Wii Developers Talk About the Console

“Wii.”

This weird yet surprisingly catchy name has come a long way. You may note that among the next-gen consoles, it’s one that seems… out of place. When people talk about next-gen consoles, they think of mind-blowing power, oodles of memory and stupefying graphics.

But even though this console doesn’t focus on any of those things, you can’t simply dismiss that it’s not innovative. Actually, far from it. This motion-sensing console that ships with a funky controller may not be a monster computer, but it’s definitely something to watch out for.

And it’s something that the Nintendo bigwigs have planned all along. In an interview the guys behind the console reveal that the company wanted to take a direction that’s different. They said that consumers will always want more, and even if you present them with top-of-the-line console technology, they will always want something bigger and better.

See what the creators had to say after the jump.

“Wii.”

This weird yet surprisingly catchy name has come a long way. You may note that among the next-gen consoles, it’s one that seems… out of place. When people talk about next-gen consoles, they think of mind-blowing power, oodles of memory and stupefying graphics.

But even though this console doesn’t focus on any of those things, you can’t simply dismiss that it’s not innovative. Actually, far from it. This motion-sensing console that ships with a funky controller may not be a monster computer, but it’s definitely something to watch out for.

And it’s something that the Nintendo bigwigs have planned all along. In an interview the guys behind the console reveal that the company wanted to take a direction that’s different. They said that consumers will always want more, and even if you present them with top-of-the-line console technology, they will always want something bigger and better.

So instead of disappointing their customers, they decided to focus on areas that aren’t focused on that much. For example, they wanted to make the Wii’s power really low without sacrificing its performance, and that resulted to the Wii’s ability to be turned on for up to 24 hours without overheating.

Of course, they have been taking their target audience in mind all along. With the low power capacity feature comes the problem of the fan constantly running, sending irate mothers on a nagging spree on sleep and gaming addiction.

So to save us all the trouble, they decided that the fan shouldn’t spin at night. Of course, lots of problems arose with that proposed feature, but they were able to work their way around it in the end, such that the console itself won’t go up in smoke due to overheating problems.

But that’s just one of the many developments the Wii has introduced to the gaming realm. We can’t say enough how innovative the Nunchuk controller is, coupled with the motion-sensing technology. Then there’s its size (can you believe Iwata actually ordered it not to be larger than 2 or 3 stacked DVD cases?).

The bottom line is, although the Wii has ventured into an entirely different path from the other next-gen consoles, customer convenience has always been the sole factor in making the Wii just the way it is now. And hopefully, the customer himself will be able to enjoy that.