Wii revolutionized the gaming industry and it even had a motion-sensitive controller to make games feel more immersive. It was released by Nintendo in 2006 and was discontinued in 2013. More than 100 million people have experienced playing with this console at some point or another. With such popularity comes a great deal of interest from gamers, as well as from game developing companies, such as Sony, who got inspired by its unique (for that era) features.
Wii was first released in the United States and then in Japan, Australia, and Europe. Nintendo made a very clever promotion, which cost millions and included legendary phrases like "Wii would like to play". The first Wii revelations were made at Nintendo's E3 in 2004, codenamed "Revolution". The reason behind the name is quite clear: Nintendo was ready to compete with Sony and Microsoft (who are legends when it comes to home consoles), bringing a revolution with its upcoming console, the Wii.
However, during the development of the Wii, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata suggested that they try not to compete with the two colossuses through better graphics and power, but through the approach of a wider target audience. Basically, they wanted to lure in new players. And so it was, as the Wii (mainly through Wii Sports) became popular with all ages, as well as people who had never tried gaming before!
Technical Features
The Console
Nintendo focused on the software instead of customized components, in order to make it cheaper and, consequently, more affordable by the player.
The console's central processing unit is an IBM PowerPC-based processor, named Broadway (size: 90nm), with a clock frequency of 729 MHz.
The Wii's GPU is a system on a chip produced by ATI and named Hollywood; the core processor runs at 243 MHz, 3 MB of texture memory, digital signal processors, and input/output functions. The memory of the console equals a total of 88 MB of memory for the console.
The Wii's motherboard has a WiFi adapter that supports IEEE 802.11 b/g modes, and a Bluetooth antenna that communicates with its controllers.
Wii includes 512 MB of internal flash memory for storing saved games and downloaded content from the Wii channels. The console has two USB ports and four ports for GameCubecontrollers and a GameCube memory card (there is backward compatibility between these two consoles)
The Wii Remote
The Wii Remote is the original Wii's controller. It contains a MEMS-based three-dimension accelerometer, along with 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. The infrared detectors are used to track emissions from LEDs in the included Sensor Bar, which is placed just above or below the television display, to track the relative orientation of the Wii Remote towards the screen. This gives the Wii Remote the ability to act as a pointing device and a computer mouse on the television screen, with an approximate 15 feet (4.6 m) range for accurate detection. Up to four Wii Remotes could connect wirelessly to a Wii, with LED lights on each remote indicating which controller number the Remote had connected as. The remote works with batteries.
Discontinuation
Wii was discontinued in 2013 in order to make room for its successor, Wii U. However, games for the console continue to be sold to this day, while many companies continue to support their new releases for the Wii (as happened with Just Dance 2020).
