HACKING THE NINTENDO WII REMOTE

The global hacking community has collectively reverse-engineered a significant portion of one of the world’s most sophisticated and common input devices. And they’re putting it to uses its designers never intended.

In November 2006, Nintendo released its fifth home videogame console, the Nintendo Wii. The company’s previous game console, the Gamecube, hadn’t fared well in terms of market share against the much higher-powered alternatives released by its competitors, Microsoft and Sony. At first the Wii also seemed significantly underpowered relative to its competitors. However, one year later it became the market leader of its console generation, selling over 20 million units worldwide. 1 This success is largely attributable to the innovative interactive technology and game-play capabilities introduced by the console’s game controller, the Wii remote, shown in Figure 1.

The Nintendo Wii remote, or Wiimote, is a handheld device resembling a television remote, but in addition to buttons, it contains a 3-axis accelerometer, a high-resolution highspeed IR camera, a speaker, a vibration motor, and wireless Bluetooth connectivity. This technology makes the Wii remote one of the most sophisticated PC-compatible input devices available today; together with the game console’s market success, it’s also one of most common. At a suggested retail price of US$40, the Wii remote is an impressively cost-effective and capable platform for exploring interaction research. Software applications developed for it have the additional advantage of being readily usable by millions of individuals around the world who already own the hardware.

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