What's All This About Wii's Exploding? The Hoax Explained

Around the turn of the new year, you may have seen a lot of chatter about Nintendo Wiis exploding as soon as the clock struck midnight on 2023.

Luckily, January 1st, 2023 came and went with no reports of Nintendo Wiis bursting into flames and spewing molten shards of Skyward Sword discs on pets and family members. But the year is young, and there are still technically 51 weeks for the old Nintendo console to suddenly become a shrapnel bomb in your home. Should you be worried?

Let's break down one of the more ridiculous hoaxes that dominated social media at the start of 2023.

What's This About Nintendo Wiis Exploding?

Let's get this out of the way: your old Nintendo Wii will not explode in 2023. Or if it somehow does, it's not by Nintendo's design.

On March 4th, satirical news site Hard Drive (an offshoot of The Hard Times) skewered Nintendo's tendency to phase out old hardware by posting an article claiming Nintendo had announced that any still-functioning Wiis, the company's 2007 home console, would burst into smithereens in 2023.

The article coincided with Nintendo's announcement that it would be pulling support and closing the e-shops of the Nintendo 3DS and the Nintendo Wii U, essentially dooming their owners to play only the games they already have on them until they die. The news added to the frustration of Nintendo's apparent habit of making it difficult to access their older content, forcing prospective players to buy their latest product, as well as often-maligned "ports."

Hard Drive's joke simply ratcheted up Nintendo's "planned obsolescence" model to an absurd degree, and almost everyone was able to get the joke. Almost.

Surprisingly, a few commenters seemed to take the article at face value and posted concerned tweets about the fates of their old Nintendo Wiis.

The confusion caused fact-checkers to write the equivalent of a facepalm, as both Snopes and Nintendo Life clarified that there are no plans in place to make Wiis self destruct in 2023.

The Resurgence

As 2023 approached, some remembered the comical confusion from earlier in the year and posted memes about preparing for their Wiis to explode (or posting disappointment that they didn't).

If this was your introduction to the bizarre inside joke spreading among Nintendo fans, this could be confusing, or maybe potentially concerning. Perhaps the jokes were an exaggeration of rumors about Wiis "bricking" or otherwise dying this year. Luckily, if your Wii still functions and is kept in good condition, there's no reason to think it will stop working in 2023. Though Nintendo has frustrated its consumers by pulling support from some popular old consoles, its hardware has proven surprisingly durable.

I should know: I've been trying to beat Wario's level in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins on a well-used, 1989 Game Boy and I suspect I'll be continuing to do so until the day I die.

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For more information, check out the Know Your Meme entry for Nintendo Wiis Exploding In 2023.