Author Topic: A Revolution in China? (Read 8831 times)

Bloodworth · « **on:** May 05, 2006, 06:39:09 PM »

So, on the way home I had a thought (not quite developed enough to be a theory). I may have come up with one good reason for the name change – China. Nintendo has been priming the market for the past several years with the iQue, GBA, and I think even the DS, but hasn’t quite entered the market with a current-level home console. Now, let’s say they choose to have their next console take that step – is the Chinese government going to look kindly on “Revolution”? Wii on the other hand (meaning “we”) actually has a somewhat communist ring to it. Call me crazy, but Nintendo may be thinking of more untapped markets than women and seniors.

mantidor · « **Reply #1 on:** May 05, 2006, 06:41:23 PM »

ha! that makes a lot of sense, including the "we" sound, is very chinese, although Im not sure, Im not expert in chinese or anything.

Louieturkey · « **Reply #2 on:** May 05, 2006, 06:47:01 PM »

That is the funniest thing I've heard yet...and yet, it is one of the most feasible reasons for the name.

Caliban · « **Reply #3 on:** May 05, 2006, 06:54:50 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: mantidor
ha! that makes a lot of sense, including the "we" sound, is very chinese, although Im not sure, Im not expert in chinese or anything.

BlackNMild2k1 is an expert in chinese, he might tell us what it really means. Fa Kin Su Pah!

jasonditz · « **Reply #4 on:** May 05, 2006, 07:52:52 PM »

Since Chinese is a tonal language, it likely means more than one thing depending on how we say it. My Chinese is really awful, but I've never heard "Wii" used as a word.

Requiem · « **Reply #5 on:** May 05, 2006, 08:00:19 PM »

Jeez....

If that's true (very clever indeed) then good luck Nintendo.

China's CRAZY!

Then again, it does have the largest population of any country.

mantidor · « **Reply #6 on:** May 05, 2006, 08:02:02 PM »

is the DS called "DS" in China?

jasonditz · « **Reply #7 on:** May 05, 2006, 08:08:51 PM »

It is, but it's not called the Nintendo DS, it's the iQue DS.

wandering · « **Reply #8 on:** May 05, 2006, 09:57:35 PM »

Yeah, I've heard other people bring up the possibility. I agree it seems likely that it played a part in the decision... though Nintendo could just as easily have renamed the console in China alone....

Smash_Brother · « **Reply #9 on:** May 05, 2006, 10:10:15 PM »

What's to stop them from naming it "Wii" in China and something less ridiculous in English speaking countries?

KDR_11k · « **Reply #10 on:** May 05, 2006, 10:13:43 PM »

I thought communist dictatorships see the term "revolution" as positive because they use it as the justification for their power? As in "communist revolution"? I'm pretty sure some of them call dissidents "counter-revolutionaries".

But then again it's still stupid to call a product sold for profit anything reminescent of the communist revolution.

UncleBob · « **Reply #11 on:** May 06, 2006, 03:47:24 AM »

Nintendo has been stressing that they want to get into untapped markets.

China is *the* untapped Home Console Market of the world... Geeze, if like 0.001% of the Chinese population bought a Wii and ever single other person in every single other country bought one, China would still be the #1 Market...

KnowsNothing · « **Reply #12 on:** May 06, 2006, 05:05:50 AM »

Nah, go for India instead. Then you get the support of indie developers *rimshot*

Terranigma Freak · « **Reply #13 on:** May 06, 2006, 06:01:01 AM »

Fat chance the Rev will be released in China--at least not anytime soon. China is the land of bootleg. Did you know the Sega Genesis was THE system to own there because Sega isn't as hard on piracy as Nintendo? No one in China even knows what's an SNES, let along N64. Plus, most of the Chinese population don't know games like Zelda, Metroid, Pilotwings, Starfox, or even Kirby. These big name games mean nothing to them. But they'll gladly embrace garbage like Final Fantasy and the like. The Gamecube's not even in China, yet. The PSX/PS2 is all the rage because of it's ability to play bootleg. Of course now that Sony's using Blu-Ray, I don't know how it'll affect the market there. Or people might just go play more PC games instead.

UncleBob · « **Reply #14 on:** May 06, 2006, 06:05:12 AM »

You mean with all the Chinese bootlegs of GameBoy Advance games, no one bootlegs the Zelda, Metroid or Kirby titles?

Flames_of_chaos · « **Reply #15 on:** May 06, 2006, 06:12:40 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
I thought communist dictatorships see the term "revolution" as positive because they use it as the justification for their power? As in "communist revolution"? I'm pretty sure some of them call dissidents "counter-revolutionaries".

But then again it's still stupid to call a product sold for profit anything reminescent of the communist revolution.

Well KDR in China every Tom Clancy game Ubi Soft put out is banned in China if it has references of Communist China, Korea, and other neighboring countries that had communist roots in them. Also if nintendo kept the revolution name it won't please the Chinese government at all, because if you remember the Google incident in China. For those who don't know what that incident was: Google wanted to establish a business building in China, the chinese government allowed them to do so on one stimpulation which was; Google had to erase all the images of the Tiananmen square protest that had tanks in them. Google refused to remove those images so Google never set up camp in China.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #16 on:** May 06, 2006, 06:35:12 AM »

Uh, what? Last time I checked Google established google.cn that censors the search results appropriately for chinese users.

I don't think the word "revolution" is connected to Tiananmen square in China.

The much bigger problem with China is that you can forget about selling games that come on physical media there.

mantidor · « **Reply #17 on:** May 06, 2006, 08:23:39 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: UncleBob
You mean with all the Chinese bootlegs of GameBoy Advance games, no one bootlegs the Zelda, Metroid or Kirby titles?

Being latinamerica the adopted children of China regarding piracy I can confirm this. It was an enormous odissey for me to find Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission here, because most GBA games are their pirated chinese version with 10 GBA games and 100 NES games, and those 10 GBA games are never Metroid or Zelda.

Back in the famicom/NES days it was the same, thats why I came to know Zelda and Metroid only with the N64 and GC, for some reason those two franchises never got pirated to the level of Mario and thus were never popular.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #18 on:** May 06, 2006, 09:31:13 AM »

That's intersting because the first game on that ancient GB multicart I got is Super Mario Land 2.

BlackNMild2k1 · « **Reply #19 on:** May 06, 2006, 09:38:17 AM »

Quote
Originally posted by: Caliban
Quote
Originally posted by: mantidor
ha! that makes a lot of sense, including the "we" sound, is very chinese, although Im not sure, Im not expert in chinese or anything.
BlackNMild2k1 is an expert in chinese, he might tell us what it really means. Fa Kin Su Pah!

Learn Chinese in 3 minutes

Quote
Originally posted by: jasonditz
Since Chinese is a tonal language, it likely means more than one thing depending on how we say it. My Chinese is really awful, but I've never heard "Wii" used as a word.

Quote
Provided from link above:
17) That was stupid.......................So Fa Kin Wii Ta Did

Athrun Zala · « **Reply #20 on:** May 06, 2006, 01:32:30 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: mantidor
Quote
Originally posted by: UncleBob
You mean with all the Chinese bootlegs of GameBoy Advance games, no one bootlegs the Zelda, Metroid or Kirby titles?

Being latinamerica the adopted children of China regarding piracy I can confirm this. It was an enormous odissey for me to find Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission here, because most GBA games are their pirated chinese version with 10 GBA games and 100 NES games, and those 10 GBA games are never Metroid or Zelda.

Back in the famicom/NES days it was the same, thats why I came to know Zelda and Metroid only with the N64 and GC, for some reason those two franchises never got pirated to the level of Mario and thus were never popular.

I second that, after all, rampart piracy is why the PSX/PS2 are so popular here.....

Bloodworth · « **Reply #21 on:** May 06, 2006, 10:33:29 PM »

I love how everyone acts as if I didn't know piracy exists in China. Thanks.

That's obviously what made the entry of iQue and it's relative success such a big deal. If Nintendo has a plan for Wii that they think will work in China, it may be influencing decisions such as the name. And remember, officially, it's not the Nintendo Wii, it's just Wii, another element that would make sense in the Chinese marketplace where "iQue" has been the brand, not the obviously Japanese "Nintendo".

PaLaDiN · « **Reply #22 on:** May 06, 2006, 10:46:14 PM »

iQue Wii looks sort of like Icari.

But yeah, pretty interesting theory.

mantidor · « **Reply #23 on:** May 06, 2006, 11:21:29 PM »

oh yeah I was sure you knew about piracy in China, I was confirming that for some odd reason, in the early days of piracy with the Famicom/NES, Zelda and Metroid were almost never pirated and thus became unknown in the region ("That guy is a woman!?", I get that a lot around here when playing metroid, even among what we could call traditional gamers). Im sure that being Zelda the first cartridge with a battery backup made things difficult for pirates, but I have no idea why Metroid was also left behind.

jasonditz · « **Reply #24 on:** May 07, 2006, 05:59:10 AM »

Who cares about piracy? Either you sell some of them games and the rest pirate, or you don't sell any of them games and they all pirate.

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Author Topic: A Revolution in China? (Read 8831 times)