Wii Remote

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The Wii Remote is the Wii's primary controller. Many development revisions of it exist, and its development history is one of the most well-known parts of the Wii's overall development history, starting out as a project separate from the Wii itself.

Overall Development History

Nintendo begun experimenting with motion-based controllers in the late 1990s, including a watch-like controller for the Nintendo 64, however they did not ship any of these devices to third-party developers until 2000 when they shipped an early prototype motion controller to Factor 5, and possibly other development studio as well. When Nintendo finished development of the GameCube and decided to try the "blue ocean strategy" for their next console, the next console project was originally separate from the motion controller project, which was still planned to be a GameCube peripheral.

At this point, Nintendo contacted a third-party company known as Gyration to further develop the technology. Gyration had initially proposed their motion technology to Nintendo independently, and Nintendo was interested while Sony and Microsoft were not. As such, Gyration and Nintendo heavily collaborated on creating a variety of motion controller prototypes, with the original goal of being able to roughly preserve the GameCube's button layout. Gyration ultimately pitched the "GyroPod" concept to Nintendo, a break-away controller somewhat similar to the Nintendo Switch JoyCons. This concept was pitched in around 2003, and was ultimately developed into the Wii Remote as the new controller and new console projects merged.

By the end of 2004, the controller's wand shape and Nunchuk were finalized.