Nintendo Wii
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After losing most of their market share to Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo decided to find a completely different way of playing games than it's competitors.
The result was the Wii, which had small remote shaped controller that contained motion controls, the machine had a very strong showing at the 1994 CES show, where the President and Shigeru Miyamoto played Wii Sports to a delighted crowd, who watched them swing the novel Wii Mote to control the action on screen.
The machine was an instant hit, even people who never or rarely played games could now have fun with video games, everyone from the young to people in care homes could enjoy the simple gameplay of the packaged Wii Sports which came with every single machine.
A second controller called the nunchuck could be plugged into the Wii Mote for use in more complicated games, it added an analogue stick and two more fire buttons.
A year or so after the Wii's launch it had become the fastest selling machine of all time, even with Nintendo seemingly suffering their usual stock 'shortages'
The original Wii Mote could be less than accurate, so to tie in with the launch of Wii Sports resort, the Wii Mote Plus was brought to market.
Nintendo released some classic games for the Wii such as the Super Mario Galaxy games, unfortunately it is known as a machine with a high rate of shovel ware on it, as third party publishers were not willing to port their top games from the PS3 and Xbox 360, as the actual hardware of the Wii was not especially powerful, but at least other companies had returned to Nintendo after the barren years of the N64 and Gamecube.
Some great software did come from third parties such as the Boom Blox Titles, and was also supported well by Capcom who released various Resident Evil titles and Zak and Wiki, a puzzle adventure well suited to the machine.
The machine did not change much through its long life, finally being discontinued in 2012, a cheaper version with many key features missing was released as the Wii Mini in 2011, but was not at market for long, its main problem was it did not have internet capabilities, restricting it to physical media.
Boxed with controller. Manufacturer: Nintendo Magazines RELATED to Nintendo Wii in our Library
This exhibit has a reference ID of CH35256. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History. |
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