 formatting for SDXC cards may be necessary to get them to work.(Prior to the release of Wii Menu 4.0 in 2009, the largest supported SD Card size was 2 GB, and the few games that could read and write data to an SD card that were released before it were stuck with this limit.) Games purchased in the Wii Shop Channel can be stored and run here.
• In addition to GameCube discs, the Wii uses a "Nintendo Optical Disc" — essentially standard DVDs with a couple of added features — with the capacity of a 12 cm DVD for its games with capacities up to 8.5 GB. This technically makes the Wii the only Nintendo system to use a non-proprietary format as its main storage medium (though the Wii U's optical discs are very similar to single-layer Blu-Rays). Still, the added features were enough to put the disc format outside the range of DVD Forum specifications, allowing Nintendo to avoid having to pay licensing fees.

Graphics

• Like the GameCube, the Wii could only output standard definition resolutions. It supported all resolution modes in interlaced or progressive scan and in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios.
• Color Palette: 32 bit (16.7 million colors)
• Polygon Count: 500 million max, 410 million in game (384 million max used in retail games like with Metroid: Other M).
• Shaders: 24 TEV units^note While the Wii's hardware was technically fixed function, the TEV units were incredibly versatile and could be used to create effects similar to what could be achieved using the pixel shaders found in its competitors
• Output: Your options were composite, S-video, and component. The Wii notably lacked an HDMI port unlike its competitors, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which became a point of contention during the console's life cycle. Today HDMI adaptors for the Wii can be found online for under $25. This was the first Nintendo console with no support for RF Coaxial. The Wii introduced a different AV plug from its predecesors, so SNES/N64/GCN cables were not compatible.

Sound

• An ARM11 based chip running at 121.5 MHz.
• 128 24 bit ADPCM channels, 8 speakers (4 for the Dolby Pro Logic 2 set up and 4 for each Wii Remote).

Add-Ons and Expansions

• The Wii could support up to 16 controllers.
• Wii component cables are much easier to come across than their GameCube counterparts thanks to component video having become much more accessible these days, and the fact that the Multi AV port outputs standard analog video means that third-party component cables from companies like Nyko are not only possible, but also widely available (the GameCube's component cables plugged into the Digital AV port and thus required a proprietary DAC chip). Because of this, Wii-through-component serves as a much more affordable method for playing GameCube games in 480p, with the only caveat being the lack of Game Boy Player support and a slightly fuzzier picture (though the difference is trivial at worst and isn't too noticeable without a side-by-side comparison).
• Has 802.11b/g wireless LAN support.
• There are four GameCube controller ports and two memory card ports for backwards compatibility with GameCube games, as well as some Wii games that gave the option of more traditional control schemes. (Removed from the Wii Family Edition and subsequent releases.) Note that you will need a GameCube controller to play the games and a GameCube memory card if you want to save your progress, no Wii-specific peripherals will work (this includes the Classic Controller) while the console is in GC mode and games can't be saved to the Wii's internal flash memory.^note Basically once you boot a GC game the Wii becomes a GameCube and completely ignores the Wii parts of the hardware, to go back to playing Wii games - or even to change GC games - you have to either use the Wii Remote to turn the Wii off (which is at that point the only thing the Wii Remote can do) and back on or get up and hit the reset button. Outside of the controllers and memory cards most GameCube peripherals will not work the Wii, particularly anything that worked with the GC's expansion slot, like the Game Boy Player. A few Wii games can be played with a GameCube controller, and it will also work with nearly every Virtual Console game.
• There's two USB ports in the back. The only thing to use them officially is a USB to Ethernet adapter, Wii Speak, USB microphones, and keyboards.
• The Wii remote (often called "Wiimote" by fans)^note Never use the word "Wiimote" in front of a Nintendo employee, the company hated the nickname and forbade anyone from using it in their marketing supports a number of add-on accessories:
  • Nunchuck: An analog stick with two shoulder buttons, with the Nunchuck in your left hand and the Wii Remote in your right hand you almost have something resembling a normal controller. It also has accelerometers that can sense shaking and lateral movement. Required for many games and optional (but definitely recommended) for many others.
  • Classic Controller: Basically an SNES controller with two analog sticks, two extra shoulder buttons in between the usual L and R, and a home button added on. Mainly intended for Virtual Console games but is also compatible with some Wii games, mainly games ported from other consoles, and it generally makes those games much more playable than using motion controls. As noted above it is unfortunately not usable with GameCube games despite having more than enough buttons.
  • Wii MotionPlus: An small add-on that plugs into the bottom of the Wii Remote (and includes a passthrough for other accessories like the Nunchuck) that has sensors that greatly improve the accuracy of the motion controls, though it only has an effect on games that are specifically programmed to work with it, other games will just ignore it. Required for a handful of games, including The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. It was originally packed with the game Wii Play: Motion and later integrated into the Wii Remote itself. The MotionPlus was also packed with a rubber boot for the Wii Remote that makes it a bit more comfortable to hold, in addition to giving it a bit of padding to protect anything it's accidentally thrown at.
  • The plug on Wii Remote accessories is the same one used for the controllers on the NES and SNES Classic and those controllers will work on Virtual Console games (where applicable, the NES Classic controller obviously can't be used to play Nintendo 64 games), likewise the Classic Controller will work with the NES and SNES Classic.
  • A few games were packed with game-specific Wii Remote add-ons
  • Many, many shells for the controllers, ranging from sports equipment to toy guns. A few of these were included with games, for instance, Mario Kart Wii was packed with a free-floating plastic steering wheel that the Wii Remote clips into, though it's not required to play the game.

Games/Series that appeared on this console:

The Wii provides examples of:

• all lowercase letters: The face buttons on the Wii Classic Controller are written as a lowercase a, b, x, and y.
• Digital Avatar: Miis. Players can make a Mii in the Mii Channel, then use it in Wii Sports and other supported games. Nintendo later brought Miis to the 3DS, Wii U and Switch. Microsoft and Sony played Follow the Leader with their own avatar tools, though Sony would quickly abandon them.
• Follow the Leader: The Wii's runaway success caused the development of things the PlayStation Move and the Xbox Kinect. Neither saw much success, though the PlayStation Move controllers would gain new life in the following generation thanks to virtual reality becoming a viable gaming market, while Microsoft would repurpose the Kinect outside of gaming as part of various mixed reality projects such as HoloLens.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: The cat in the Photo Channel explains how to use the B button to scroll, but has no idea where to find this B button. (It's on the back of the Wii remote.)
• Never Trust a Trailer: Most of the adverts for the Wii showed players standing up while using the console, to help emphasize the active nature of using the motion controls. While this would become the defining image of the system in gaming culture (for better or worse), most of the games for the console — even the ones that utilized motion controls — didn't necessitate standing up to play them. In reality, you can easily use the motion controls in the vast majority of the system's library with just simple wrist and arm movements; especially after the Wii Motion Plus was introduced to make motion controls even more accurate. Outside Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Just Dance, you'll rarely find a game that actually requires you to stand up while playing it.
• Save Scumming: Unlike later Nintendo consoles, the Wii's Virtual Console feature uses Suspend Saves as opposed to proper save states in order to prevent this trope.
• Shout-Out: In the Photo Channel, the Doodle feature makes two references to the SNES game Mario Paint. First, the "Undo all" button summons a rocket to erase all the doodles. The rocket looks and sounds different, but functions exactly like the rocket eraser in Mario Paint. Second, if one holds Down on the Control Pad and hits the eraser, it does undo or redo with the sound of Undodog from Mario Paint.
• Suspend Save: Virtual Console can suspend some games. It can suspend SNES games, but not N64 games. This feature is less useful than the save states in other emulators - including later Nintendo consoles - because it prevents Save Scumming.
• Trope Codifier: Popularized motion controls as a core control method in the video game industry; future gaming systems would incorporate gyroscopic sensors into their standard controllers, while the rise of virtual reality during the following decade would see those devices gain similar control setups to the Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
• Variable Mix: The Mii Channel music gets a backing beat when you are creating or editing a Mii. When viewing the Mii Parade, rhythmic marching sounds accompany it.