Interesting Facts on the Nintendo Wii

Identification

• During development, the Nintendo Wii went by the code name "Revolution." Bright Hub reports that the Nintendo company nixed this name because it did not translate well in many languages, and opted instead for the name "Wii." Unlike previous Nintendo model names, the name Wii has no real meaning. The “ii” represents the two basic Wii accessories, the Nunchuk and the Wii Remote. The "ii" can also represent two people playing while standing next to each other.

Design

• Satoru Iwata, the president and CEO of the Nintendo Company, gave his design team one major guideline to follow. Says Mr. Iwata, “I stacked up a few DVD cases and said, "I’d like to make it about this size!" Instead of relying on one sole designer for this design, as the company had done for every other hardware model produced, Nintendo assembled a design group consisting of a lot of their younger designers, who worked together to create the final Wii model.

Function

• When designing a piece of hardware, engineers usually try to make hardware that is faster than its competition. When designing the Wii, however, the engineers had a different task. They were told to design a piece of hardware that could be left on for at least 24 hours. To achieve this, the engineers created chips that were smaller in size and gave off less energy, thus allowing the Wii to be left on for the required period of time.

Features

• The Wii remote, or Wiimote, started out as a two-handed motion-control sensor with a pointer in the center. This original design, called the "gunbai" (named after the fan that the referee holds down in sumo wrestling), was eventually nixed in favor of the one-handed, rod-shaped Wii remote with a pointer and sensors that can read over 200 signal exchanges per second.

Considerations

• When creating the game Wii Fit, the designers were faced with the challenge of how to make the game aware of the player&'s body. The design team achieved this feat with the creation of the Wii balance board, which reads the body&'s position and can tell if the body is swaying or not. Originally circular in design, the board&'s shape changed into an octagon before the team settled on the rectangular shape.