14millwiis.jpg

On November 19, 2006, the Nintendo Wii was launched in the United States and shortly after that, it was released to the rest of the world. Here we are 1 year later and the system has sold over 14 million units making for a fantastic start and a great first year for the console. The system is still sold out just about everywhere and is said to continue to sell out all through Christmas. A search on eBay has plenty of them (over 9000) listed for sale at a premium and unless you’re keen to standing in line this holiday season hoping to get one, you may have a very tough time finding one if you haven’t already.

If you do have a Wii, we would like to hear your story of how you attained yours and when. Did you get it at launch? Maybe you had to stand in line and wait or buy it from someone off Craigslist. What do you think of this first year for the Nintendo Wii lineup and hardware wise?

I remember when we got our Wii, it was right around launch and while I wanted one at launch, I wasn’t too up on waiting outside the local WalMart for over 12 hours to get one as we just had our baby boy who was a month old at this time. I waited a few days after the official launch and found out GameStop would be getting in a few systems at both of the two stores local to us. One of them is inside a mall and one of them outside. The outside one is more popular as it’s more visible and as we drove by, I noticed a line of about 20-30 people waiting. “Uggghh”, I said as we continued on to the mall location. We walked into the mall at 8:30 and made our way to the GameStop where we found a line of about 3 people. “!!!”, we were so excited to be #4 or 5 in line as this surely meant we would get one. We thought the store opened at 9:00 as the employees were starting to roll in, but in fact it didn’t open until 10 and they were sticking to that. More people started filling out the line behind us and an employee came out to tell us they had 6 systems in and that was it. Some people left, others were hopeful our credit cards wouldn’t work I suppose and hung around. At 10, they opened up, we slowly made our way in and sure enough, picked up our Wii system with huge smiles on our faces! We picked up an extra nunchuk and remote and drove back home to get it on with some Wii Sports.

Overall I would say the first year has been fantastic with a very strong launch system that has had very few hardware issues that weren’t resolved very quickly in the customer’s favor. Software wise, we’ve got Wii Sports of course which shows off how much fun you can have with even the most simple of games, Zelda: Twilight Princess (which I still have yet to finish), Paper Mario, Mario Strikers with online play, Wario Ware, ExciteTruck, Metroid Prime 3 which appeals to the gamer looking for a more complex FPS style game, and only the best game in the world: Super Mario Galaxy. The Wii Zapper also just came out which is going to bring even more fun to the table at a very affordable price point with plenty of rail shooters already out and just around the corner.

This holiday season should be very exciting for the Nintendo Wii and I predict sales to be very high, much higher than the other consoles which I am sure will do well also. So yeah, make a comment and let us know when you got your Wii and the story behind it. Do you have any crazy TV breaking stories to share (remember all that hubbub)? Surprised by any non-gamer friends or family that enjoyed the system more than you thought they would? Speak up and congrats once again to Nintendo and the Wii!