What Game Console Is Most Like The Wii?
What Game Console Is Most Like The Wii?
In 2006, Nintendo released the Wii and took the world by storm. The success was based on the “blue ocean strategy” that Nintendo popularized by creating an experience unlike anything else available that didn’t complete on graphical power. Nintendo’s gamble paid off and likely you bought one because the Wii ended up selling over 101 million units.
You have never had so much fun bowling and playing baseball with family on Thanksgiving indoors but something happened along the way and you stopped gaming. With all the extra time that you have been spending indoors lately, you might be wondering if you should get back into gaming again, but you’re not sure where to start. If you want to get the definitive answer on what video game system is closest to the Wii then you have come to the right place.
The best way to figure out what console is closest to the Wii is to figure out what made the Wii so popular in the first place. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one thing that made the Wii a runway success but instead a collection of assets that propelled the Nintendo system to rarified air for gaming consoles, even by Nintendo's standards. In the history of video games, only six systems have managed to sell over 100 million. Narrowing things down, there are five factors that made the Wii a winner including size, price, focus on exercise, excellent library of games, and obviously, its motion based functionality.
Does Size Matter?
No one wants to have a huge piece of gaming equipment that takes up all the room in the entertainment unit. Even worse, if the console is too big, it won't fit in an entertainment unit and is forced to become a huge eye sore near the TV.
The Wii is about 6 inches tall and long but only about 2.5 inches wide. The Wii only weighed around 2.7 pounds which did allow for easy transportation to friends, or for family gatherings. The PS4 is about twice as big, in terms of area, at around 12 inches by 12 inches, has a height of 2 inches and over double the weight at over 6 pounds.
As expected, if you have ever held or seen an Xbox One, it’s huge, measuring slightly bigger than the PS4 in size and weighing in at seven pounds which is almost three times the weight of the Wii. The PS5 and Xbox Series X are even bigger. The most comparable system in terms of size is the Nintendo Switch, which is about 4 inches tall by about 9 wide and about half an inch deep giving it a very small surface area and an insanely low weight of .9 pounds.
Is Nintendo Worth It?
An easy way to convince casual gamers or even non gamers to purchase your system is to make the barrier to entry as painless as possible. Pricing is usually the biggest barrier for potential buyers. Most people can justify spending around $200-$300.
The Wii launched at $249 in 2006, which works out to around $310 dollars when you factor in inflation. The PS4 at launch was $399 and the Xbox One was $499 which put these consoles well above a similar range. Nintendo’s hybrid once again has the most in common console because the Switch launched in 2017 at $299 which would technically make it cheaper than the Wii.
If you like Nintendo, check out the article on what might happen in 2021 with the 35th Anniversary of Zelda and Metroid.
Nintendo Fitness
Everyone wants to be healthy and exercise but not many people actually enjoy it. What the Wii did was make staying active fun or at least tried to by making it a game. Everyone was a potential consumer because everyone knows how to swing a bat or a tennis racket.
The pack in of Wii Sports easily helped that game sell almost 90 million copies, making it one of best selling games of all time, but the Wii didn’t stop there with its exercise centric games. Exercise games became a major focus for the Wii, including other peripherals such as the Wii-Motion Plus and The Wii Balance Board.
The only real comparable for companies that are committed to exercise gaming peripherals is still Nintendo. Xbox tried their hand with the Kinect but once that failed to gain market share, the games stopped and as we know production shut down. PlayStation does offer some pretty great games that will get you sweating like Beat Saber, but as we will talk about soon, that involves the whole PSVR commitment.
This brings us full circle back to Nintendo with games like Ring Fit Adventure. The Ring Con and the leg strap each hold one of the Joy Cons and make exercising fun as you try to defeat Drago, the body building dragon with all types of exercises including yoga as well. The game is truly a lot of fun and it’s easy to see why it became in such high demand in early 2020 as supply couldn’t keep up with demand.
Wii Motion
There are certainly ways that you can incorporate motion controls on systems like the Xbox One and the PS4 but both aren’t greatly supported. For the Xbox One, you would have to purchase a secondhand Kinect 2.0 to take advantage of a small handful of games, as Microsoft abandoned support and halted production for the peripheral back in 2018.
Is PSVR worth it?
As for the PlayStation, there is better argument for offering a similar gaming experience that isn’t based around a standard controller. PSVR, PlayStation’s attempt at virtual reality and arguably the most successful consumer VR unit.
Virtual Reality is still very much in its infancy because of this many people experience motion sickness, especially if we are discussing the Wii demographic who wouldn’t be considered hardcore gamers. The other major problem with PSVR is the cost and ease of entry, both of which are high.
First you will first need to buy a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, then you will need buy the PSVR kit, hopefully you can find the bundle that comes with the move wands to fully experience something along the lines of the Wii-mote and the Nunchuck. Purchasing this would put you around $1000 which is well out of the comparable range.
The Switch is basically a tablet, which in 2020 everyone knows how to use whether you are 1 or 100 years old. One HDMI cable and one power cable and you are ready to play motion gaming with the Joy-Cons that remove extremely easily and give the ability for two player gaming right out of the box. The Joy-Cons are the evolution of what the Wii started with motion controls, gyroscopes and IR almost fifteen years ago. You don’t even need to connect a light bar.
What Are The Best Nintendo Wii Games?
Figuring out what system most resembles the Wii means looking at the top selling games and seeing what people were playing. Six out of the top ten selling games for the Wii are focused around either exercise or using motion as a key pillar for controlling the game. On top of the major focus for exercise or motion centric titles, the Wii also featured classic IP that included recognizable titles or characters including Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong and Metroid.
There would have been many easy ways to incorporate exercise into Ring Fit without spending all the research and development costs on the Ring Con but its this commitment that makes it feel like much more than just an afterthought. The technology that the Ring Con uses makes it much more than a cheap piece of inanimate plastic that most exercise peripherals are made of.
Along with great way to exercise on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo also has the massive benefit of having a stable of extremely valuable IP on their platforms. This instantly gives the Nintendo Switch the instant recognition to everyone as most people have heard of Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong, all three characters that are already on the Switch.
The Boring Answer
There is no competition when it comes to the best casual gaming system that also incorporates all of the factors that made the Wii a runaway success other than the Nintendo Switch. As much as I wanted it to be a closer competition or a glamorous answer, it’s clear that Nintendo is the only company committed to experiences like this.
If you or someone you love would like to get into games casually and would also like the benefit of staying fit then Nintendo Switch is the console that is most like the Wii, there is even bowling on Clubhouse 51, similar to Wii Sports.
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