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ed well for the Wii ’ s future .
How right they were . Initial sales figures for the system were staggering , with 600,000 units being moved in the first eight days of its release in America alone . Japan ’ s original shipment of 400,000 units proved to be insufficient , with the Wii selling out across the country . In the UK , it quickly came to hold the record for the fastest-selling games console in the region ’ s history .
Indeed , it seemed that almost everyone and their mother owned a Wii by the end of the year , and it ’ s not difficult to see why ; adverts for the console really played up the easily accessible , fitness-boosting aspects of titles such as Wii Sports , and though this went some way
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to turning off gamers more interested in the likes of Call of Duty , it
did the trick : consumers bit , and bit hard .
Above everything else , the Wii was cheap , far cheaper than the alternative consoles – a reduction Nintendo could afford owing to the system ’ s lower processing power – and it wasn ’ t unheard of for some families to own more than one . Make no mistake , Nintendo had struck gold . White , matte , waggle-controlled gold .
But , naturally , it didn ’ t last . Once the initial excitement of waving a makeshift golf club / baseball bat / sword around had faded , casual punters found themselves faced with a games library which , outside of the numerous sports titles they ’ d by this point already gotten sick of , had little to cater to their interests . Principally , this was because
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many indie developers , labouring under the misguided assumption that the huge casual
install base for the Wii would translate into commercial success for their niche games , had saturated the market with experimental new IPs .
In some cases , this resulted in some beautifully creative titles , such as de Blob and Zack and Wiki : Quest for Barbaros ’ Treasure , but sadly a few too many third parties seized the opportunity , as well as the fact that the Wii was relatively simple to develop for , to put out awful shovelware like Ninjabread Man for next to nothing . Nintendo attempted to rekindle interest among the casual crowd in subsequent years with the likes of Wii Music and Wii Sports Resort , but it was too little , too late – the damage was done .
Many users , deeming the console to now be nothing more than a vehicle for shallow , low effort cash-ins and
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hackneyed implementation of the Wii Remote , consigned their once-beloved Wiis to dusty cupboards in favour of HD systems , where most would remain for the duration of the seventh generation . Those who stuck around were generally Nintendo devotees , and it ’ s telling that from roughly 2008 onwards , first-party output appealing to a casual demographic had almost completely petered out , with a steady drip of more
conventional games like Mario Kart Wii – which did serve to recuperate public interest in the console for a good while – and The Legend of Zelda : Skyward Sword taking its place .
Regardless of who was actually playing the system by the time it was finally phased out , though , the Wii ’ s impact on modern gaming is undeniable . For a while , it was the console ; the console which set the standards up to which other
manufacturers were expected to live , resulting in the birth of such motion-based paraphernalia from Ninty ’ s rivals as the PlayStation Move ( in essence , a Wii Remote with a
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lightbulb stuck on top ) and the Kinect , both of which owe their existence entirely to the fact that Microsoft and Sony knew this bandwagon was a bandwagon worth jumping on .
Perhaps most importantly , it restored Nintendo to ruler of the roost in a time where they needed it most , paving the way for their
continued relevance today ; the impending Switch and destinedto-be classics such as Zelda : Breath of the Wild are only going to continue this trend and likely wouldn ’ t be happening were it not for the success of the Wii .
In the end , even though its total dominance was short-lived , the Wii ’ s legacy was not . Giving us brilliant gems like Super Mario Galaxy , totally reshaping the accepted mould of what it meant to be a gaming system , as well as drawing in a crowd otherwise uninterested in the format were only some of the breakthroughs
Nintendo ’ s diminutive powerhouse accomplished , and for that we owe it a proud place amid the pantheon of gaming greats .
Thanks for everything , Wii . You did good .
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