Nintendo Revolution Renamed 'Wii'

Retroneous writes "The Nintendo Revolution has had its name changed to the Nintendo Wii." Confirmation on the official Revolution site. Update: 04/27 16:32 GMT by Z : More information available from a Gamasutra article: "New details on the disc format have also been revealed: 'Instead of a tray, a single, innovative, self-loading media bay will play both 12-centimeter optical discs used for the new system as well as Nintendo GameCube discs. Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content.'"

Comments

Re:What about Japanese?

[Valdrax]

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that Japanese obsoleted the "wi" sound many years ago, and the most common way of making similar sounds in loan words and sound effects is to use the two characters "u-i" instead. As there are no suriving Japanese words that start with "wi," unless there's some ancient meaning that only a classical language scholar would recognize, this is just nothing but a sound effect word, like "Wheee!"

Oh. I just saw the bit about asking us to lie. Hmmm....

Yes, "wii" is the way that nobles in the Sendai region used to say "ii" or "good." The use of ancient Sendai dialect evokes images of both the area's Tanabata festival and the legendary samurai Date Masamune. It is the spirit of big, brightly pastel colored floats and badass, one-eyed, moon-helmetted warlords that Nintendo seeks to evoke.