List of Wii Hardware events

This is an under construction list of Wii Hardware events, or events that have occured on the board that affected it, short or long term.

E3 2007
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) Media and Business Summit was held July 11-13, 2007. Wii Fit was Nintendo's prime reveal, a controversial point among Wii Hardware members. Mario Kart Wii was officially revealed, as well as the Wii Zapper. Metroid Prime 3 was shown. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl were given release dates, although Brawl's changed twice. Reggie Fils-Aime's comment that Brawl would not be released "next year" or "next spring" has been widely ridiculed, as Brawl eventually was released "next year" and "next spring."

"September Surprise"
In an interview with G4 TechTV in August 2007, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime commented that Wii owners could expect a surprise by the end of September when asked when the fans would find their blue light on again. He stated that "a surprise is coming...by the end of September" in response to the interviewer's statement that no suprises had come from WiiConnect24. This started speculation as to what this "September Surprise" might be. However, fans were disappointed when September came and went without any new hardware updates or features. Some tried to rationalize this by bringing up the free Wii Remote jackets, and the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl's online mode, but because these had nothing to do with system updates, most people considered Reggie a liar. To this day, topics asking when the "September Surprise" is being revealed are a small fad on the board.

Action Replay brick
When Wii users updated to firmware update 3.0 in August 2007, most people were fine. However people who used the GameCube Action Replay/Freeloader were not. The firmware update in question disabled these products, as they were not officially licensed by Nintendo, and thus were not guaranteed to work with the hardware. Many people suspected that Nintendo was purposely trying to get rid of unlicensed software, which is possible, but more likely is that they were trying to disable mod chip install disks, which allow the user to play pirated games. Nevertheless, outrage ensued, and many board users became very angry at Nintendo.

Twilight Hack
During April 2008, a system exploit known as the "Twilight Hack" was discovered. It allows the user to run homebrew-unsigned software created by users-on the system, by finding a backdoor in the save file of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. However this split the Wii Hardware community on the legality and morality of such a hack, as the main use for Twilight Hack was emulation, which legally is theft. Some members who supported homebrew, but not piracy were torn on the issue. The trouble for the board got worse when a FAQ on the process of using the "Twilight Hack" was stickied, making its use even more widespread. Even worse for the board was the new finding in early May that "Twilight Hack" could be used to pirate WiiWare games. In July 2008, GameFAQs banned discussion of homebrew, prompting outcry from forum members.

Nintendo Power "Moon" surprise
At the end of the May 2008 issue of Nintendo Power Magazine, in the next issue preview section, a picture of a red moon was shown as being a hint about a top-secret new game. This, combined with other hints sprinkled throughout the magazine, sparked a flurry of speculation on the Wii Hardware board. Since the issue came out, there have been countless topics of people analyzing the moon picture to find hidden symbols in it. The magazine claims the game is third-party and for the Wii. The caption below the moon says "We may even have a surprise or two. Can you find the clues we've hidden in the moon?" The game was later revealed to be a new Castlevania for the DS. It was also revealed that there were actually no hidden clues in the moon, and that the writers had made that up.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts trailer
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is the upcoming third main installment in the Banjo-Kazooie franchise, to be released on the Xbox 360 in fall 2008. On May 13, 2008, a trailer for the game, which is developed by Nintendo's former second party Rare, was released. The trailer features an ending in which Banjo, flying a plane, destroys a statue of 8-bit Mario. The trailer caused a massive uproar on the Internet, with many accusing Rare of being immature about their former relationship with Nintendo and about the unrelated gameplay changes being made to the new game. Reception was generally negative regardless of the Mario scene. Wii Hardware users were polarized over whether the scene was a joke or a rude gesture to Nintendo, who many feel helped Rare get to where they are today. After about 10 hours on the site, the video was suddenly censored, with the Mario headshot being cut from the trailer. Rare has not commented on the trailer.

Wiki announcement
On May 19, 2008, Hulkpanda posted a link to this wiki before it was finished, unaware of who made it. Immediately, various trolls, most notably Kirbyfan, began vandalising the site, adding odd pictures to various pages and altering various users' information. Although most trolls got bored, Kirbyfan persisted, adding (outdated) spoilers and gay porn to BDS's page before finally being blocked.

Ubisoft controversy
At the Ubidays 2008 show in late May 2008, Ubisoft revealed its upcoming lineup of games across all platforms. However, despite the comment earlier in the year that Ubisoft would be producing games of "Nintendo-like quality", all that was revealed for the Wii were sub-par casual games, and a dated snowboarding game. This caused uproar on the official Ubisoft forums, causing a company rep to make comments to try to control the chaos, which only made things worse as he made comments that stated he didn't like the Wii, and its audience was only parents and kids. This spurred an email campaign against Ubisoft by a GameFAQs user DarkMuta, who produced an email for people to send en mass to official Nintendo magazines and various websites. Later on, the issue became worse as allegations surfaced that Ubisoft was in effect hiring viral marketers to troll the Wii, and defend Ubisoft's decisions. These allegations have not been proven. As of present several gaming news sources, like Kotaku and GoNintendo, have picked up the story. Rumors that gaming sites planned on DDoS hacking the Ubisoft forums are unsubstantiated.

Wii Hardware/Wii General merge
On June 9, 2008, all General boards for systems were deleted and the Hardware boards were simply renamed to the name of the console. Dozens of confused Wii General members came to the former Wii Hardware, and annoyance broke out between the two groups. The General members were annoyed that their small, close-knit community was gone, and the Hardware members were annoyed that the General members acted "above them" and treated them somewhat rudely. Wii General has since moved to another board since the merger and still remains active.

GameFAQs/Gamespot ToS merge
On July 7, 2008, a moderator posted on the PSP hardware board that GameFAQs would soon be adopting sister site Gamespot's terms of service, and that these new rules would ban discussion of homebrew and the Twilight Hack, a popular subject on the Wii, DS, and PSP boards. The outcry on those boards was evidenced by the fact that the topic BDS made announcing the changes reached a hundred posts in only a few hours, filled with outraged homebrew users attempting to explain why homebrew is not illegal. Social boards like Current Events were more concerned with rumors of other mergings with Gamespot, such as the social boards, or, in the most extreme cases, a full merge of GameFAQs and Gamespot. Later that day, SBAllen posted the updated terms of service, which, aside from the homebrew ban, also banned quoting a user without their permission and posting pictures of scantily clad women (a favorite past time of Current Events users).

E3 2008
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) Media and Business Summit was held July 15-17, 2008. The event became even more controversial than the previous year's because Nintendo had spent several months claiming that new titles for hardcore gamers would be revealed. However, at the actual conference, Nintendo spent most of their conference showing a casual game called Wii Music and describing a new peripheral called MotionPlus that makes the Wii Remote operate in 1:1 motion control, using the sequel to Wii Sports as an example. One game from an existing franchise, Animal Crossing: City Folk, was announced, but many on the forum were outraged at Nintendo's lack of announcements and hundreds of arguments erupted on the forum.

2008 Wii Hardware Presidential Election
''Main article: 2008 Wii Hardware Presidential Election

In August 2008, several users began running for the "office" of Wii Hardware president. BlackDoomShadow eventually won.

E3 2009
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) was held June 1-4, 2009. Unlike the previous two years, reception to the event was mostly positive. Nintendo announced and showed footage of the highly anticipated titles Metroid: Other M and Super Mario Galaxy 2, as well as New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Other games were also shown. Zelda Wii was reannounced at the conference by Miyamoto. The conference helped restore faith in the Wii's lineup on the forum.