Nintendo's 'Wii' Just A Marketing Gimmick?

An anonymous reader writes "Tom's Hardware has an editorial up on the Nintendo Wii in which the author postulates that the new name may be a bigger PR stunt than it looks. From the article: 'Saying Wii is controversial mainly in the English-speaking world (the Japanese can't even pronounce it); in France, for instance, it's a homonym for oui. But the upcoming E3 Expo plays mostly to an English-speaking crowd, even though it's an international event. It's just over a week to E3, where Sony fans will be all giddy and running around like they have a Blu-ray chasing their tails. Amid all this, Nintendo announces a name change which is not only interesting, but controversial. You can't not notice it. Essentially, Nintendo steals more than a wee bit of Sony's thunder.'"

Comments

And the last horse reaches the finish line

[Wind_Walker]

I knew the strange name was a PR stunt when it was on the front page of CNN.com the whole day of the announcement, followed shortly by postings on Fark and two posts here on Slashdot.

I don't think they're going to rename it again to get rid of the naysayers, but the timing of the announcement and the uniqueness of it was pretty clearly a PR ploy.

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

[Hogwash McFly]

The fact is that this is simply unacceptable to much of the gaming population because they wanted something edgier and cooler like "Nintendo Revolution Extreme 1080".

No, they didn't.

What about a regular, non-gimmicky, non-confusing name like the ones given to practically every other Nintendo system? Where would that fit into that false dichotomy of yours?

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

[KDR_11k]

If the name was any good this question wouldn't even arise.

Free PR

[9mm Censor]

If Nintendo said they were going to call the Wii say the Nintendo GameCube 2, would they have gotten near as much PR for the name? Lots of people know they name of nintendos new console, and Nintendo did little more than release a press release, it wasn't a multi million dollar ad campaign. genious!

Re:Free PR

[masklinn]

"Revolution" just sold among the geeks & gamers. Geeks and gamers aren't the market nintendo wants to create, it's not the segment they want to sell to, geeks&gamers already know, they know the controller, they know the console, some already know whether they'll buy it (if only at a second console next to an XBox360/PS3), most will know soon after it's release and won't base it on the name.

Revolution was good to market the console to the enthusiasts and the early adopters, but that's not the population N wants to reach now. What they want are the non gamers, the ones who like slick logos and funny names (iPod anyone?), the non gamers.

Plus the new name gives Nintendo and the Revo a unique spot among search engines. Google for "Revolution", see how many links are about the revo on page one. Now do the same with "Wii".

What's in a name?

[The-Bus]

Aside from the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, I don't think I remember there ever being a cool-sounding console or hand-held name. Nintendo 64? Dreamcast? Xbox... 360? PlayStation? Wonder... [i]Swan[/i]?

To me, all these names sounded ridiculous, and I know I'm not alone. We made fun of the 360's name but now it's pretty much accepted and any complaints about it have nothing to do with the name.

By July, at the latest, this will be a non-issue.

Hold on..

[EpochVII]

Look I didnt read thge article, but I read the post about it here on Slashdot. I lived with 5 guys from Thailand and they couldnt pronounce 'Will'. But they could pronouce the W, just not the ll'. In fact, it came out sounding like 'Wiww'. Even more W's!. Japanese people cant pronounce W's or E's? Its essentially 'Wee', right? Can they pronounce Wakizashi? So I dont get that.

And last time I checked, all names are marketing gimmicks. I thought we all walked around knowing that. Ive seen countless articles and comments about this. Mission accomplished, Nintendo. Your marketing guys probably deserve their exorbitant salaries now. I hope the console lives up to all the talk. Also, I dont know Japanese, but I believe I heard about some point pictograms have a relation to words in Japanese. That makes the Wii/Controller/Multiplayer concept somewhat Japanese in its thinking. I applaud them for an original name for a product as well, instead of the cheesy techno names like the Playstation or the XBox. What tired thinking.

Finally, how dumb an idea would it be to call a product the revolution if for whatever reason it ended up sucking? It would be an even bigger disaster.

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

[miyako]

IDNSJ (I Do Not Speak Japanese) but it seems unlikely that it would be true to say "the japanese can't pronounce it".
It seems more likely that they will use the same stylized logo and spelling (IIRC romanji is considered very stylish in japan anyway) and simply adjust the pronounciation to fit the local language.
In English speaking countries, it is "We"
In German speaking countries, "wie"
In French speaking countries, "oui"
..etc. It's actually quite clever because it is a word in each of those languages. A single name and logo, and one can get "Wii play together" or "Parole juste Wii" (just say yes) or "Wii wir umziehen, wii wir spielen" (how we move, how we play).
These are just theoretical ideas of course, but it nintendo were able to do find homonyms in other languages, it could create a globally recognized product name.