Nov 19th, 2007

While most celebrating their first birthday have achieved very little during the preceding year bar the production of a variety of venomous smells and a lot of drooling, the Wii has had a pretty eventful time.

With its radically new approach to control input (not to mention controversial attitude towards the console industry’s traditional generational horsepower boost), it was clear from the start thatthe machinewas going to be death or glory for the then-struggling Nintendo. Would its success follow on from the SNES and DS? Or would it just be another Virtual Boy? Everyone claimed to know, and all were equally vitriolicin their views.

One year on, it’s obvious that Nintendo’s risk has paid off. The company is back in a commanding position in the videogames industry, the like of which many felt it would never reach again back in the dark days of the Gamecube. Wiis are flying off the shelves and popping up all over the mainstream media, and publishers’ press releases are now packed with new concepts and buzzwords we’d never heard of eighteen months ago.

It’s been far from a flawlessly easy ride though, and not everyone’s a fan. Some remain resolutely anti-Wii, despite the console’s dominance, and there’s still bizarrely a faction heavily against what it sees as the format that ruined gaming. So one year on, just what has the Wii achieved? What has it changed and how much for the better? Read on and find out.