Topic: EDITORIALS: Wii Will Get Over It, Won’t Wii?

[RickPowers]

Well, I don't think I'll do either, but thanks.  

[Kairon]

I don't see potty jokes, the name's hidden complexity, or it's unconventionalness as negatives. And I don't care that it can't be verbed, neither can Gamecube, and the ever-popular "Nintendo" was always a noun and never a verb itself.

All those aspects I actually appreciate. I love how the name can be used in language and how it can be played with. And I would like to point out that whereas Revolution uses a complex "r" sound (that I.. have a speech deficiency for...), the W sound in Wii is one of the simpler and earlier sounds humans learn (hence why, after mama and dada, the next thing of importance to name is what happens in baby's diaper). And for all this fear of whether people will pick this up, non-gamers need something significant to catch their attention long enough to have them try the console, and when the entire market has embraced names like tivo and pooh by now, I don't think any negative impacts will truly last.

But if there's any criticism of the name that I cannot deny, it is the double "i." I do agree that breaking the rules of english pronounciation might throw people into too much confusion for them to move beyond that stage, lol.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[18 Days]

Rick what you have to understand is that crap senses of humour and toilet humour beyond age 10 is exclusive to gamers. New gamers could not give a damn.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

The name Wii is both and handicap and a strength, a handicap because of the fact that its such an oddball name with some very off-color connotations (the number of urine jokes alone) and I can see why that would be a turnoff to many, On the other hand its name has brought about tons of free press, and alt hough much of it is negative, the fact is once you hear the name Wii its very hard not to remember, so in that way Nintendo has gained massive "mindshare" as a result of the name.

[trip1eX]

Well there's some holes in the editorial.  

YOu mention Google does fun things with their name, but you haven't given Wii a chance to do that yet.  The little teaser video did a kewl thing, but this is ground zero for the name.

I don't remember anyone being around when the names of the other products were announced?  Luckily those other companies you mentioned never had to release the name 6 months before their product was on the shelf.  You have to give the name some time.  E3 is going to make or break the console for the gaming media.  Not the name.  The marketing hasn't even started.  

Also you're comparing Wii to two very successful names in Tivo and Google.  Names that have been around for years.  Those names didn't mean anything when they were launched.  The product made the name not the other way around.  

YOu also  say the Wii name can't be a verb.  Well let me know what console name has ever become a verb.  None that I know of.  WE never said let's Genesis that.  Let's 360 this game.  Or let's NES this game.  WE've never said any of that.   So that's a dumb argument as well.

I don't mind the name.  It looks kewl.  The console looks kewl.  The controller looks kewl.  Come E3 we'll have a better idea if everything is outta this world too.  

[Arbok]

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Originally posted by: 18 Days
Rick what you have to understand is that crap senses of humour and toilet humour beyond age 10 is exclusive to gamers. New gamers could not give a damn.

Please tell me what country this applies to, as it sure doesn't seem to fit with the US. Have you seen the type of PG-13 comedies that have been doing well at the box office since the turn of the century? Are these people mature? No. Are they all under 10 and/or gamers? Hardly.

[Jonnyboy117]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
And I would like to point out that whereas Revolution uses a complex "r" sound (that I.. have a speech deficiency for...), the W sound in Wii is one of the simpler and earlier sounds humans learn (hence why, after mama and dada, the next thing of importance to name is what happens in baby's diaper).

The "w" sound is hardly universal.  Russians find it nearly impossible to say, for instance, and I'm sure other Slavic peoples share the difficulty.  Meanwhile, many people I know from India and Pakistan say the "w" sound instead of the "v" sound, so it could cause confusion for them too.

[mantidor]

W is the "foreign" letter of the alfabet in spanish also, along with Y, mostly it ends up being pronounced "GUI" or "UI", which is similar to japanese pronounciation of the name. Its not universal at all.

[VideoGamerJ]

I have tried to get along with saying, but when talking to customers about it, I keep referring back to revolution. This is really going to be a strange turnout, and yes, there will be people who will not buy it because of the name. These are the same people who didnt buy GameCube's because they came in Purple initially and the same people who stereotype people according to their names. Ouch.

[SgtShiversBen]

Playstation THREE, Xbox three sixTY, WII

All platforms now have the "ee" sounding now.  Nintendo's not the oddball anymore.  Although, I don't think people are going to say "I would like a Microsoft GameBox now" or a "Playstation 360" when asking for a Wii.  it's pretty simple.

Although I was a big advocator against the name in the early stages, after telling a couple of my friends about it, the strange conundrum from the name entirely dissappeared altogether.  Saying Wii in public isn't any different than saying iPod or Debbie Does Dallas anymore.  It's part of our ever growing vocabulary.

Just like "doh" is now one too.

[Guitar Smasher]

Quote
Originally posted by: 18 Days

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The people Nintendo wants to reach with the console will not be caught dead walking into a store and asking for “Wii" within earshot of friends.

Nintendo is aiming at the eight year old boys market? I thought they already had this one.

Pathetic editorial, Rick should drop his hate or leave forever.

And you've just demonstrated how you're more immature than these eight year olds.

[Kairon]

I will concede that W is not universal. *bow* However, as someone with a slight speech deficiency, I will say that it is sooooo much more easier than ahhhhh....awwwwww....arrrrrrrrrrrrrrabbit.

*ahem*

Perhaps if they stuck with the revolution I may get enough practice to start pronouncing "r" right. Darn.

Either way, I think that most of the criticisms of the word don't reveal any new arguments, just retread the same gamer-culture confusion. And while valid, those concerns won't be proven or disproven until we can fully apply hindsight to it.

Do I like the name? No. Then again, I haven't liked any name for any videogame system... except the Jaguar. Umm....nvm...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Mario]

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For all of the wonderful things that the name is supposed to evoke, you lose all of them as soon as you have to explain them.

Why the **** do you need an explanation? There are thousands of names that nobody asked for an explanation for.

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The people Nintendo wants to reach with the console will not be caught dead walking into a store and asking for “Wii" within earshot of friends.

Non gamers.
Casual gamers.

Different groups.

Overall it sounds like a horrible editorial from a  fanboy with his head stuck in his Nintendo sandbox, and one I wouldn't expect from my favourite website. Get some perspective

[Shin Gallon]

Just a quik note, "Google" isn't a nonsensical word, it's a modified form of a mathematical term (a googol, to be precise).
In other news, the name "Wii" is still terrible. I still (and will continue to) call the system the Revolution.

[The Omen]

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Overall it sounds like a horrible editorial from a fanboy with his head stuck in his Nintendo sandbox, and one I wouldn't expect from my favourite website. Get some perspective

Yeah, and he's a fanboy....

Look how mad you are.  It's as if you personally are being attacked, and you become defensive and return attack in kind.  Problem is, nobody is attacking you, which means you're pretty much acting like a loud, raucous, fanboy baby.

[Hostile Creation]

"Just a quik note, "Google" isn't a nonsensical word, it's a modified form of a mathematical term (a googol, to be precise)."

And molikkle is a modified version of molecule.  It's still a nonsense word.
Wii is an altered version of we.  Still a nonsense word.
Your point?

[Mario]

Quote
Originally posted by: The Omen

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Overall it sounds like a horrible editorial from a fanboy with his head stuck in his Nintendo sandbox, and one I wouldn't expect from my favourite website. Get some perspective

Yeah, and he's a fanboy....

Look how mad you are.  It's as if you personally are being attacked, and you become defensive and return attack in kind.  Problem is, nobody is attacking you, which means you're pretty much acting like a loud, raucous, fanboy baby.

Yep, I went over the edge. I'm decided i'm not going to make one more post regarding the name, i'm sick of all the valid points being ignored. Over and over. I've been rash and accepting towards others views on it, but when the forum bitching translated to an editorial on the main site, it's gone too far. Have fun whining!

[IceCold]

I'm with Mario here. First time in a long while that I've felt how Grey Ninja did..

[Kairon]

I can understand the concerns that traditional gamers have. I share them. But the proof isn't in the punditry, it's in the pudding.

Hopefully, anyone who's going to ever take a risk on something that isn't proven 100% beforehand realizes that. For example, focus groups hated playing Mario Bros. on the NES, retailers didn't want to stock the system, and videogames were a cultural faux pas in america at the time. There are, of course, many more failures than successes when undertaking such risks, but the point is that if you don't try something new and daring and perhaps even untested, you'll never be able to expand, innovate, challenge, or redefine anything.

As a Nintendo fan, I take it that Nintendo isn't that kind of company. Satoru Iwata said that Nintendo doesn't want to be seen as a company that avoids risk. They want to be seen as a company that is willing to take risks. That'd the company I believe in, one that challenges me to grow and learn and be some place I've never been before. This is the company that made vines grow out of invisible blocks, that made controllers shake in my hands, has me doing 100 simple math problems in quick succession, and that has kept me feeling young and alive all my 22 years.

They're not perfect, they never were. But I don't ask them to be perfect. I ask them to to take risks, and show me something new that I've never seen before.

That's the sort of company I believe Nintendo to be. And that's why the name makes sense to me: it's a risk, it has negatives and positives, things i dig (like the playfulness, the oddity of it) and things i think are clunky (the pronounciation-breaking double - ii, the lack of any hard sounds whatsoever), but it's a chance to look at the world around me in a completely new light.

Nintendo's taking a risk at something new, and I think that's a good thing in any Nintendo fan's book.

You think Nintendo is in danger, but, crisis and opportunity are after all inextricably intertwined. And what greater crisis than Nintendo's current predicament? What greater opportunity than Wii?

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Berto2K]

Guess I'll chime in a bit here.  When I first got to work the next day after the announcement one of the first things my coworker (who is an avid pc gamer in a quake clan i believe) sad to me was "did you see what nintendo did to the name of their next system?"  he thought it was lame and a really bad choice.  

Then later that night I showed another coworker who hasn't played games in years (goes to school for art like drawing, design, etc.) the trailer that was released and he thought it was cool.  He could see some interesting things that could be done from a marketing standpoint.

Opinions are going to vary A LOT from all camps.  I don't personally like the name either...Nintendo has a lot to prove to lots of people.  But from a marketing stance there are lots of opportunities.

 

[BigJim]

Well this is gonna turn into another "wii name" thread pretty quickly.

I understand what Nintendo tried to achieve with the name, they just failed on execution.

When I first saw the "Wii" name, I didn't immediately think of penis or piss jokes. I simply thought "WTF, that sounds stupid." The negative connotations seem to just be the low-hanging fruit of many name haters as a means to dismiss it. Not unlike the other easy excuses Nintendo has given people to dismiss them.... the purple lunchbox, a handle, k!ddy games, etc.

They should just go back to the drawing board and pick something better if "Revolution" is too "hardcore" for their newfound taste in the mainstream.

What I find odd about this mainstream desire of theirs is that you can look at the sales of any of their "non-game" products and you'd still see that the majority of buyers were GAMERS. They use the improved sales as some sort of proof of concept to then TARGET the non-gamers when they're merely a minority portion of the sales.

Let's make a bunch of cheap-ass garage games and run all the way to the bank!

Anyway, they just better remember who their base is. Piles of non-games and occasional epics is not going to fly with many of them (and they're dwindling as it is). A silly name like that does them no favors either.

God bless Nintendo, though. There's no other love/hate relationship like it. They can capture your imagination with fantastic epics like Zelda on one hand, and piss you off with the other by taping "Kick Me" signs to their own backs.

[wandering]

A surprisingly good editorial. I haven't been hearing much but "it's a stupid name and anyone who says otherwise is a hopeless fanboy who's twisting his head around." I tip my hat to you Rick.

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Those “mainstream gamers" that Nintendo is trying to bring under their wing will not be caught dead “playing Wii". They are far more image-conscious, and what’s baffling is that Nintendo knows this. Game Boy Micro was the device designed for exactly this segment.

I find this ironic considering the name "Game Boy Micro." You can just as easily say "Run along little boy and play with your micro-sized 'game!'" as you can make fun of Wii. Who's to say mainstream gamers won't be caught dead with Wii? Have you actually talked with people that've said they won't be buying one because of the name? Personally, I think, after a massive advertising campaign, mainstream gamers won't care about the name at all.

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Dropping the Nintendo brand from the product gives them no alternative name to request. To use poker terminology, they’ve been left with no “outs", not even an acronym or abbreviation.

The lack of abbreviation is very deliberate. They want to remove barriers to non-gamers, and one of many barriers is the use of code-words among the gaming elite. It's hard enough to keep your playstations and xboxes straight, much less a seperate set of abbreviations.

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The intended meanings behind the name are unclear and need explanation that many will simply not bother to learn.

It doesn't require much explanation, though. "Together, Wii will change everything" explains everything you need to know about the name, and I'm sure something similiar will appear in all advertisements.

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We haven’t even gotten to the place where the TiVo and Google brands truly excel, and where Wii falls completely flat. Those names achieved the holy grail; they became verbs. Even on other recording devices, people now say that they “TiVo’ed" a program; when you search for information on the internet, you Google it, even if you’re not using Google as your search engine. Wii can’t become a verb without becoming “Wii’d", which brings up entirely different negative connotations and joke potential.

I keep hearing reasons why Wii is fatally different than names like 'iPod' and 'Tivo', and I keep thinking they're weak. As to this particular one: who cares if it can't be turned into a verb? Are you saying that's one of the big reasons those products took off?


Personally, I think Wii is a good name. It's short, easy to remember, unique, intriguing, and a relatively blank slate. Yes, it has stumbling blocks: it's a little silly, a little hard to pronounce. But, in my experience, a lot of successful product names are like that (look at the name in my avatar.) Once the name becomes synonymous with the system, and a regular part of everyone's vocabulary, I think we'll look back at our initial reaction and wonder what we thought the big deal was.

[Kairon]

I don't find their non-gamer strategy strange. They've, really, technically ALWAYS been about the non-gamer, with "fun" as their goal, not "cool." Miyamoto's made games about gardening, for chrissakes! He uses examples from his non-gaming childhood as inspirations for Mario and Zelda! His emphasis is on how something feels in your hand, not how it looks on the screen! And he's been trained as an artist first and foremost, not as anything remotely gamer-like!

It's just that now they've finally got a control system that they feel has a chance of really driving this point home. They feel like they can finally make a stand and reset the entire videogame field to zero when it was just about fun and it wasn't defined and segmented and franchised and a business science. And they're willing to shoot for that goal because they believe in a vision of videogames that's slowly disappearing.

Now, as for the name, what most people think are negatives I think are positives, but I also have a few negative opinions on it of my own. But the only actual name I ever DID like was Jaguar...so...yeah...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Kairon]

Oh snap! Is Wawa an .....airline?

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Arbok]

Quote
Originally posted by: wandering
I find this ironic considering the name "Game Boy Micro." You can just as easily say "Run along little boy and play with your micro-sized 'game!'" as you can make fun of Wii.

The big difference is that most non-gamers, and most gamers in casual conversation for that matter, would never call it a "Game Boy Micro". They will simply call it a "Game Boy", much in the same sense that iPod Nano users will never call the system by its full name, unless asked what model that is. So, it's a non-issue in the case of the Micro.