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.

[22] The company's game designer Shigeru Miyamoto said that, in the early stages, they decided they would not aim to compete on hardware power, and would instead prioritize new gameplay concepts.

[25] Takeda led the team building the console's hardware components, and Miyamoto spearheaded the development of a new type of controller, based on Gyration's motion-sensing technology.

[28] BBC News' technology editor Alfred Hermida wrote that Nintendo's struggle to match Sony and Microsoft in the home console market made success crucial.

Iwata demonstrated its motion sensing gameplay capabilities, and incorporated commentary from developers, such as Hideo Kojima and Yuji Horii, who had tested the controller and believed people would be drawn in by it.

[59] Nintendo had planned work with its localization partner iQue to release the Wii in China in 2008, but failed to meet the requirements to circumvent the ban on foreign-made consoles the Chinese government had put in place.

[73][74] On January 27, 2020, Nintendo announced that it will no longer repair any faulty Wii consoles in Japan starting on February 6 due to a scarcity of spare parts.

A later system update added the ability to launch Wii channels and play Virtual Console and WiiWare games directly from SD cards.

This gives the Wii Remote the ability to act as a pointing device like a computer mouse on the television screen, with an approximate range of 15 feet (4.6 m) for accurate detection.

[102][103][104] A number of third-party controller manufacturers developed their own lower-cost versions of the Wii Remote, though these generally were less accurate or lacked the sensitivity that Nintendo's unit had.

[111] One of Iwata's initiatives at Nintendo was focused on "quality of life" products, those that encouraged players to do other activities beyond simply sitting and playing video games as to promote physical wellbeing.

The use of motion controls in the Wii served part of this, but Nintendo developed additional accessories to give awareness of one's health as a lead-in for the company to break into the healthcare field.

[112] At E3 2009, Nintendo had presented a "Vitality Sensor" accessory that would be used to measure a player's pulse as a lead-in to a larger quality of life initiative, but this product was never released.

[114] A number of first- and third-party accessories were developed that the Wii Remote could be slotted into and then used in a more physical manner that took advantage of the accelerometer and gyroscopic functions of the controller.

[146] Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, released on both Nintendo DS and Wii, features connectivity in which both games can advance simultaneously.

[148] Third-party media apps were added to the Wii's online channels, typically offered as free downloads but requiring subscriber logins for paid services.

[164] Nintendo had also planned to release Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a launch title, but its director Masahiro Sakurai stated there were difficulties in adapting the format to the Wii's motion controls to require more time for the game's development.

Nintendo has received third-party support from companies such as Ubisoft, Sega, Square Enix, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Capcom, with more games being developed for Wii than for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

[195] Miyamoto originally defended Nintendo's decision to not include HD graphics in the Wii, stating that the number of HDTV's in people's homes at the time was "really not that high, yet.

"[196] In 2013, Miyamoto said in an interview with Japanese video game website 4Gamer that "Even for the Wii, no matter how much it made the system cost, it would have been great if it were HD in the first place.

[199] UK-based developer Free Radical Design stated that the Wii hardware lacks the power necessary to run the software it scheduled for release on other seventh-generation consoles.

Critics were disappointed in the lack of online play and backward compatibility with GameCube games,[202][204][205] and also believed the hardware was still rather quite large, being about half the size of the Wii;[202] Eurogamer's Richard Leadbetter thought the Wii Mini was not any more "living room friendly", as he believed the "bright red plastics make it stand out much more than the more neutral blacks and whites of existing model's casing."

[203] Nintendo Life reviewer Damien McFerran said that the lightweight design of the Wii Mini makes it feel "a little cheaper and less dependable" with empty space inside the shell.

[202] The Wii's success caught third-party developers by surprise due to constraints of the hardware's distinct limitations; this led to apologies for the quality of their early games.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Ubisoft's Yves Guillemot and Alain Corre admitted that they made a mistake in rushing out their launch titles, promising to take future projects more seriously.

[206] An executive for Frontline Studios stated that major publishers were wary of releasing exclusive titles for the Wii, due to the perception that third-party companies were not strongly supported by consumers.

The Nikkei Business Daily, a Japanese newspaper, claimed that companies were too nervous to start or continue making games for the console, some of which considering the Wii to be a fad that will eventually die down in popularity.

[209] Nintendo considered why this was the case was due to the fact that they "know the Wii's special characteristics better than anyone", and began developing the games for the console long before its release, giving them a head start.

The case was overturned in 2020, with the appellate court ruling that iLife's patents were too broad to cover the specific motion detection technologies developed by Nintendo.

[245] There were lawsuits against Nintendo claiming physical damage done by ineffective wrist straps on the Wii Remote when they slipped out of players' hands and broke television screens or windows.