History
Development of a motion enabled controller began in 2001, coinciding with development of the Wii console. In that year, Nintendo licensed a number of motion-sensing patents from Gyration Inc., a company that produces wireless motion-sensing computer mice. Nintendo then commissioned Gyration Inc. to create a one-handed controller for it, which eventually developed the "Gyropod", a more traditional gamepad which allowed its right half to break away for motion-control. At this point, Gyration Inc. brought in a separate design firm Bridge Design to help pitch its concept to Nintendo. Under requirement to "roughly preserve the existing Game Cube button layout", it experimented with different forms "through sketches, models and interviewing various hardcore gamers". By "late 2004, early 2005", however, Nintendo had come up with the Wii Remote's less traditional "wand shape", and the design of the Nunchuk attachment. Nintendo had also decided upon using a motion sensor, infrared pointer, and the layout of the buttons, and by the end of 2005 the controller was ready for mass production.
During development of the Wii Remote, video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto brought in mobile phones and controllers for automotive navigation systems for inspiration, eventually producing a prototype that resembled a cell phone. Another design featured both an analog stick and a touchscreen, but Nintendo rejected the idea of a touchscreen on the controller, "since the portable console and living-room console would have been exactly the same". Coincidentally this idea was later implemented on the Wii U's GamePad controller.
Sources also indicate that the Wii Remote was originally in development as a controller for the Nintendo GameCube, rather than the Wii. Video game developer Factor 5 stated that during development of launch title Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, it had an early prototype of a motion-sensing controller. Video game journalist Matt Casamassina, from gaming website IGN, stated that he believed that Nintendo had planned to release the Wii Remote for the GameCube, noting that "Nintendo said that it hoped that GCN could enjoy a longer life cycle with the addition of top-secret peripherals that would forever enhance the gameplay experience." He suggested that Nintendo may have wanted to release the Wii Remote with a new system, instead of onto the GameCube, as " Revolution addresses one of the GameCube's biggest drawbacks, which is that it was/is perceived as a toy."
Read more about this topic: Wii Remote
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)