Nintendo has always been an odd company. Its foray into the seventh generation console war shows it.

I recently came across a Nintendo Wii for $15 at my local thrift store. Why was it $15 dollars? Well it looks like this.

Though it looks like it was hit by one of its own Wii-motes and knocked into someones dinner multiple times it still seams to work!

Out of the Seventh Generation consoles,(The X-box 360, the Playstation 3 and the Wii) the Wii sold the most. Though it also was the least powerful console by a long shot.

The Nintendo Wii had the single core processor “Broadway” running at 729 Mhz. While the X-box 360 had a three core processor running at 3.6 Ghz.

If my math is correct the X-Box 360 was on paper 237% more powerful in the cpu performance than the Wii. This power imbalance continues to many other parts of the product as well.

The Wii could not output HD video, and its storage could only be upgraded by SD cards, while other consoles used larger Hard Drives for storage.

While lacking the “power” to run graphically intense games the Wii was for normal people. Let me rephrase that while the X-box and Playstation 3 was focused on selling to capital G “Gamers” the Wii was marketed to parents and families. It was marketed to those who have never and would never get a game console normally.

it (the Wii) had to be appealing to mothers

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo Magic: Winning the Video Game Wars

The Wii was the smallest console produced at the time, it made very little noise compared to the competition. The price was $250 while the x-box cost $400 and the PS3 cost $600.

The Wii also had a unique and simplified control set up. While the X-Box controller had 13 physical buttons, much of the Wii Remote’s 8 buttons were not used in normal gameplay. Instead the motions of the Wii remote covered much of the input spectrum.

In my personal experience most games used the Wii Remote’s A button and trigger, as well as the analog stick in the nunchuck. This made it easier for anyone to pickup and know instinctively how to use it.

The motion controls were a hit, who would have guessed that physically moving to make your character move the same exact way would increase immersion. (Sarcasm)

The Nintendo Wii offered such a novel and, dare I say, fun control method that everyone in the industry copied it and did it worse and with less support.

Go look up what people thought about the X-box Kinect and Playstation move. The newer generation consoles do not have these motion controls add ons.

The additional hardware almost cost as much as the entire Nintendo Wii, and surprise, surprise has a smaller game library of motion controlled games.

The Nintendo Wii could have fought an uphill battle trying to make a more powerful console, but it would be at a cost of it being louder, more expensive and larger.

Instead they miniturised and diversified their older console. The Game Cube. Using not only the motion controls to differentiate, but also backwards compatibility with Game Cube games. Which was easy as the hardware in the Wii was just a refinement of the Game Cube’s Gekko Chip.

While everyone was upgrading their consoles, the Nintendo Wii side-graded. Then made a game system and games more approachable for more people.

The Wii is an interesting piece of hardware, and it shows that you don’t always need to be the best but sometimes just do something different well.