It was released on November 19, , in North America, and in December for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, following the GameCube , and is a seventh-generation console alongside Microsoft 's Xbox and Sony 's PlayStation 3. In developing the Wii, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata directed the company to avoid competing with Microsoft and Sony on computational graphics and power and instead to target a broader demographic of players through novel gameplay.
Game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda led the console's development under the codename Revolution. The primary controller for the Wii is the Wii Remote , a wireless controller with both motion sensing and traditional controls which can be used as a pointing device towards the television screen or for gesture recognition.
The Wii was Nintendo's first home console to directly support Internet connectivity, supporting both online games and for digital distribution of games and media applications through the Wii Shop Channel.
The Wii also supports wireless connectivity with the Nintendo DS handheld console for selected games. Initial Wii models included full backward compatibility support for GameCube games and most of the console's accessories. Later in its lifecycle, two lower-cost Wii models were produced: a revised model with the same design as the original Wii but without the GameCube compatibility features, and the Wii Mini, a compact, budget redesign of the Wii which further removed several features, including online connectivity and SD card storage.
Because of Nintendo's reduced focus on computational power, the Wii and its games were less expensive to produce than its competitors. The Wii was extremely popular at launch, causing the system to be in short supply in some markets. Within a year of launch, the Wii became the best-selling seventh-generation console as well as a social phenomenon in many countries. Total lifetime sales of the Wii had reached over million units, making it Nintendo's best-selling home console until it was surpassed by the Nintendo Switch in The Wii repositioned Nintendo as a key player in the video game console marketplace.
