The Nintendo Wii launched in North America on November 19, 2006, then in Japan on December 2 and Europe on December 8. It was Nintendo’s fifth home console and the follow-up to the GameCube. Codenamed Revolution, it did not chase raw power against the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Satoru Iwata aimed it at a wider living-room audience. The wireless Wii Remote pointed at the Sensor Bar, tracked motion, and made the TV feel like a shared toy. Early units played GameCube discs and used GameCube controllers. It was Nintendo’s first home console with built-in Wi-Fi, plus the Wii Shop Channel and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
The pack-in Wii Sports became the machine’s calling card. First-party sequels kept the core audience: Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Wii Fit and Wii Play pulled in households that had never owned a console. Mario Kart Wii is the best-selling stand-alone title, at about 37.3 million.
Lifetime shipments reached 101.63 million. That made the Wii the best-selling console of its generation and Nintendo’s second-best home machine until the Switch passed it. Production of the original model ended in October 2013. The Wii U followed in 2012 and failed to recapture the same crowd. Microsoft and Sony answered with Kinect and PlayStation Move. The Wii remains the console that treated motion as the product, not a footnote.
Wii Technical Specifications
| Component | Specification |
|---|---|
| CPU | IBM Broadway (PowerPC) @ 729 MHz |
| Graphics | ATI Hollywood @ 243 MHz (includes 3 MB eDRAM) |
| Resolution | 480i / 576i; 480p via component |
| Sound | Stereo; Dolby Pro Logic II |
| Media | 12 cm Wii optical disc; 8 cm GameCube disc (early models) |
| Memory | 24 MB 1T-SRAM + 64 MB GDDR3 (88 MB total) |
| Storage | 512 MB internal NAND; SD card; GameCube Memory Card |
| Controllers | Wii Remote (Plus), Nunchuk, Classic Controller, GameCube pad |
| Online | Wi-Fi 802.11b/g; Bluetooth 2.0; Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection |
| Release Date | November 19, 2006 (NA); December 2, 2006 (JP); December 8, 2006 (EU) |
| Units Sold | 101.63 million |