About this time 10 years ago, Nintendo started shipping dev kits of the Wii console to various third party developers — the console that put the company back on track after the failure of the GameCube.
As the picture shows, the original Wii dev kit looked nothing like the final, sleek design. It was a big, heavy box filled with the console hardware, but also various debugging hardware as well.
Nintendo also supplied a disc with the operating system software and tools for developers with the dev kit, which is seen below.
The Wii went on to sell over 101 million units worldwide, and spawned a successor, the Wii U, which was released in 2012. So far, the Wii U has sold just over 10 million units, less than 10% of Wii’s lifetime sales.
