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What is the Nintendo Wii?

The Nintendo Wii is a family-friendly next-generation video game console from Nintendo, one of the original home gaming giants. It is the fifth installment of Nintendo’s home video game consoles, succeeding the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo Gamecube. Every Wii comes with Wii Sports, a 5-in-1 sports games title that includes tennis, golf, bowling, baseball and boxing.

The Wii currently competes against Microsoft’s XBOX 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3. Both of its competitors are significantly more powerful and more expensive. The Wii differentiates itself from its competitors by offering a more fun, family-friendly gaming experience, with the method of interaction being the main differentiation point, and the Wii’s raison d’tre. The Wii uses a proprietary controller lovingly called the Wiimote, which has motion-sensing abilities, thanks to embedded accelerometers as well as optical sensor technology. In addition to that, the Wiimote has a small built-in speaker for player-specific sounds, and a convenient on-off button for the console. It allows players to interact with the games with physical motion that sometimes resembles realistic movement, such as the swing of a tennis racket, the punch of a boxer or the strike of a sword.

Nintendo, in its advertisements claims that Wii and its games are easy for anyone to pick up and play, from toddlers to seniors, and to quite some extent, this is true. The Wiimote also has an accessory called the Nunchuk. It plugs into the bottom of the Wiimote, and when in use, the player would hold the Wiimote in one hand, and the Nunchuk in the other. It is not required for all games. Up to four Wiimotes can be connected for a fun, involved gaming experience, though only one Wiimote and one Nunchuck are included in the box. Additional Wiimotes and Nunchucks are sold separately.

Even though the Wii uses a DVD-ROM drive for its games, it currently cannot play DVD movies. It does however, have built-in Wi-Fi, which allows gamers to play games online, surf the Internet with the included Opera browser, and receive news and weather updates. No Ethernet port is included, but a Nintendo-branded USB Ethernet adapter is availabe at extra cost.

The Wii allows users to make a profile for themselves, called a Mii. The user can customize the look of their Mii to suit their tastes. While the Mii is also like a user account for remember game saves and accomplishments, some games actually allow the user to play as their Mii, such as Wii Sports. Using the WiiConnect24 feature, Miis can also be shared online.

WiiConnect24 is one of the features of the Wii that Nintendo touts. It is basically a feature that allows certain features of the Wii to function even in standby mode, and be accessible from other Wiis when enabled. It uses the Wi-Fi connection to do so, and uses the LED lighting of the DVD drive slot at the front to notify the user of e-mail, messages, or updated channel or game information. Other features that take advantage of WiiConnect24 are the News Channel, Everybody Votes Channel and Wii Shop Channel, where you can browse and buy not only Wii games, but also legacy games from previous consoles that have been reformatted for use with the Wii, such as Mario 64 (originally for the Nintendo 64 console). New channels are added on an ongoing basis.

One of the most controversial points about the Wii is that it was not specifically designed for use with HDTVs, as Microsoft’s XBOX 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 are. The Wii outputs at a resolution of 480i over the included composite cables, or at a maximum of 480p over the optional component cables, and no HDMI connection is possible. However, the Wii does have a widescreen mode for those with HDTVs. Nintendo says that it doesn’t feel that the majority of people have an HDTV, and so, they’ve designed the Wii for SDTVs, thereby also reducing the cost compared to its competitors.

The new wii device is said to be the true “next generation” Nintendo console, and far more than a simple refresh of the current hardware. Unlike previous console transitions from Nintendo, the new system will be presented as a true successor to the Wii, and is being dubbed by those that have seen the presentation as “Wii HD.” There is no indication if this will be its eventual name, but the nature of the transition has been characterized as similar to “the shift from Game Boy to Game Boy Advance,” where familiar, key elements were left intact while the core hardware was made more powerful.

Nintendo has proven it can be extremely successful by leveraging processor technology that is not on the bleeding edge, and be more profitable and more innovative as a result. In a 2006 interview with Business Week, Nintendo visionary Shigeru Miyamoto stated, “The consensus [at Nintendo] was that power isn’t everything for a console. Too many powerful consoles can’t coexist. It’s like having only ferocious dinosaurs. They might fight and hasten their own extinction.”