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Nintendo's 'Wii' Just A Marketing Gimmick?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the doesn't-seem-their-style dept.

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.'"

3 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. The New Coke by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As hard as I find it to believe, I'm not against the idea that this is another "New Coke".

    Did Nintendo do this just to get more support when they bring back "Coke Classic" (i.e. Revolution or another better name)?

    Even if this IS the name, they certainly got quite a lot of press over it.

    I still don't really like it. I'll buy the system, don't get me wrong. They could call it "Magic Happy Leprosy Spreading Bad Smell Maker" and I'd buy it. But I think Revolution was such a perfect name. It was catchy, yet differentiated the console perfectly.

    DS was just a code name and they said they would change the name, until they said DS was the final name.

    Is this all a stunt? Who knows. We'll find out when the system actually launches.

    That said, I'm getting used to the name. Maybe it's like Game Cube and I'll come to like it.

    That said the blurb mentions that "wii" is not a sound in the Japanese language (which I've heard elsewhere). I've heard that "revolution" is similarly unpronounceable because it also contains sounds not in Japanese. Is that true?

    They could always call it Revolution here and the Japanese word for Revolution there (like the NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Genesis/MegaDrive and a few others had different names).

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  2. Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it... by hunterx11 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "Wi" is not a phoneme in modern Japanese. The reason the hiragana for it is no longer used is that "wi" became "i" in all positions in Japanese. Although "ui" can be phonetically realized as a diphthong, phonemically it is still two morae.

    Put in a different perspective, voiceless "l" occurs phonetically in English, but English-speakers would probably find the name "Hlii" a bit awkward.

    --
    English is easier said than done.
  3. Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it... by Haeleth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Put in a different perspective, voiceless "l" occurs phonetically in English, but English-speakers would probably find the name "Hlii" a bit awkward.

    That's a better example than you may realise, given that (like /wi/ in Japanese) initial /hl/ is a cluster that was perfectly ordinary in Old English, but has fallen out of use.

    In the case of English /hl/, the change was to /l/: Old English hlaford becomes Modern English lord.