Random: No, Your Wii Isn't Going To Self-Destruct

Kept the controllers and games, but traded in my Wii back in 2014 when I got a Wii U. Seemed pointless to keep them both due to backwards compatibility, and sadly I'd made the (very very wrong) decision to sell my GameCube and all its games a few years prior.

Sad news indeed…

People believed Hard Drive??

I've seen a few people posting on fb saying they thought this was real. It's amazing these people know how to type if they believe a story like that 😅

Wait... this is fake? You mean I threw my Wii into that ravine for nothing?!

But it was on the Internet! It must be true!

Where do I even start with this..
You know what It's Just easier to call them stupid

So I have to destruct it myself? Well THANKS Nintendo........

Can you imagine if one, somewhere in the world, did catch fire?!

LMFAO 😐😐😐😐...... .... Fgjkig

I randomly found the article, I believed it before reading it.
Thought it was click-bait, Wii's will stop working or something like that (Can't trust Nintendo not to do that).

Also, I don't know if someone else had that (can't find any info on it on the internet), but we had a cheap knockoff of the wii that my dad brought. It's called the "wii wii" or "oui oui" don't remember, it was really fun...when we knew how to use it that is.

Edit: Found it! (Will send it to the family group chat). Really interesting that it was a N64 console with Wii controllers:

These people must be on something.
Probably smoking Wiid

Sorry but people who thought a computer game company would deliberately send out a self-destruct code to your old console (which the online does not work anymore) are not the people I want to know

There's being uninformed about the finer details of gaming and there's low comprehension of how technology works, but please don't tell me anyone genuinely believed a device will "burst into flames" and "melt" and "shoot parts across the room" 😟

@Bunkerneath My grandma makes fire pancakes though

I'm surprised they covered this in snopes. Wii really was a crossover if enough people saw it for them to debunk it.

Also, most gamers knew Hard Drive is a (often hilarious) joke.

I will test if my Wii can explode like nuclear bomb.

You've got to be joking. IT'S HARD DRIVE, how would anyone fall for this as soon as they read the article? Have our attention spans fallen to the point where a catchy title is all we need to get in an uproar?

Wait...

@Fizza
Except if inside your Wii have explosion pie like on Spongebob episode. 😆
Let's see. Oopss....

More people that believe everything they read on the internet. Hmm...my NES didn't blow up yet...

There's a voice that will say this Console will self destruct soon prepare for evacuation. Gullible people will believe anything lol

I was wondering how consumer electronics audiences could have mistaken Wii U for "just a new peripheral" in 2012, but I guess reading such posts about audience judgement ten years later gives me all the answers I need... and none I like.🙄

Who the hell actually believed this, to the point where this article had to be written?

I'm sure that the people who know about Hard Drive are a much smaller group than the people who own a Wii or know someone who owns a Wii.

The quote itself is obviously fake, but I bet it's been boiled down to "your Wii could explode" and that is what is going round. The fact that this is the one and only source is just indicative of the general lack of critical thinking

@JohnnyC Ah but Fire Emblem Radiant dawn requires the OG Wii to transfer information from a Gamecube memory card. That's the only reason my Wii hasn't been fully retired.

@TheStardustWarrior True but the hellscape we live in combined with how easily people believe anything they read in the internet… here we are 🙄

I'm sure nintendo would be thrilled to see that happen though.

Did anyone really believe that?

@Fizza lots of people were falling for this because GOOGLE was pushing the story out to everones news feed as fact, I thought the story was true for a brief moment because i've never even herd about Hard Drive, and when I went to the site there was no disclamer saying it was satire. Unless you went to the about page, which there also was no disclamer unless you read the discription and known that a real news site would not say it is VERY real.

I thought this would be about how the calendar ends soonish in 2035 or something. Which of course doesn't really mean anything bad will happen.

@JohnnyC I know how you feel. I made the wrong decision getting rid of my N64 to get the GC so I've kept everything GC onward.

As to the point of the article, anyone who believed the Wii would self-destruct has to be quite stupid. Seriously, how can anyone be dumb enough to fall for that?

Anyone seen Idiocracy? LOL

@BloodWolfe GC/PS2 was the last gen I sold consoles, aside from handhelds where I traded my PSP and Vita as they were on their last legs. Kept all my home consoles from PS3 onwards aside from the Wii, but I don't count that as I considered the Wii U as an upgrade given its backwards compatibility.

My fave bit of the comments in the orig article is everyone going on about litigation as the reason why this would never happen, not the fact that it's impossible* and is morally wrong
(*... I think? Could you set up a machine to overheat incredibly quickly by an update?)

People who believed this are so damn stupid clearly have no freaking idea how technology even works. So much so that I don't understand how so many of them managed to survive past their teenage years without getting themselves killed.

@Link-Hero
https://darwinawards.com/

Well when you're conditioned to believe that every business is fundamentally evil...

@Marioman02 Oh.... well that explains that then.

@FantasiaWHT
I would say that a sizable chunk of people view business as having the same morals, whether they are Shell or Nintendo. This is also reflected in politics, with the "all politicians are the same" ideology, which plays into the hands of those that wish to keep the status quo

“I’m sure you’ll understand” should be Nintendo’s new motto.

If you actually believe satirical news then you deserve to get a miserable life.

That's what YOU think. I've rigged my Wii with explosives set to go off the moment the eShop goes down.

Snopes: Debunking satire since 1754.

The Wii would need a rechargeable battery to self destruct.🙃

"Once we get this new Switch Sports game out, we really don’t want anyone enjoying a past version of it"

I'll see you all in 10 years when satire becomes reality.

I weep for humanity.

I know someone who came to me to ask about this because they thought it was real. I know a different person who believed that an entire local river and bay was to be drained to clean it up... because it was posted on a (satirical) "news" website. Critical thinking is an increasingly rare skill in modern times.

@TrainerRosa Why watch YouTube when you can read through the comments of stupid people on satire websites?

It's comedy gold! You've got the people who think it's real and say "WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS" and then you've got the "smart" people who say "ugh, fake news. People will believe anything on the internet nowadays." Amazing.

Witness the power of the human mind. One person says, and I quote, "If mines blow up. You giving me my money back for purchasing it in the first place." and then they proceed to advertise their TikTok and youtube. Ah, I've found someone smart, by the name of Jack Bob. "Bruh fake" is all they have to say about this dire situation. Then you have the researcher, someone who knows about fake news and researches things himself. "Is this real? I looked it up and no other sources are saying the same thing. I only see stuff for killing off the Wii u shop."

Absolutely incredible.

@lolwhatno That was a N64 clone?
Would be the first I've seen.
Though I know the Famicom has been cloned into the shape of almost every console known to mankind.

I'm honestly at disbelief that people actually fell for Hard Drive. They should know that this was the same website that said Nintendo was stopping it's Expansion Pack service.

@FantasiaWHT For me the most evil businesses are the ones in the video game industry. However there are some good companies.

I got to the third paragraph then realized it’s an Onion piece. I’m surprised people took it serious.

I saw that piece doing the rounds and recognized it as satire instantly. I don't know whether to be amused or sad that some actually thought Nintendo would cause Wiis to remotely self-destruct.

@SmashFan347
What, worse than Rio Tinto?

Next on Hard Drive Nintendo ninja's execute order 64.

I can't wait until this fad of satire news is over. It was funny for a bit with the Onion way back when. People who claim to believe these obvious fake headlines are just doing it for the engagements. It's this big circle for the smugly disingenuous and I'm sick of it.

Can confirm: I've seen multiple sites blindly report this as fact. Content regurgitation sites like The Guardian etc - you know the ones which Chrome loves to suggest whenever you open a new tab, but you would never visit on purpose.
Hard Drive certainly wrote a winner with this one.

Is it even legal for companies to blow up old consoles

What gets me is when people say "Ok but considering what nintendo usually does it could have been true!"

No, you're just stupid.

So obviously NOT true! 😂 The only people who would believe this Wii catching fire story, are those who also would think when Homer Simpson poured milk onto cereal, and the cereal caught fire, that that was based on a true historic event. 🤦‍♂️

@AW1Long - of course it is. It's in every EULA. Same for all laptops, servers, TVs and radios.

And people believed thissss why?

@Anti-Matter that's disgusting, I expected more from you. For shame 🤨

When i saw the name of the article i thought it would have been rumours similar that something akin to what happened with some psp batteries would happen with one of wii components.

There is definitely a big argument towards game preservation however i feel like in terms of satire the article mentioned did miss its mark somewhat.

@TheStardustWarrior The irony is it was both and you weren’t smart enough to realize it was either…😕

I remember hearing a similar story about PlayStation 3 having a kill switch inside that would go off when Sony programmed it to. I doubt even Nintendo would be arrogant enough to assume their fans would stick around after one of their systems self-destructed. Besides, think of the lawsuits over injuries and property damage that would likely occure from the system "melting and shooting parts all over across the room."

Satire is a good way of dealing with my feelings about the death of virtual console. While, planned obsolescence has always been a Nintendo policy, the flimsy, short living switch and subscription model takes it so far it makes me want to get an ugly looking steam deck and be done with it. I have such a love-hate relationship with Nintendo.

@KingMike Dude, I barely remember it. I said that just because of how the console looks like (it's a N64 side ways), otherwise I'm sorry but I have no idea how it plays.

@Moistnado,

The virtual console was discontinued because of poor sales, it's more of a core thing anyway, I loved both services on the Wii and Wii U, but the mass majority are just not that interested in older games, the official retro mini systems show this, although of course some state Nintendo did not make enough etc etc, these things like older consoles have to lose support at some point, but rather than be grateful these things have been supported as long as they have, people just complain they are not being kept alive forever.

Just like the online service, rather than be grateful it was free for years, people complain they now have to pay for the service, as if they have some god given right for Nintendo to never ever charge a penny/cent for it, it's perception of quality is moot, as this is very subjective and will differ wildly between person to person, but of course the people complaining about these services were also moaning when the online was free, and about the individual prices of games on the virtual console, and the fact they could not migrate the titles for free on the Wii/Wii U...

I know of a family's house that burned down because they had a Wii running 24/7 for ages.

That's okay. Our Wii (which we had since early 2007) was fried in August 2016 when our house was struck by lightning. By the time my brother managed to acquire another Wii while off at college, Nintendo had already shut down their online services for it, including the Wii Shop Channel.

Wasn't it the PS4 which was going to die when its internal clock battery died making them bricks?

@BloodyMurder Maybe, but my PS4 died after about 2 years.
Got the DarthVader one, I was sooooo pissed off!!

Nintendo‘s evil plan only failed, because the Wii consoles cannot download the Self Destruct Channel anymore.

@BloodyMurder yes, but Sony fixed that with a firmware update last year.

@Piyo Hahahaha

@Daniel36 - most consumer electronics would end up torching your house if left to run permanently. It's one of the main causes of house fires
https://safetymanagement.eku.edu/blog/10-most-common-causes-of-house-fires/
Fits into cat 1 and 3

@Caolan114 Awww.. that's not nice, Rimuru 😆

That's too bad :/

Common sense died when the Internet was born

@johnvboy are you writing a rather dry form of satire here?

@ROBLOGNICK probably be used as a weapon in the invasion of ukraine

@Moistnado,

No just stating the obvious, unless you feel Nintendo do not want to make money, and are losing out on millions because they refuse to keep the Virtual console and ancient e-Shops open.

Pretty much like all the internet business experts said they were going to lose loads of money by discontinuing the Mario 3D All Stars game, and the millions left clamoring to buy it were going to have to pay well over retail for a copy, but fast forward and you can still buy it retail and copies on e-bay pretty much sell for retail price too, in fact my copy has been on E-bay for weeks with no offers, and that's under retail price.

I think you are falling into the traditional trap on internet forums, by thinking you are in the majority rather than the minority.

@JustMonika I'm a bad slime

@johnvboy do you not remember the ratios of dislikes for the videos about the online service? I'm hardly a minority to dislike it, the dislikes broke world records.

When it comes to making money, they would make money by selling games, they really need to sell their old games, and make more new ones, proper games, with actual development time. A portable system that has a really inconvenient online verification for old roms is really dumb, you'd be better off syncing a joycon with your phone. The way to combat piracy is to provide convenience and value for money.

@Moistnado,

Numbers please, and what percentage is this of the 103 or so million Switch user base, we need some wider context before we suggest there is any substance to any of this.

@johnvboy https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/11/youtube-is-hiding-the-dislike-count-good-news-for-switch-onlines-video-team

@johnvboy https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/10/random-nintendos-switch-online-expansion-pack-trailer-is-now-its-most-disliked-youtube-video-ever

@Moistnado,

"So a huge percentage out of the internet minorities that never liked the original service, do not like the new expansion or it's price, what a genuine shocker.

101 K views out of 90 million or so Switch consoles, so who knows how many people are really up in arms, or how many multiple accounts etc, are involved."

My original comment on the second article you posted, my opinion has still not changed all that much, minorities who can be bothered to watch and dislike/like videos in the first place.

Hardly a fair reflection to the overall opinion of the online service, but of course there are really millions of dislikes as YouTube are hiding them all.

No wonder when you relay these types of things, or talk to people in general their eyes seem to glaze over.

@Caolan114 Well I hope the Great Sage gives you a good talking to then 😄

@Moistnado,

So this particular video has 1.6 million views, but lets say there was an online video with 8 million, then lets then assume that all the views are from individual accounts and watched by each person only once, and every one disliked it, that would still be minute compared to the overall Switch userbase.

So not sure how you are coming to the conclusion that the online service is universally disliked, could it not be the people that do not like it are simply shouting louder.

And of course a usual click bate article headline from Nintendo Life, no change there then.

@johnvboy such brilliant satire. Well done.

@Moistnado,

Yes refuse to consider Nintendo are not going to discontinue something if there was a huge profit in it, and stay in denial hoping for them to bring back a Virtual console service, and e-Shops that have been pretty much dead for years.

Perhaps Nintendo should just sack all their business advisors and count YouTube dislikes.

@TheStardustWarrior Wasn't believable? You have so much faith in people on the internet.

i love how a joke article can become a battleground. No wonder why everyone gives me the stink eye when i say im a nintendo fan, this is painful.

That's a relief 😅

~A week ago I posted that artical to reddit at r/casual Nintendo. I thought this was hilarious when I found it, then immediately posted it.