The Wii is Nintendo's 5th home entertainment console and is a 7th generation console. It was released in North America on November 19th, 2006, for a price of $249.99. At launch, several games were available, such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Excite Truck and Wii Sports. Wii Sports, one Wii Remote, one Nunchuk, a set of AA batteries, and all necessary cables come packaged with the Wii. The consoles ended up being a massive success towards the general market of gaming due to it's ease of use, it is often associated with motion controls.
Overview[]
Hardware[]
The Wii has 512 MBs of storage, storage is taken by the system, game save data, channels, and other files. Since 512 megabytes aren't a lot of storage for games, they can be moved to the SD Card. Additionally, there is many accessories, the first one being the Nunchuk.
Software[]
The Wii's main software are apps called Channels, they take up slots in the home screen alongside digital original and retro games called WiiWare and Virtual Console. Channels, WiiWare games, and Virtual Consoles get to have their own spot in the Wii Menu. Wii disc games however also appear in the menu but in Disc Channel.
History[]
Conceived in 2001 as the GameCube was first seeing release, the concept involved focusing on a new form of player interaction. It was called "Revolution" until April 27, 2006, then called "Wii". This means it is the first home console Nintendo has marketed outside of Japan without the company name featured in its trademark. The Wii was launched on September 14, 2006, Nintendo announced release information for Japan, North and South America, Australia (Oceania), Asia, and Europe including release dates and prices. Nintendo announced that they would release their console in South Korea by the end of 2007. The Wii did not have much power in the graphics part and as a whole. The Wii has been marked by many people as a family friendly system with no "hard-core" market.
Trivia[]
- "Wiis" is a commonly used pluralization of the console; Nintendo has stated that the official plural form is "Wii systems" or "Wii consoles."
- "Wii" with two lower-case "i" characters meant to resemble two people standing side by side, representing players gathering together.
- The console was Nintendo's first home console to directly support internet connectivity
- This was also Mii's first console to be on.