Why Does My Wii Remote Keep Turning Off? (Solved!)

The Nintendo Wii is a home gaming entertainment system that the company developed to release alongside competing gaming systems like the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PS3 from Sony.

Like many of the consoles Nintendo has developed over the years, the Wii is an excellent one to use with friends or family to have fun with cooperative or competitive gameplay.

The nature of the Wii remote keeps movement, excitement, and fun at the forefront of many of the titles that go along with the console. However, the wireless Wii remote may sometimes have trouble staying on and connected to the gaming system.

We’ll discuss why this might be so, some of the signs you can look for, and go over a couple of possible fixes that might work for you and get you back to enjoying the frantic, fun energy of the Wii system in no time.

Why Does My Wii Remote Keep Turning Off?

The Wii remote works on battery power to connect to and communicate with the console itself. That way, you can enjoy wireless connectivity without being constrained to a particular position relative to the Wii or distance away from it during gameplay.

While this is convenient, it also means that there can be times where the device does not actively communicate with the console. In such cases, you could find that your Wii remote is turning off in the middle of a game, seemingly for no obvious reason.

We can go over some of the most common causes here in order to help you identify a culprit.

1. It’s always a good idea to start with some of the more obvious possibilities first. Therefore, we recommend checking the state of the batteries in the Wii remote.

They could have just enough charge to stay on for a little while during a game, but they may not have enough juice to carry you through a whole gaming session.

2. Fortunately, Nintendo makes it easy to determine if a low battery is the likely cause of your woes. For one thing, many games in the Wii library will notify players that the console thinks the battery is getting low.

While not all of them will do this, you can check for a low battery using the electronic meter on the Wii remote itself.

3. You can use the ‘Sync’ button after removing the battery cover to check the level of your batteries.

Additionally, you can press ‘Home’ on any Wii remote synced already and go to ‘Wii Remote Settings’. This page will display the charge level of all remotes currently connected to the console. Four bars are indicative of a full charge.

Why Won’t My Wii Remote Turn On With New Batteries?

You’ve gone ahead and replaced the faulty or dead batteries in your Wii remote with fresh ones. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to fix your issue, and the remote still won’t turn on, or it doesn’t stay on when it does receive power. This means that there are a couple of other things we might need to check first.

1. If you have fresh batteries that still don’t seem to power the device, check to see if they are seated properly in the remote itself. They may not be connected firmly enough to the remote. If they aren’t stable, they may turn the remote on for a bit before dropping the connection, or they may not be able to make any connection at all. Remove and reseat the batteries to see if this clears things up.

2. Let’s assume that the batteries are fresh and making a good connection with the remote.

Even so, things still don’t turn on. This could mean that there is a bad connection between the remote’s power button and the motherboard. You may need to clean the contact plate in order to restore things.

3. To clean the plate, you can remove the cover from the Wii remote.

4. Once you’ve done this, brush the contact head for the power button with a clean, soft toothbrush.

5. Replace the cover plate to power up the Wii and see if it works.

If none of these options work, it could be an indication that there is a larger problem going on here. You may have a problem with the power button connectors being misaligned.

In more severe cases, the connections here might be fried entirely, particularly if you cannot get the remote to turn on at all.

Here, the best and most quickest solution could be to replace the Wii remote with a new one. If any of the connections are not working, it could be prohibitive to your time or costs to try to fix this sort of thing on your own.

We do stress that you should try at least the steps we’ve outlined above first to eliminate other possibilities.

Things that are not aligned properly, dirty, or otherwise not receiving a proper signal might be things that you can address on your own.

Once you know that you’ve tried everything that is reasonable, particularly given the equipment and expertise you have on hand, you might have to go for a new controller to deal with the issue.

What To Do if Wii Remote Keeps Disconnecting?

For this part, we will assume that your controller turns on and stays on for at least a few seconds. Unlike not turning on at all, there are different possibilities as to what is going on here.

You might still find that the batteries are either low in power or not seated properly, so we do recommend revisiting these fixes first. If they do not work, there are still other things you can try.

1. Try a cold reboot of the system by turning off the console for at least 30 seconds. We might also recommend that you remove the power cable entirely during this time, replacing it when you’re ready to turn the Wii back on.

2. It is possible that the battery terminals themselves are bent out of alignment or not working. This can happen if slightly larger batteries are shoved into the Wii remote, as there are slightly different standards between some manufacturers.

It is also possible that excessive movement during gameplay has caused the batteries to move against the terminals in this way.

3. There could be a problem with the wiring inside the remote. It wouldn’t be uncommon for Wii remotes to sustain some damage if you accidentally drop them frequently during gameplay.

It may be possible to fix wiring that is out of alignment, but it could be that you’ll need a new remote, too.

Why Is My Wii Remote Blinking but Not Connecting?

If your Wii remote is blinking or flashing but not connecting to the console itself, usually shows a syncing or connectivity issue.

You know that the remote works thanks to it lighting up and trying to connect, but a full connection between the remote and the entertainment console is never established.

This is problematic, but we can at least be sure that there is not likely to be any serious issue between the two devices. There are a few ways that you might troubleshoot a syncing issue:

1. Although it might seem simple, there is a preferred way to sync the Wii remote with the console. You need to press the button on the remote briefly, then press the button on the console briefly. If done properly, things should sync up after a few seconds.

2. We mention this here because it is in contrast to how some other devices sync up with each other. Most times, other devices will require you to press and hold one or more buttons for several seconds at a time. It appears that doing this with the Wii could result in improper syncing.

3. If syncing truly cannot be the cause of the blinking, there could be a problem with the sensors that allow the devices to communicate. In such cases, they may not be able to find each other properly due to damaged sensors. Try a different Wii remote to see if this might be the issue.

4. If no Wii remotes are working despite using the recommended syncing methods, it could be an issue with the console rather than the remote.

You might try syncing the remotes of friends or acquaintances just to see if no remotes whatsoever can talk to the Wii.

If so, there could be some trouble in the console that is preventing it from receiving the appropriate signals. In such cases, some professional servicing may be in order.

Conclusion

For fun, interactive gameplay at home, it is hard to beat the Wii console from Nintendo. The way that you can play the games means that there is a lot of potential for entertainment in an interactive way just by going solo.

Furthermore, many of the games have cooperative gameplay in mind, and you can get into the spirit of party games with friends and family, each of them sporting a Wii remote. If one or more of the remotes do not work, you can try some of the fixes above to get the fun started again.