The Wii at 20: How Nintendo Won by Refusing to Fight

In April 2006, Nintendo revealed the name of its next console, and much of the internet laughed. After years of being called Revolution, it would be the Wii. Fans mocked it, some developers preferred the old name, and Nintendo of America's Reggie Fils-Aime found himself defending a word that sounded like a joke. Nintendo's explanation was simple: it sounds like "we", and the console was for everyone.

Seven months later, on November 19, 2006, the Wii launched in North America at $249.99. It went on to sell 101.63 million units. Next week, it turns 20. Here is how Nintendo built one of the best-selling consoles ever by deliberately losing the race everyone else was running.

The race Nintendo chose not to run

By the mid-2000s, the console business had become an arms race. Sony and Microsoft were preparing the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, machines built around high-definition graphics and powerful processors, with prices to match. Nintendo, coming off the GameCube, which had trailed both the PS2 and the Xbox, had a choice to make.

President Satoru Iwata decided not to compete on power at all. Instead of chasing more polygons, Nintendo would chase new players: people who had never played games, or who had stopped. The strategy is often described as a "blue ocean" approach, from the business idea of creating a new market rather than fighting rivals in a crowded one, the "red ocean". Iwata unveiled the Revolution codename at E3 2004.

The hardware reflected that choice. The Wii used an IBM Broadway processor at 729 MHz and an ATI Hollywood graphics chip at 243 MHz, both evolutions of the GameCube's design, with 88 MB of memory in total. It did not output high-definition video. On paper it was a generation behind its rivals.

The remote that changed everything

What the Wii had instead was the Wii Remote. It looked like a TV remote, held in one hand, and it knew how you were moving it. An accelerometer tracked motion, and an infrared camera at the front tracked a Sensor Bar placed by the television, so the remote also worked as a pointer. Nintendo's work on it drew on motion-sensing patents from a company called Gyration.

For people who had found game controllers intimidating, this was a revelation. You swung the remote to swing a tennis racket. You pointed it at the screen to aim. There was nothing to learn.

There were teething problems. A class-action lawsuit in December 2006, barely weeks after launch, led to a recall of the original wrist straps, which were replaced with a stronger version. In October 2007, Nintendo started including a silicone Wii Remote Jacket, because enthusiastic players kept letting go of the remote mid-swing.

That tight global schedule mattered. The Wii reached every major market in time for the 2006 holidays, while the PS3 did not arrive in Europe and Australia until March 2007. For several crucial months, the cheaper, stranger console simply had the field to itself in many countries.

Wii Sports, the killer app nobody expected

The game that sold the Wii was the one in the box. Wii Sports was bundled with the console in most regions, except Japan and South Korea. It offered tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing, played with simple cartoon characters and almost no menus.

It became one of the best-selling video games ever made, with about 82.90 million copies. A huge part of that was the bundle, but the bundle worked because the game was the best possible demonstration of what the remote could do. Family members who had never touched a controller bowled with each other at Christmas, and the game became a fixture of family gatherings.

Shortages and the Wii Fit phenomenon

Demand was so high that the Wii was hard to find for more than a year. Shortages lasted through 2007, and Nintendo increased production to about 2.4 million units a month in 2008 to catch up. Unlike its rivals, Nintendo was also making money on each console. A 2007 analyst estimate put its profit at about $13 per unit in Japan, $49 in the US and $74 in Europe, at a time when Sony was losing large sums on every PS3.

The second wave came with the Wii Balance Board, released alongside Wii Fit in December 2007. It was a platform you stood on that measured your weight and balance, turning yoga poses, step aerobics and ski jumps into games. Wii Fit reached audiences no console had reached before, and helped keep the Wii in the news well into its third year.

The long goodbye

Every craze fades. By the end of the decade, many of the new players the Wii had attracted were moving to smartphones and tablets, where simple, intuitive games were now everywhere. Nintendo cut the Wii's price to $199.99 in September 2009. Its successor arrived in 2012, and Wii production ended in October 2013.

Its online services faded more slowly. Virtual Console, which sold classic NES, Super NES and Nintendo 64 games, was a precursor of today's subscription retro libraries. Some WiiConnect24 channels shut down in June 2013, and the Wii Shop Channel closed in January 2019.

By the numbers

• 101.63 million: Wii consoles sold (as of March 31, 2016)
• $249.99: US launch price on November 19, 2006
• 82.90 million: copies of Wii Sports
• 37.38 million: copies of Mario Kart Wii
• 2.4 million: Wiis Nintendo was producing each month in 2008 to meet demand
• 729 MHz: speed of the Wii's Broadway processor

Why the Wii still matters

The Wii proved that a console did not have to be the most powerful machine on the market to win. That idea shaped everything Nintendo has done since. The Nintendo Switch, a portable console that is also a home console, came from the same instinct: change the way people play instead of matching rivals on specifications.

It also changed the industry's assumptions about who plays games. Families, older people and casual players were not a niche, they were a market far bigger than the traditional audience. Many of them later became smartphone players, but the Wii was where a lot of them first picked up a controller.

WGC's take: the motion-control craze faded, and the Wii's library has plenty of forgotten shovelware. But few consoles have created more memorable shared moments. Twenty years later, the image of a grandmother beating her grandchildren at virtual bowling is still one of gaming's best advertisements.

What to play next

Wii hardware is long discontinued, but the ideas live on. Switch Sports on the Nintendo Switch is the spiritual successor to Wii Sports, played with motion controls. Mario Kart World on Switch 2 carries on the family racing tradition of Mario Kart Wii, and many original Wii consoles still work today, often with a GameCube library to explore on the same machine.