Nintendo Wii (2006-2013) - History Of Console Gaming

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Summary

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii competed with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others. As of the first quarter of 2012, the Wii leads its generation over PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in worldwide sales, with more than 101 million units sold; in December 2009, the console broke the sales record for a single month in the United States.

The Wii introduced the Wii Remote controller, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and which detects movement in three dimensions. Another notable feature of the console is the now defunct WiiConnect24, which enabled it to receive messages and updates over the Internet while in standby mode. Like other seventh-generation consoles, it features a game download service, called “Virtual Console”, which features emulated games from past systems.

It succeeded the GameCube, and early models are fully backward-compatible with all GameCube games and most accessories. Nintendo first spoke of the console at the E3 2004 press conference and later unveiled it at E3 2005. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata revealed a prototype of the controller at the September 2005 Tokyo Game Show. At E3 2006, the console won the first of several awards. By December 8, 2006, it had completed its launch in the four key markets.

In late 2011, Nintendo released a reconfigured model, the “Wii Family Edition”, which lacks Nintendo GameCube compatibility; this model was not released in Japan. The Wii Mini, Nintendo’s first major console redesign since the compact SNES, succeeded the standard Wii model and was released first in Canada on December 7, 2012. The Wii Mini can only play Wii optical discs, as it omits GameCube compatibility and all networking capabilities; this model was not released in Japan, Australia, or New Zealand. The Wii’s successor, the Wii U, was released on November 18, 2012. On October 20, 2013, Nintendo confirmed it had discontinued production of the Wii in Japan and Europe, although the Wii Mini is still in production and available in Europe.

History

The console was conceived in 2001, as the Nintendo GameCube was first released. According to an interview with Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the concept involved focusing on a new form of player interaction. “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.”

In 2003, game engineers and designers were brought together to develop the concept further. By 2005 the controller interface had taken form, but a public showing at that year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was canceled. Miyamoto stated that the company “had some troubleshooting to do. So we decided not to reveal the controller and instead we displayed just the console.” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata later unveiled and demonstrated the Wii Remote at the September Tokyo Game Show.

The Nintendo DS is said to have influenced the Wii’s design. Designer Ken’ichiro Ashida noted, “We had the DS on our minds as we worked on the Wii. We thought about copying the DS’s touch-panel interface and even came up with a prototype.” The idea was eventually rejected because of the notion that the two gaming systems would be identical. Miyamoto also stated, “[…] if the DS had flopped, we might have taken the Wii back to the drawing board.” In June 2011 Nintendo unveiled the prototype of its successor to the Wii, to be known as Wii U.

Name

The console was known by the code name “Revolution” until April 27, 2006, immediately before E3.

Nintendo’s spelling of “Wii” (with two lower-case “i” characters) is intended to resemble two people standing side-by-side (representing players gathering together) and to represent the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. One reason the company has given for this name choice since the announcement is:

Wii sounds like ‘we’, which emphasizes that the console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion.

Some video game developers and members of the press stated that they preferred “Revolution” over “Wii”. Forbes expressed a fear “that the name would convey a continued sense of ‘kidiness’ to the console.” The BBC reported the day after the name was announced that “a long list of puerile jokes, based on the name,” had appeared on the Internet.

Nintendo of America’s Vice President of Corporate Affairs Perrin Kaplan defended the choice of “Wii” over “Revolution” and responded to critics of the name, stating “Live with it, sleep with it, eat with it, move along with it and hopefully they’ll arrive at the same place.” Nintendo of America’s president Reggie Fils-Aime acknowledged the initial reaction and further explained the change:

Revolution as a name is not ideal; it’s long, and in some cultures, it’s hard to pronounce. So we wanted something that was short, to the point, easy to pronounce, and distinctive. That’s how ‘Wii,’ as a console name, was created.

Nintendo has stated that the official plural form is “Wii systems” or “Wii consoles.” The Nintendo Style Guide refers to the console as “simply Wii, not Nintendo Wii”, making it the first home console Nintendo has marketed outside Japan without the company name in its trademark.

Launch

 

Wii retail display boxes

On September 14, 2006 Nintendo announced release information for Japan, North and South America, Oceania, Asia and Europe including dates, prices, and projected unit-distribution figures. It was announced that the majority of the 2006 shipments would be allotted to the Americas, and 33 titles would be available at its launch. The Wii was launched in the United States on November 19, 2006 for $249.99, and was later launched in the United Kingdom on December 8, 2006 for £179.  The United Kingdom experienced a widespread shortage of Wii units in many High-Street and online stores, and was unable to fulfill all pre-orders at its release. The Wii was launched in South Korea on April 26, 2008 and Taiwan on July 12, 2008.

Reception

The Wii has received generally positive reviews. The system was well received after its exhibition at E3 2006. At the event, Nintendo’s console won the Game Critics Awards for Best of Show and Best Hardware. In the December 2006 issue of Popular Science, the console was named a Grand Award Winner in home entertainment. Spike TV’s Video Games Award cited the Wii’s breakthrough technology. GameSpot chose the console as having the best hardware in its “Best and Worst 2006” awards. The system was also chosen as one of PC World magazine’s 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year. The console received a Golden Joystick for Innovation of the Year 2007 at the Golden Joystick Awards. In the category of Engineering & Technology for Creation and Implementation of Video Games and Platforms, Nintendo was awarded an Emmy Award for Game Controller Innovation by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 2009, IGN named the Wii the 10th greatest console of all time (out of 25).

The Wii’s success caught third-party developers by surprise, leading to apologies for the quality of their early games. In an interview with German news magazine 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.Take-Two Interactive, which released few games for the Nintendo GameCube, changed its stance towards Nintendo by placing a higher priority on the Wii.

At the same time, criticism of the Wii Remote and Wii hardware specifications has surfaced. Former GameSpot editor and Giantbomb.com founder Jeff Gerstmann stated that the controller’s speaker produces low-quality sound, while Factor 5 President Julian Eggebrecht criticized the hardware audio as substandard for a console of its generation. 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. Online connectivity of the Wii was also criticized; Matt Casamassina of IGN compared it to the “entirely unintuitive” service provided for the Nintendo DS.

Game designer and The Sims creator Will Wright shared his thoughts on the Wii in the context of the current console generation: “The only next gen system I’ve seen is the Wii – the PS3 and the Xbox 360 feel like better versions of the last, but pretty much the same game with incremental improvement. But the Wii feels like a major jump – not that the graphics are more powerful, but that it hits a completely different demographic.”

The Wii is seen as more physically demanding than other game consoles.  Some Wii players have experienced a form of tennis elbow, known as “Wiiitis”. A study published in the British Medical Journal stated that Wii players use more energy than they do playing sedentary computer games. While this energy increase may be beneficial to weight management, it was not an adequate replacement for regular exercise. A case study published in the American Physical Therapy Association’s journal, Physical Therapy, focused on use of the Wii for rehabilitation in a teenager with cerebral palsy. It is believed to be the first published research demonstrating physical-therapy benefits from use of the gaming system. Researchers say the system complements traditional techniques through use of simultaneous gaming rehabilitation  In May 2010 the American Heart Association (AHA) endorsed the Wii to encourage sedentary people to take the first step toward fitness. The AHA heart icon covers the console and two of its more-active games, Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort.

By 2008, two years after the Wii’s release, Nintendo acknowledged several limitations and challenges with the system (such as the perception that the system catered primarily to a “casual” audience and was unpopular among “core” gamers). Game designer Shigeru 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.

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. In his blog, 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 Wii landscape is bleak. Worse than it was on N64. Worse than on GameCube…the resulting third-party content is overwhelmingly bargain-bin trash.” The Globe and Mail and Forbes noted that the Wii had few successful third-party titles compared to its rivals (due, in part, to its weaker hardware). Third-party developers often skipped the Wii instead of making games for all three consoles simultaneously (“blockbusters like the Call of Duty franchise either never arrive on Nintendo hardware or show up in neutered form”). Forbes observed that of the most successful games of 2011 (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, Portal 2, L.A. Noire, Battlefield 3,Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3), although all were released for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, only Modern Warfare 3 received a Wii version which was also the least positively received port of the game. The lack of third-party games may be exacerbated in the future, as Nintendo faces the “dilemma of having fallen out of sync with its rivals in the console cycle”; Microsoft and Sony would design their consoles to be more powerful than the Wii U. Strong third-party titles are seen as a key sign of a gaming console’s health.

The Globe and Mail, in suggesting why Nintendo posted a record loss of $926 million for the initial six months of its 2011–2012 fiscal year, blamed the Wii’s design for being “short-sighted”. The Wii initially enjoyed phenomenal success because it was inexpensive (due to its being less sophisticated than its competitors) and introduced a “gaming gimmick”. However, this approach meant that the Wii’s hardware soon became outdated and could not keep up long-term (in contrast to more-advanced rivals such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which are expected to continue doing well in 2012–2013) “as both user desires and surrounding technologies evolved” later in the generation. Furthermore, price cuts and the introduction of motion-sensor controllers for the Xbox 360 and PS3 nullified advantages once held by the Wii. The Globe suggested that there were other reasons for Nintendo’s poor financial performance, including a strong yen and a tepid reception to the Nintendo 3DS handheld as mobile gaming becomes popular on smartphones and tablets (such as the iPad).

Sales

As of March 31, 2016, the Wii has sold 101.63 million consoles worldwide.

Since its launch, monthly sales numbers of the console have generally been higher than its competitors around the globe. According to the NPD Group, the Wii sold more units in the United States than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 combined in the first half of 2007. This lead is even larger in the Japanese market, where it currently leads in total sales (having outsold both consoles by factors of 2:1 to 6:1 nearly every week from its launch to November 2007). In Australia the Wii broke the record set by the Xbox 360 and became the fastest-selling game console in Australian history.

On September 12, 2007, the Financial Times reported that the Wii had surpassed the Xbox 360 (released a year earlier) and had become market leader in home-console sales for the current generation, based on sales figures from Enterbrain, NPD Group and GfK. This was the first time a Nintendo console led its generation in sales since the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

On July 11, 2007, Nintendo warned that the Wii would remain in short supply throughout that calendar year. In December, Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that Nintendo was producing approximately 1.8 million Wii consoles each month. Some UK stores still had a shortage of consoles in March 2007, demand still outpaced supply in the United States in June 2007, and the console was “selling out almost as quickly as it hits retail shelves” in Canada in April 2008. In October 2008 Nintendo announced that between October and December the Wii would have its North American supplies increased considerably from 2007 levels, while producing 2.4 million Wii units a month worldwide (compared to 1.6 million per month in 2007).

In the United States the Wii sold 10.9 million units by July 1, 2008, making it the leader in current-generation home console sales according to the NPD Group (and surpassing the Xbox 360).

In Japan the Wii surpassed the number of GameCube units sold by January 2008; it sold 7,526,821 units by December 2008, according to Enterbrain. According to the NPD Group the Wii surpassed the Xbox 360 to become the best-selling “next-generation” home video-game console in Canada (with 813,000 units sold by April 1, 2008), and was the best-selling home console for 13 of the previous 17 months. According to the NPD Group the Wii had sold a total of 1,060,000 units in Canada by August 2008, making it the first current-generation home console to surpass the million-unit mark in that country. In the United Kingdom the Wii leads in current-generation home-console sales with 4.9 million units sold as of January 3, 2009, according to GfK Chart-Track. On March 25, 2009 at the Game Developers Conference, Satoru Iwata said that worldwide shipments of Wii had reached 50 million.

While Microsoft and Sony have experienced losses producing their consoles in the hopes of making a long-term profit on software sales, Nintendo reportedly has optimized production costs to obtain a significant profit margin with each Wii unit sold. On September 17, 2007 the Financial Times reported that the direct profit per Wii sold may vary, from $13 in Japan to $49 in the United States and $79 in Europe. On December 2, 2008, Forbes reported that Nintendo made a $6 operating profit per Wii unit sold.

On September 23, 2009, Nintendo announced its first price reductions for the console. Nintendo sold more than three million Wii consoles in the U.S. in December 2009 (setting a regional record for the month and ending nine months of declining sales), due to the price cut and software releases such as New Super Mario Bros. Wii. On January 31, 2010 the Wii became the best-selling home video-game console produced by Nintendo, with sales of over 67 million units (surpassing those of the original Nintendo Entertainment System). Nintendo reported that on Black Friday 2011 over 500,000 Wii consoles were sold, making it the most successful Black Friday in company history.

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