Motion control sells a console to people who never bought one

What happened

Nintendo declined to compete on power. The Wii was only modestly stronger than the GameCube and did not output high definition, decisions that let it be cheap, small, quiet and profitable on every unit sold. The remote was the argument. Pointing it at the screen, swinging it, or turning it sideways to hold like a classic controller gave people a way in that did not require learning what two thumbsticks and a dozen buttons were for.

Wii Sports, included in the box, did the persuading. Five simple games demonstrated the controller in about a minute each, and they were played in retirement homes, hospitals, offices and family gatherings by people with no interest in the medium generally. Demand outstripped supply for well over a year. Shortages became a recurring holiday news story, and the console outsold its more powerful rivals through most of the generation. Nintendo's profits climbed to levels the company had not seen in years.

The weaknesses appeared later. Motion control was often imprecise, and a flood of cheaply made party collections traded on the novelty without much behind it. Many of the households that bought one played little after the first months, and the standard-definition output aged badly. Nintendo's attempt to repeat the trick with a successor failed outright, and the company did not find its footing again until it merged its handheld and console lines.

The world at the time

Both competitors were selling expensive high-definition machines at a loss and arguing about processing power. Nintendo had finished last in the previous generation and had already learned, from its dual-screen handheld, that accessible software could reach people the industry had written off. Television sets in most American homes were still standard definition.

What it changed

Microsoft and Sony both built motion-sensing hardware in response, with mixed results. Fitness and family software became a permanent commercial category. The broader idea, that a console can win by finding new players rather than by beating rivals on specifications, remains the strategy Nintendo returns to whenever it designs new hardware.