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:And one Xbox to rule them all....

[SScorpio]

The Playstation brand has been keeping Sony afloat for a few years now. Unless they really mess up the PS3 in some way expect it to be a success.

Nintendo while not number one has been having constent profit, and has had one quarter in company history that was not profitable. This was causing by the extra investments and the USD taking a dive in value. But over 100 years of profit looks good.

Microsoft while a rich company does not have limitless funding. Shareholders will eventually get upset with all the money being pissed away. While it remains to be seen what happens this generation, I'd be extremely suprised if Microsoft killed off both Sony and Nintendo. Hell it will be surprising if the Xbox360 turns a profit 1/2 through it's life cycle.

Yeah! The Good News!

[Shadow Wrought]

This is actually great news. See, every time Nintendo does something with a console, there is always one really stupid thing about it. With the wii (did I just really write that?) its the name that means that we can simply keep calling it the Revolution and it won't suck.

Kudos to Nintendo for getting their stupidity out of their sytem early, and in a manner which won't affect the machines performance.

Re:Oh Good Lord

[venicebeach]

It's WE, not WHY. At least get the jokes correct.

Seems to me one of the problems with this name is that it's not immediately clear how to pronounce it from the way it is written.

Re:That Said

[iapetus]

It may be a dumb name, but the majority of the population isn't going to instantly think "wee" and giggle

I dispute this claim.

Re:April 1st was 26 days ago

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

decade-old talent for self-destruction

????

I fail to see how nintendo can be talented at self-destruction if they've been doing it for a decade.

I mean, I have no inherent abilities at self-destruction, but give me free reign at Nintendo & I'll run the company into the ground in less then a month.

Re:Oh no.

[Guppy06]

I'd buy it even if it were called "OMG PONIES!"

Seriously though, if your buy/don't buy decision revolves around the name of the console (as opposed to the games, or even just shiney specs), then you're not the target audience. You don't broaden the game-buying audience by being all 1337, you instead make it approachable by people who are currently put off by exactly that kind of attitude.

If they were trying to be badass and edgy, they'd probably call it "Xbox" or something.

Why are you looking for validation of your masculinity in your video game purchases to begin with?

Re:First Pun!

[SetupWeasel]

what fucktard thought that custom optical discs would be a good idea?

The same fucktards that want to make pirating games difficult without breaking the game or your system.

Re:N Wii

[thatguywhoiam]

Call it the 'N Wii' instead of the 'Nintendo Wii' and it doesn't sound so bad.

Ennui (ennui): Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: "The servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about their masters" (John Barth).

Hmmmmmm.

Re:Terrible

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, Revolution sounds awesome. I mean, they were really taking that name to the max. We're looking at PowerGaming here, with a console that could only have been topped by the future Revolution: Xtreme.

Revolution was a cheesy name. It made sense from a code-word point of view, but as marketing goes, it was a word that brought to mind hype and pretty much nothing else. Microsoft had PowerPoint, to describe a presentation package. IBM was having difficulty with RISC in the 1980s and trying to get the message across that less is more: it finally decided to call its new architecture POWER. Apple couldn't figure out how to make a speed upgrade to the Airport 802.11 product look more interesting than... well, a speed bump. So it called it the Airport Extreme. Revolution was part of that genre. And just like all these names look ridiculous today, it'd have looked ridiculous too.

Is Wii better? Well, as people aren't generally referring to the Piss-Three or the Sex-box 360, I have to assume those who posted today thinking Wii is only going to be associated with Urine are probably wide of the mark.

It's not a bad word. It conveys fun ("Wheee!"), it also subtly highlights the new console's 802.11 features (WiFi), and the ads, using the anthromorphicized(sp) "i"s, look like they have potential. I think it's objectively better than "Revolution". Better names might exist, but this is a good one, and what it replaced was awful.

Still, I know people complaining that a certain operating system currently named after a wide view of the world should instead have been named after a cow, as it was originally. Some people are wierd...