When you’re a kid and you wanna go “Wii” (but you ain’t got drugs yet)

Submitted by The Game on Thursday, April 27, 20067 Comments

Breaking news! Announced this morning, the Revolution will not be televised! Instead, Nintendo has decided to name its next-gen console Wii.

And in other breaking news, we’ve hit 150 posts!

You can mosey over to the official Revolution/Wii website for Nintendo’s statement and some animated vowels. Gamasutra reports on a few more details about the system as a whole. And judging by Digg, alot of people think the name is stupid. I certainly won’t be swayed one way or another just because of a system’s name (unless the name was something like “Nintendo RacistOvertones” or “Sony Wifebeater.”) The name certainly isn’t “cool” by my estimation, and the 13 year old boy market probably won’t like it, but maybe Nintendo will do what they claim and bring in a whole new segment of the population into videogaming. Sounds good to me, but for me as a cynical gamer, it’ll be all about the software.

On the plus side, it does remind me of Gonads and Strife.

Oh, and as I said, we hit 150 posts! How are we doing? Anything you’d like to see? Please let us know!

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Dave The Game is Dave Chalker, son of science fiction author Jack L. Chalker. In addition to being a semi-professional game designer Dave is the Editor-in-Chief of Critical Hits (which means he writes about everything.) Dave is also Executive Director of the RPG Bloggers Network. (Email Dave)

7 Comments »

Bartoneus said:

I think it’s extremely clever marketing toward a wide variety of nations, cultures, and ages. Yes, many people will think it is stupid and many other bad things, but in the end it has more meaning and is more interesting then a simple name like “Revolution” or “360″ or even “GameCube” and “Playstation”.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Nintendo is going out on a metaphorical limb, giving their system a name that is both a title and a symbol at the same time. Much like Half-Life’s lambda symbol, or the X-Box’s X. It’s out there, but I would like to make the argument that it is out there in a -good- way.

- 27 April 2006 at 7:24 pm

The Main Event said:

http://wiiwillrockyou.ytmnd.com/

- 28 April 2006 at 11:50 am

The O said:

For those of you who don’t read Penny Arcade, or who haven’t seen this yet, you should.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic

This link goes to their most current comic, so in a day or so it won’t be the same comic. Just go back a couple strips and you’ll find it. It’s called “Whence Wii”. Enjoy.

- 1 May 2006 at 12:27 am

The Game (author) said:

Wil Wheaton comments along similar lines:
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2006/05/consoles_and_st.html

Gah, he made a much better reference with his post title, consarnit.

- 2 May 2006 at 12:06 am

Critical Hits » The Christmastide Cometh said:

[...] Apparently these are some rejected or preliminary conceptual designs for the Wii and its controller interface. It really has to make you happy with what came out, going with the simplest and most functional but still aesthetically and commercially appealing is really the balance that the Wii controller achieves perfectly. I was sold from the very beginning, once I saw that the ‘remote’ design could be turned sideways to almost perfectly mimic a classic NES controller, I knew Nintendo had done right. [...]

- 21 December 2006 at 12:46 pm

Critical Hits » More on the Tragedy of Multiplayer (Spotlighting Wario Ware) said:

[...] name “Wii” caused a number of reactions in the online community, ranging from those who swore they would not buy it to those who thought it was an interesting name [...]

- 16 February 2007 at 7:33 pm

Critical Hits » Don’t Believe the Anti-Hype said:

[...] the name Nintendo chose for their new system was. People reacted very badly, initially, and the name Wii was parodied countless times. People were jumping the gun to judge the entire console system not based entirely upon its name, [...]

- 28 March 2007 at 5:04 pm