Nintendo Wii

By the mid-2000s Nintendo had watched two straight console generations slip behind Sony and Microsoft, and it responded not by chasing raw power but by changing the question. Codenamed Revolution, the Wii was deliberately modest inside, roughly a doubled-up GameCube, so that Nintendo could sell it cheaply and profitably from day one. Its radical idea sat in the player's hand: the Wii Remote, a wand studded with an accelerometer and infrared pointer that let you bowl, fence, and swing by moving your whole arm.

The gamble detonated into a mainstream phenomenon. Bundled with Wii Sports, the console became a fixture in living rooms, dorms, retirement homes, and physical-therapy clinics, reaching people who had never touched a controller. For long stretches it was impossible to find in stores, and it ultimately sold over 100 million units, comfortably beating the more powerful Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Beyond the party pieces, the library ran deep. Super Mario Galaxy reinvented 3D platforming with gravity-bending genius, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword pushed the pointer into swordplay, and Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl became social mainstays. The friendly Mii avatars and the WiiWare and Virtual Console shops nudged Nintendo, hesitantly, into the online age.

The Wii's weaknesses were the flip side of its strengths. Standard-definition output looked dated beside HD rivals, third-party support was patchy as publishers struggled to fit blockbusters onto weaker hardware, and shovelware flooded the casual space its success created. Many buyers played Wii Sports for a season and let the console gather dust.

Still, its legacy is enormous. Motion control forced Sony and Microsoft into their own answers, the Move and Kinect, and the idea that accessibility could beat spec sheets reshaped the industry's thinking. The Wii proved a console could win a generation by expanding who a gamer was, a lesson Nintendo would carry, in inverted form, into the Switch.