Wii is a dumb name for a console

Friday, April 28, 2006 » gaming thought

I thought I'd wait a day to sound off1 on this Wii business, hoping that 24 hours would be enough for any knee-jerk cenophobia2 to subside. Sadly, it appears that Wii sounds just as dumb Friday morning as it did on Thursday.

It certainly fits in with Nintendo's Revolution and DS strategy of separating themselves from the crowd. There are already people praising the name because of its similarity to Google and iPod, but surely there are options out there that aren't as immediately alienating. After learning that Wii was in fact the new name for Revolution, my first thought wasn't, "What was wrong with Revolution?" but "How do I even say that?" Judging from the lines and lines of desperate justification on their site, Nintendo doesn't even seem entirely sold on it themselves. I'm also surprised that their reasoning doesn't mention the play on WiFi at all, which I originally thought was the only explanation of why they'd go with such a strange-looking arrangement of letters.

I'm going step out of the discussion here, though. I've been planning to pick up the console on day one almost since it was unveiled last year, and that's not about to change just because they've finally picked a name for it. I just hope Nintendo isn't shooting itself in the foot with a marketing campaign that's so out there.

1 I said "sound off" instead of "talk about," do I get my pro blogger badge now?
2 Thanks, Google!