Nintendo Kills Production on Original Wii
The first motion controlled game console is no more.
Nintendo used two words to announce that the Wii, the game console that launched motion control systems in home gaming, will no longer be made. As reported on Kotaku, the official Japanese Wii website was updated to two simple words which in English mean “production ended.”
The Wii, despite being the butt of many jokes about destroying TVs and other furniture by overzealous gamers hurling wiimotes at them, was enough of a hit to force both competitors Microsoft and Sony to launch their own motion control systems, with varying degrees of success (does anyone actually use Play Station Move?) It seems that the Wii sold about 100 million units since it was launched in 2006, which feels like an eternity ago in gaming years.
According to coverage on CNet, Nintendo wil redouble its efforts to improve flagging sales in the new Wii U, which was supposed to make us all forget about the Wii. This is sort of like Microsoft not supplying Windows 7 to OEMs anymore once Windows 8 came out — they don’t care how much you like the previous model, you had better learn to love the new one.
At least there is a bright side in all of this for someone — the eBay gougers are going to start getting a premium price on unopened original Wii units. Hey, somebody’s gotta win.
