The fucking "wii"?

[108]

DISCUSS

[Wii willy winky]

I think the Nintendo Urine has quite a ring to it.

[Guest]

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[somari]

[Mr. Apol]

Wryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!

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LJ -- Profile -- Gallery

[shnozlk 2 lazy 2 log in]

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp

Band togeather! Write nintendo about this disaster!

[Mr. Apol]

[Margaret Beck]

Just cuz you won't have your glorious Revolution doesn't mean we can't still hope for the triumph of the Wii.

Yes, the successor to the DS will officially be named the Nintendo Pee Wii.

Don't worry everybody, the Wiikipedia (as the Nintendo fanboys (who are now dubbing themselves the "Wet Wiiwiis" ) are calling it) article has been updated!! #REDIRECT that shit away from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Revolution!!

On a more serious note, the Wii is a yuu that must be handled responsibly!!

(Post continues below)

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We can also confirm that it will be called the Nintendo Oui in France.

The English translation of Wii (Japanese for W (double-u) + ii (good)) will actually be the Nintendo Wood (Wgood just didn't work). There may or may not be a liscencing deal with James Woods. Speaking of which, they had to adopt the "Wii" spelling to avoid copyright issues with Adam We.

Hopefully the Wii will do a little better than the Atari Lynx, the only other monosyllablic console in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD. At least it isn't named after a feline. As Atari learned the hard way (ten plus years later), only Apple can get away with that kind of sillyness!!

I am SO TOTALLY COOL!! I'm just going to keep running with this. Forever.

[Mr. Apol]

[Guest]

Please write something similar hell just cut and paste sections out of this if you want, we need volume damn it!

To whom it may concern:

I? part of many communities both on line and in the real world who are bound together by videogames. Overall the reaction from these people has been that the name you have chosen for the Nintendo Revolution is a very bad choice. It's embarrassing. To be the owner of something called a Wii is very embarrassing.

To take a Wee is to urinate and weeee! is the sound excited toddlers (children ages 3-8) make when excited. The sound in general is a very childish and annoying one to the ears of the average American. This name will cripple your success in the American market. I can't see myself buying a product called the Wii. I would buy a revolution because it makes me sound progressive and ahead of the curve, yet 'Wii' sounds very weak. 'We' is even the first sound in the word weak.

This name choice suggests that Nintendo wants to be the next Macintosh and create a defined 'culture' which will inherently divide gamers and game makers. When you encourage one culture you alienate all others. You are going to ALINENATE your CURRENT USER BASE. And practically NO ONE is going to be attracted to a product that has such an embarrassment of a name.

As a fan of Nintendo products
I beg you to change the name of your console.
-Jason

[Margaret Beck]

[DeusJester]

Of course, now the real question is, since this news has been flying around teh intarwebs at the speed of light, do I look like a dumbass for putting that post up there and totally following the herd? Dude!

Hmm!

In my defense, I was on the ball a few hours after it was announced! yet oh well.

In all seriousness, though, I do think it's a legitimately idiotic name. I get that it gets people talking about it, yet come on. What the hell was wrong with Revolution? It had the best name out of any of the next-gen consoles. Xbox 360 is just stupid sounding, and PlayStation 3 is easily the most predictable goddamn name ever. Revolution had a nice connotation while maintaining Nintendo's gleeful "fuck you" attitude towards the competition.

Blargh. Wii. What the fuck.

And that is a bitchin' tattoo, by the way.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[DeusJester]

Hey, I made no urine "jokes". I was being serious! Did anyone tell them what that word means in English? I mean, yeah, it's not the most common term for piss, yet it's certaintly one of them.

The Nintendo Dickfest does have a nice ring to it, though, to cross-pollenate suggestions from the IC forums a bit.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Guest]

[johnhummel]

[kappuru]

Stop looking at her chest and read her post. Jesus.

Anyway, didn't you hear? NO ONE MESSES WITH ADAM WE.
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punchin' my way on through the world

[johnhummel]

[johnhummel]

There was an interesting idea brought up in a forum post somewhere else, and I don't recall where, yet the headline went like this:

"Hard core gamers: Do we matter anymore?"

And the second I saw it, I knew the answer:

No.

Gaming, to use an idea that would make Mr. Rogers cringe, is becoming more and more like the movie industry every day. Not in scale or stars, yet in history. The industry was first introduced with small players, making games out of their basement - like initial movie makers with their "moving cameras". Then came an era of competition and explosion - then the conglomerates came into being, and they started to get movie making down to a science.

People complain that movies are all "the same", yet the fact is this: movies sell. Yes, they're going into a slight downslide right now, yet I'd argue that's an issue with technology (home theaters more comfortable and convienient than movie theaters - look at how studios make more money from DVD rental sales than blockbuster sales). yet movies, as bland as they are, make money. They make a shitload of money. They make so much fracking money it's not funny, because they have the formula down.

Was "Momento" a better movie than "The Matrix"? I'd argue it was - yet it didn't follow the rules. It was harder to think through. It didn't challenge. People could watch the Matrix with it's biblical allusions and get the surface story - kick ass people in leather, yeah! Or get the subtext. In "Momento", you had to think the whole fracking movie, and <em>work</em> to understand it.

Nintendo gets this. Look at the games they've been releasing. Is "Pikmen" a good game? I liked it. yet it's not selling nearly as well as "Tetris" or "Brain Age" or "Nintendogs" - the latter are games that you don't have to think about (insert irony about "Brain Age" here). yet these are games that a) did not cost a lot to make, and b) could be played by anybody with more than 5 brain cells. Are they fun? Sure - Nintendo gets it: the hardcore gamers don't make them money. Armies of teenage schoolgirls and their parents do.

What does this have to do with Wii? I think Nintendo, in a way, is making a statement. To hard core gamers, they're saying "This is not your world. There will be things for you, for those who look past the name. yet we are establishing here and now - this system is not for the 'hard core'. This is for all of the girls and grown ups out there who don't get 40 button controls, who will look at the word 'Wii' and go 'Oh, that's interesting.'"

Look at their plans for porting: almost none. EA had an interview where they said they were all yet forced to rewrite games from scratch for the Revolution/Wii because of the difference of power and controller. Which is what Nintendo wants. Let Sony and Microsoft fight over almost exactly the same games and who's cock-a-doodle doo is bigger in the "HD-DVD versus Blue-Ray" fight. Nintendo will do what Sony did - offer a DVD player that also plays a ton of games that people can pick up and go "Oh, Mario. OK - I move this way and jump. I can do that", while the "hard core" will either look at the name and say "Wii is lame", or will look at the game lineup and go "Turbo Graphix? Sweet - hey, Phoenix Wright Wii version! Neat!"

I don't know if it will work. Or, it will probably work in Japan the way the DS all yet killed PSP sales. (As Tim once said, every time someone finds out how to do something fun with the PSP, Sony releases a patch to break it. Or, something like that.) It probably won't hurt the Xbox 360 sales, since for all the money it's losing it's supported by a monopoly that hopes for more, and PS3 sales probably won't matter because of the Wii.

yet I think that Nintendo did the name on purpose, knowing it would piss off the "hard core". I'll probably get one, because I've got 3 kids and a wife who only plays "Tetris" and "Brain Age" (I leave the DS at home for her to play while I'm out working - which will be my excuse for why we need to buy a DS Lite when it comes out ;) ), and I just don't have the time to play every really cool game I want to.

(Shrug.) Guess we'll see more at E3.

[Mr. Mechanical]

[108]

I like this thread!!

I doubt Shigesato Itoi had anything to do with naming this thing.

. . . I have like 100 emails asking me what I think of this.

Maybe I should say something?
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[Sushi K]

Was I the only one who looked at the name and went "WWII? Aren't World War Two jokes not funny?"
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[klikbeep]

Puns aside!

If you're talking about it, you're talking about it. You've got basically an object here, which you're going to buy or not . . . "IF WE GET 10000 SIGNATURES WE CAN GET THEM TO CHANGE THE NAME!!1!"-style petitions be damned. The only thing marketing can do is create some kind of awareness here.

THAT SAID. . . that said, I doubt very much that they've got some sort of person who is that on the ball in terms of foxy subtlety. Who knows, though? They gave us the Virtual Boy, safe in the knowledge that we'd buy anything that came thereafter just to soothe our aching retinas.

[Zing]

I think most of us were thinking "gonads and strife" the entire time.

You'd hope they would at least rename that shit to "Whee" so that they might pretend that it's related to another English word, rather than being related to urine.

"Wii" is also a royal bitch to write as kana. Or at least, too much trouble for something with only three roman characters.

[Sushi K]

[Guest]

Double you, I, I

neato

I think it will just be called 'The Nintendo'

that's what mothers have been doing for decades, y'know "oh he's playing Nintendo"

so yeah, lets go play Nintendo

[Guest]

[Zing]

Right. Which is why I said most of us were thinking gonads and strife, to allow for the news reporter here and there who isn't going to find the name hilarious.

[DeusJester]

[ninjaboyjohn]

This almost assures what I had thought about the true secret behind the Revolution all along:

the console will print out pink cards based on highly complicated mathematical formulas that will give us time slots to have sex in glass buildings with very hot women.

[Rud13]

[Agent Orange]

[Guest]

maybe they just mean "small". you know, as in "wee high".

then again that makes as much sense as pee.

[Guest]

[Guest]

I liked the name. "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"

It's fun. It's allowed to be fun, right? Gaming just became cute. Those of you who are like "ZOMG! The world is ending!" should either try to grow up and get past the piss jokes, or get more childish and go "Wheeeeeeeee!"

[OtakupunkX]

I'll be happy as long as the Bob Ross game doesn't suck.

[FrozenDelight]

It's unbelievable to think they spent much time and money on coming up with this name. Like others have said, its obvious that they didn't speak to a good English speaker about this first. I like to think of myself as an open minded kind of guy, yet 'Wii' is just plain stupid.

And no its not immature to associate this with pissing. It's such a hugely common turn for urinating! If I went up to my mum or some random old dude, they would burst out laughing as well, or at least find it dumb.

[Guest]

Maybe that's not the name, which would raise the question What is it?

[bubbafatass]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Nintendo did know how silly the name would sound to English speakers. Why else would they announce the name weeks before E3 actually commences, other than to let everyone get all the jeering out of their systems earlier so that when the real press show starts people aren't so focused on it as much.

Anyone else find it interesting that they've also pretty much confirmed a Thanksgiving launch for the US, yet all we see being reported right now is the silly name? Would Nintendo have wanted people making a fuss over the name at E3 when they're trying to announce system specs, games, and all that other more important stuff? Of course not. To me, that just says that they knew exactly what they were doing in naming it Wii. In a few weeks people will be more used to it, have run all the damn piss jokes into the ground, and be ready to focus on the other aspects of the system that are probably going to be announced when real announcements on the hardware actually start taking place.

Smart move; still a dumb name. Nope, none it still matters.
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Mr. Mechanical
It's okay; I use the internet. I'm sophisticated.

[Deathnutz]

I got Mario on my Wii. Nuff said. Bad name. looks too much like "Why". And W the sequal. or W the second. My dysliscklia (<--- joke) lets me see wwii, as in that war. So, they like having two i's, I have two eyes. I'm nothing special. I'm so not special I hvae no friends. Seeing to little people (ii) makes me sad I have to play alone. Why can't I have a Wi instead. Why can't we use more i's else where. Like in... um, Easii, or Hii, or god I dont' know. You know... I don't remember the controller having a little dot on top of it. Maybe they should have used the lowercase l. That looks way more like the controller. Call it a Nintendo All It fits cause it has all nintedo games and all umm, sorts of other things, yet it is also a laundry detergent. Oh, What about the WII. Wildlife Instatute of India. Remember WWF.... yea, that went well. I give up. Wii is just silly and makes it that much harder trying to defend nintedo to a hard core xbox or playstation addict. It will be the butt of jokes for years... I think I am going to crii. :( Remember... I before E except after C, not replace E with two I's whenever. boooh!

[Mr. Apol]

Ha ha, so it seemed like I was hitting on her? I wasn't really, I thought her tattoo was cool a while back and just thought to say it now. Also Kappuru hates girls and loves to kiss boys on the lips.

Anyways.

Yeah.

Wii.

Did you guys hear about SILENT HILL the movie?

i heard it totally SUCKS
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LJ -- Profile -- Gallery

[Mr. Apol]

[Rud13]

tits and wii!
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[Mr. Apol]

GUYS I GET IT!

LOOK AT THE NAME:

Wii

The "W" is two people holding hands.

The "ii" is two stick figures standing beside each other, most likely the ones holding hands.

I GET IT.

The name is both a picture, and a word, that tie in with each other. It's still dumb, yet I finally get it.
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LJ -- Profile -- Gallery

[Guest]

FrozenDelight said: its obvious that they didn't speak to a good English speaker about this first.

I think it's obvious that anybody who actually believes a highly succesful and sage multinational corporation would do a worldwide product launch without meticulously testing the name with focus groups in all of their major markets is a complete idiot.

Steve-o

[Guest]

[Guest]

Xcox 3shitty

[Terrible Majesty]

Wii is a marketing gimmick.

All this pessimism will make your hearts burn.

When you all play the Wii your hearts will melt.

Wii is the hook. Its games the reel to pull you in.

[Sushi K]

As someone who knows the Japanese language not at all except how it is transliterated into English... Double vowels at the end of words, espicaly proper nouns, seems popular.
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[DeusJester]

I think we may need to collect all the Nintendo fanboy cum spraying out of the guest account posts and keep it in a bucket somewhere. God knows what we can use it for. Dissolving paint, maybe?

Guys, I like Nintendo as much as the next guy, yet come the fuck on. It's an idiotic name. It sounds dumb, plain and simple. I know everyone's going to have a blast contemplating the deeper meaning Nintendo has clearly squirreled away in there somewhere, yet that's a moot point when the name itself means PEE.

It's like that clothing company, FCUK. Yes, it means "French Connection UK" yet does anyone really care about that? What's the first thing you think of looking at that logo? I bet "french" didn't spring immediately to mind.

I liked Revoultion. I liked it better than any of the other names for the consoles. Had a nice ring to it, was easy to pronouce, all that.

Wii.

Good God.

And to the guy who said that anyone who thinks Nintendo didn't focus tesrtthe name is an idiot, here: Nintendo is a Japanese company. What's more, they're a pretty notoriously Japan-centric Japanese company. A fuck-ton of their money is made in Japan, not elsewhere. America is the land of Xboxes and racist PSP ads, while in Japan the DS is ripping every other chunk of videogame technology a new asshole and fucking it while straddling a huge pile of money.

The chance that they came up with this great, symbolic, interesting name for a Japanese market without bothering to think how it was really going to sound to speakers of other languages isn't really all that crazy. That's something for the PR folks in the respective countries to figure out -- that's what they're getting paid for, right? The GameCube is about as popular as a colostomy bag in America and the DS is headed in that direction, directly the opposite trend the big N are seeing in their home county. Do they really care how it looks in a place where the only people who are going to buy the damn thing anyway are people who were already going to buy the damn thing anyway?

The thing really could be called the Nintendo SkullFuck and there would still be people defending it as groundbreaking and carefully market-tested. Nintendo fans have a bit of a reputation to that effect. I'm sure the company itself is well aware of this.

And I'm normally not quite this profane or angry, yet it's late and I might be drunk, so please bear with me. It's been a nasty week.
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[DeusJester]

And I posted twice for some reason? Hmm.

Anyway.

At least the thing still looks the same, right? They didn't change that, did they? It isn't shaped like a big hand with its middle finger extended now or anything?
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[E. Megas]

Well, Deus, you fucking went and did it. You've gone and done The Obvious on the main page, and now the topic is beaten to death.

THE MEME IS DEAD HERE, PEOPLE, AND IT'S ALL DEUSJESTER'S FAULT! MOVE ALONG

Seriously, now: Nintendo did not market test this name outside of Japan. The company has given birth to a publicity nightmare in English-speaking nations, the recipient being a console that could be reasonably "good" otherwise. To me, this is a genuine disaster that should be mourned, though to everyone else it's likely not much of a deal in the long run. People adapt. (Whether they actually will is anyone's guess.)

Anyway! Let me say vaguely constructive things to various people.:

Ms. Beck: Meh. Not even trying, lady. Train under Stabo10 for a while; he figured it out and so can you.

Mr. Hummel: I do not mean to offend. Yet, I must mention that you misspelled "Memento" and "TurboGrafx-16." Hope it helps. (Good to see you around, sir. We could use more like you in our Organization.)

Sushi K: Linking to Chris "http://zzt.belsambar.net/?p=database&search=Chris%20Kohler" Kohler invalidates any argument you were trying to make - in this instance at least. BAD END TRY AGAIN (and if you don't believe me, son, you will. Gods help you, you will)

Mr. Jester: Yeah, they haven't changed the console design. They make an explicit note to the press that it comes with a "silver stand," however, which probably means it will not come in any other color, at least in the US (American Game Boy Player only coming in black...GRR DEATH)

ALL RIGHT I'M DONE NOW MOVE ALONG PEOPLE BREAK IT UP

[inmatarian]

Super Mariio.

[johnhummel]

I knew I should have spell checked that sucker - ah, well - thanks for pointing that out.

It was still a great movie ;).

[Sushi K]

Most people are losing perspective. I believe one play may help to settle the issue.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"
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