Nintendo's 'Wii' Just A Marketing Gimmick?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Sunday April 30, 2006 @05:49AM 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.'"

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Wii - Japanese CAN pronunce this by anocow · 2006-04-30 19:57 · Score: 0, Redundant

OK lets get the myth out of the way - Japanese CAN pronunce Wii the way you're supposed to. Yes although there is no specific "sound" to pronunce Wii in Japanese, but they can use the hiragana 'U' in combination with a small 'i' to make this sound. As strange as it may sound to us English speaking folks, the word 'virus' is pronunced as "Ui-rusu", which begins the same way as you would pronunce 'Wii' in Japanese. So lets stop saying Nintendo is shooting themselves in the foot with Wii cos "Japanese can't even pronunce it" - that's just not true.