Nintendo's 'Wii' Just A Marketing Gimmick?

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.'"

And the last horse reaches the finish line

I knew the strange name was a PR stunt when it was on the front page of CNN.com the whole day of the announcement, followed shortly by postings on Fark and two posts here on Slashdot.

I don't think they're going to rename it again to get rid of the naysayers, but the timing of the announcement and the uniqueness of it was pretty clearly a PR ploy.

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

Honestly, I'm not too sure that Nintendo named the Revolution Wii simply to gain press; I do think that Nintendo recognized that the Hard-Core segment of the gaming population would dislike the name and that simply releasing the name would provide a lot of press.

The question I want to ask is why does the Hard-Core gaming population hate the name Wii?

Personally, I think I know the answer. When you watch Nintendo's flash video you'll realize that Wii is not just cute, it's simply adorable; adorable in a way that only women and gay men really understand. The fact is that this is simply unacceptable to much of the gaming population because they wanted something edgier and cooler like "Nintendo Revolution Extreme 1080".

Face it, Nintendo may make games for them (and the system may be great for them) but Nintendo is no longer actively marketing towards Hard-Core gamers; with Animal Crossing, Brain Training and Nintendogs Nintendo has realized that they can be very successful with non-traditional gamers on a level no one ever has been (non-traditional as in women).

Will they be successful? I don't know, but the Nintendo DS has (so far) sold faster than the PS2 did simply because their potential market was much larger.

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

I'm not a "hardcore" gamer (though I play a decent number of games). I think the name is dumb. My older brother IS a hardcore gamer, he works for Sega, and he thinks the name is dumb. My fiance is not a gamer. She likes Paper Mario and Bejewelled and that's about it. She thinks the name is dumb.

Everyone I've spoken to (IRL) about this thinks the name is dumb, be they male or female, gay or straight. I don't need an edgy name, I think GameCube was a pretty good name - simple but descriptive. But Wii looks stupid on paper, and sounds even worse when actually pronounced.

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

Personally, I'd rather game consoles have cool, interesting names. First you had the Nintendo, which was nondescript, but had a ring to it. Then you had the Super Nintendo. That name was cool because it had the word "super" in it. Gameboy was patronizing, Virtual Boy was too homoerotic (for my tastes), Genesis was too Bibley, Saturn was a cool name, Lynx was okay, because it's a cat, as well, Gamegear was cool, because "gear" sounds all mechanical and cool, Playstation sounded dumb, as did Playstation 2, Playstation Portable, Gamecube, and DS. Dreamcast was a decent name, simply because it didn't mean anything. Then there's XBOX, which has the best name for a console since Super Nintendo. Plus, the thing's black.
 
Personally, if I released a game maching, I'd name it something like "Psychotic Dragonskull: Mechanized Deathpod Maximized." Its logo would be a flaming skull with a dagger stuck through it, and a snake wrapped around a babe going through its eyes and mouth. The box itself would be a jet black sphere, and it would play overly-angsty deathmetal screams as it started up.
 
And it's predecessor wouldn't be white or have the number three hundred and sixty in its name.

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

The fact is that this is simply unacceptable to much of the gaming population because they wanted something edgier and cooler like "Nintendo Revolution Extreme 1080".

No, they didn't.

What about a regular, non-gimmicky, non-confusing name like the ones given to practically every other Nintendo system? Where would that fit into that false dichotomy of yours?

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

This is all pure speculation, but it is entirely possible that this whole thing is a big, albeit late, April Fool's joke. Consider the following scenario: Thousands of people are gathered around Nintendo's booth at E3 waiting for them to talk more about the Wii, DS, and other things. A spokesperson for Nintendo steps up to a podium and begins delivering a speech about the Wii. "Wii have a dream!" the spokesperson begins. The speech is filled with similar puns and word plays. As the speech ends, the spokesperson closes with, "Of course, wii're just joking. Viva la REVOLUTION!" Screens light up with pictures of the Revolution/Wii and some of the games that are going to be launched or are being worked on for the console. Throw in some banners, fireworks, or anything else to add to the overall emotional rush and the entire expo will be talking about it. No one's going to care about the PS3's launch or how many tera-majigaflops it can do and how it's better than the Xbox 360 and can play Blu-Ray movies. No one's going to care about Halo 3 demo (non-playable) that Microsoft came up with. Nintendo will essentially steal the show if they were to do something like this. The important part is that there's a lot of fanfare so that everyone gets caught up in the moment. They'll also need to keep the surprises and big announcements comming in a steady rate after that to keep the emotions running high. I'd suggest allowing people to get hands on and showing some good looking vaporware to keep people excited. Kudos if it isn't vaporware, but it really doesn't matter if it will keep people impressed. They'll get coverage based on the games they're releasing, but they'll get even more when every site that posted a story about the Wii has to post another one saying it was all a big gag that Nintendo played on everyone. Of course, like I said, this is all purely speculation.

Re:And the last horse reaches the finish line

I don't think it's a joke, or if it is it's gonna backfire. Nintendo's biggest software partners didn't find out about the name any earlier than the rest of us (I know this for a fact). They are all in the middle of finalizing their E3 stands and promotional materials and now all of a sudden they have to change all the names to Wii. If Nintendo stand up on day one and change the name again, they will be VERY pissed off.

Free PR

If Nintendo said they were going to call the Wii say the Nintendo GameCube 2, would they have gotten near as much PR for the name? Lots of people know they name of nintendos new console, and Nintendo did little more than release a press release, it wasn't a multi million dollar ad campaign. genious!

Re:Free PR

"Revolution" just sold among the geeks & gamers. Geeks and gamers aren't the market nintendo wants to create, it's not the segment they want to sell to, geeks&gamers already know, they know the controller, they know the console, some already know whether they'll buy it (if only at a second console next to an XBox360/PS3), most will know soon after it's release and won't base it on the name.

Revolution was good to market the console to the enthusiasts and the early adopters, but that's not the population N wants to reach now. What they want are the non gamers, the ones who like slick logos and funny names (iPod anyone?), the non gamers.

Plus the new name gives Nintendo and the Revo a unique spot among search engines. Google for "Revolution", see how many links are about the revo on page one. Now do the same with "Wii".

If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

...that would kinda suggest that they're planning on either

1) A name change (again) in the near future

or

2) A different name for the Japanese market (a-la "Super Famicom")

3) ...

4) Profit!

Oh, wait - I think I got confused a little along the way...

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

"Wi" is not a phoneme in modern Japanese. The reason the hiragana for it is no longer used is that "wi" became "i" in all positions in Japanese. Although "ui" can be phonetically realized as a diphthong, phonemically it is still two morae.

Put in a different perspective, voiceless "l" occurs phonetically in English, but English-speakers would probably find the name "Hlii" a bit awkward.

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

Put in a different perspective, voiceless "l" occurs phonetically in English, but English-speakers would probably find the name "Hlii" a bit awkward.

That's a better example than you may realise, given that (like /wi/ in Japanese) initial /hl/ is a cluster that was perfectly ordinary in Old English, but has fallen out of use.

In the case of English /hl/, the change was to /l/: Old English hlaford becomes Modern English lord.

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

"Wiku is still a girl's name"

What!? I'd be really interested to see a link to any evidence of this. Most Japanese who don't read much old literature don't even know how to write the hiragana for "wi," I don't someone would be crazy enough to name their kid something that starts with a sound no longer used. (Note, I am not Japanese, but I live in Japan, have for several years, and speak the language)

Of course, perhaps there is a name that uses a kanji that was once pronounced that way, but unless you've been to Edo-era Japan recently, I call bullshit on girls named Wiku. Maybe you got confused with Miku?

Wii is written "uii," not "wii," in Japanese kana (just check the Nintendo Japan website if you don't believe me), though they will probably usually write the English letters in ads etc..

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

IDNSJ (I Do Not Speak Japanese) but it seems unlikely that it would be true to say "the japanese can't pronounce it".
It seems more likely that they will use the same stylized logo and spelling (IIRC romanji is considered very stylish in japan anyway) and simply adjust the pronounciation to fit the local language.
In English speaking countries, it is "We"
In German speaking countries, "wie"
In French speaking countries, "oui"
..etc. It's actually quite clever because it is a word in each of those languages. A single name and logo, and one can get "Wii play together" or "Parole juste Wii" (just say yes) or "Wii wir umziehen, wii wir spielen" (how we move, how we play).
These are just theoretical ideas of course, but it nintendo were able to do find homonyms in other languages, it could create a globally recognized product name.

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

So in Germany, "Wii" is simply unpronounceable.

I think you mean "there is no way to represent the English pronunciation of 'Wii' in standard German orthography".

That does not mean that the name "Wii" is unpronounceable in German (it is trivially pronounceable: it will simply be read [vi:]), nor does it mean that no German is capable of uttering the sound [w], as you appear to be claiming.

To claim that "Wii" is unpronounceable in Germany, simply because the Germans will not pronounce it the way you pronounce it, is like claiming that "kimono" is unpronounceable in English, because the Americans do not pronounce it the way the Japanese do. That is to say, it's patent nonsense.

Re:If the Japanese can't pronounce it...

I'm afriad you're the one who didn't read the GP post, he said specifically that Germans will be incapable of pronouncing the English pronunciation, which is nonsense, since there is only one correct pronunciation, namely the one Nintendo has given it. The GP was very specific and so was I.

No, I don't think Germans are physically incapable but as a German I can tell you it takes years and years of training to sound even remotely close to the American 'w.' It's just a difficult sound to make for us, and I can say almost noone in Germany will be able to pronounce "Wii" correctly.

They can...

The Japanese can pronounce it about as well as most loan words, and just as well as "revolution." There's also the added bonus of greater consistency in the pronunciation of difthongs, so it's not even ambiguous.

Re:They can...

I'd say the next most common one would be Naziism
Did you just Godwin the name of Nintendo's new console? Are they going to have to change to something else now? ...and just when I'd started to think the name was kinda neat.

What's in a name?

Aside from the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, I don't think I remember there ever being a cool-sounding console or hand-held name. Nintendo 64? Dreamcast? Xbox... 360? PlayStation? Wonder... [i]Swan[/i]?

To me, all these names sounded ridiculous, and I know I'm not alone. We made fun of the 360's name but now it's pretty much accepted and any complaints about it have nothing to do with the name.

By July, at the latest, this will be a non-issue.

The New Coke

As hard as I find it to believe, I'm not against the idea that this is another "New Coke".

Did Nintendo do this just to get more support when they bring back "Coke Classic" (i.e. Revolution or another better name)?

Even if this IS the name, they certainly got quite a lot of press over it.

I still don't really like it. I'll buy the system, don't get me wrong. They could call it "Magic Happy Leprosy Spreading Bad Smell Maker" and I'd buy it. But I think Revolution was such a perfect name. It was catchy, yet differentiated the console perfectly.

DS was just a code name and they said they would change the name, until they said DS was the final name.

Is this all a stunt? Who knows. We'll find out when the system actually launches.

That said, I'm getting used to the name. Maybe it's like Game Cube and I'll come to like it.

That said the blurb mentions that "wii" is not a sound in the Japanese language (which I've heard elsewhere). I've heard that "revolution" is similarly unpronounceable because it also contains sounds not in Japanese. Is that true?

They could always call it Revolution here and the Japanese word for Revolution there (like the NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Genesis/MegaDrive and a few others had different names).

Re:The New Coke

Japanese seem to have a thing for liking made up names that are not easy to pronounce in Japanese. I'm Japanese and I remember making fun of all of the Japanese car names because most could not be pronounced in Japanese.

* Honda Accord (can't pronounce "r")
* Honda Civic (can't pronounce "v")
* Acura (can't pronounce "r")
* Integra (can't pronounce "r")
* Legend (can't pronounce "l")
* Camry ( no 'r')
* Corolla (holy crap!)
* Celica (no 'l')
* Supra (no 'r')
* Avalon (no 'r')

I say no 'l' and no 'r' but they have a similar sound which is halfway between 'l' and 'r' which is why Japanese often mix these two letters up.

I was just going to comment that this may be less now that Acura has switched to letters but actually, that's not entirely true either.

* RL (both letters not easy to pronounce)
* TL (L?)
* RSX (R?)

Anyways, the fact that it can't be pronounced is not an impediment to them using that name. In fact, I think for many using these sounds make the products sound more upmarket. Besides, Revolution is also difficult to pronounce in Japanese.

p.s. wii would most likely be pronounced like oo-ee.

Re:The New Coke

I'll likely buy this console as well. But I do not look forward to this name. For the very simple reason that it's awkward to tell people about. If they haven't already heard of Wii, you can forget about--you'll immediately sound like either someone who doesn't understand the concept of pronouns or some kind of pervert. I think the pervert response will actually be more common that people realize--when you are given a set of sounds to interpret that has multiple possible meanings, the shocking meanings are going to draw more of your attention.

In any event, if you tell someone you're going to play Wii, the urine/pronoun blur will color their interpretation of you. You then explain what Wii is, but now you're the sort of dork who has to explain everything he says. Awkwardness, poor grammar, and perversion are all now associated with you.

You'll even have to spell it! Double-ewe-eye-eye! (Dubya, aye aye?!! OMG SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE Wii: it's a uniter, not a divider)

And if this console is supposed to focus on social interaction, any added difficultly in word of mouth advertising seems like a huge liability. The problem is mitigated assuming Nintendo advertising of the Wii brand is omnipresent, but I'm not sure advertising has ever been the primary way people are introduced to new games. Especially for regular people--the games famous for appealing to non-gamers--from Tetris to The Sims, from Nintendogs to Bejewled, from WoW to DDR, tended, I think, to spread more by word of mouth than by massive advertising campaigns. Any game, even the simplest, is a bigger time sink than a tv show or a movie or a flavor of soda, and so those who are least "hard-core" about games are the ones who most rely on other people they trust to point out when something worth their attention comes along.

I remember back in the nineties people would wonder what they would call this decade. We never did find a good name for it, and so therefore we never refer to it--I never hear anyone refer to this decade as a cultural unit. Awkwardness is a powerful cultural disincentive--awkward ideas don't last. And ideas like "I play Wii and you should too!" or "We should play Wii!" are spatially sound but aurally awkward. People will likely end up saying something like "Nintendo Wii" or "the Wii system" or "Wii gaming" or some other unauthorized set of disambiguation sounds when necessary in non-games contexts. It's one thing to have a product name that people can make jokes about, but in this case the jokes could conceivably cloud understanding.

It would probably be the best PR campaign ever ...

if this is indeed a hoax. When the name first came out, I was rather indifferent about it. In the end, I don't really care about the name, I'm still buying it :)

However, I did have time to think about it, since I didn't waste my day posting to message boards about how I think it's so stupid like the rest of the world did. What I came up with was rather simular.

Either I'll be made fun of for playing my Wii ... OR ... Nintendo is a brilliant. Why brilliant? Well, what if on E3, they don't unveil the Wii .. they unveil the "XXXXXX" (Whatever the REAL name is) !!!??? Yah .. that would be absolutely pure genius. Not only did they steal attention of everyone for the 2 weeks BEFORE E3 ... they'll steal the attention at E3 and for the 2 weeks following!

It wouldn't have been an expensive campaign either. 1 Press Release. 1 stupid little flash movie up on http://revolution.nintendo.com./ [revolution.nintendo.com] That's it!? And it got all this press!

Here's a little more fuel for this consipiracy fire. Why does http://wii.nintendo.com/ [nintendo.com] not work? That'd take a whole 10 seconds for someone to create that subdomain and point it to revolution.nintendo.com or even just mirror that page from it. Hmmmmmm? Maybe it isn't the name after all?!??!

Indeed, things that make you go Hmmmmmm.

Bad Names?

I distinctly remember when "Dreamcast" was released that everyone thought it was a terrible, touchy-feely name. And when the iPod came out, we all thought Apple was smoking the eCrack. Even the PlayStation was a pretty dumb sounding name, and was proof that Sony's SNES CD was never going to amount to anything. For that matter, the Super NES sounded incredibly bad to US ears.

Now all of these names are recognized worldwide. They gained traction on the strength of the systems, and are now highly recognizable and much loved. It's theoretically possible that the same will happen to Wii.

Kotaku has a better breakdown [kotaku.com] of the situation, which includes the nugget that nobody prior to the announcement had registered any tradmarks or websites with the Wii name.

Re:Bad Names?

nobody prior to the announcement had registered any tradmarks or websites with the Wii name.

If this was true, it'd deserve an article all of it's own, but look at the update at the bottom of that site:
Update: This just in from Nintendo on the subject of the missing Wii trademark: "Nintendo has filed many trademark applications for Wii. Trademark Web sites often take time to update, and you can expect the Wii trademarks to appear shortly."

Hold on..

Look I didnt read thge article, but I read the post about it here on Slashdot. I lived with 5 guys from Thailand and they couldnt pronounce 'Will'. But they could pronouce the W, just not the ll'. In fact, it came out sounding like 'Wiww'. Even more W's!. Japanese people cant pronounce W's or E's? Its essentially 'Wee', right? Can they pronounce Wakizashi? So I dont get that.

And last time I checked, all names are marketing gimmicks. I thought we all walked around knowing that. Ive seen countless articles and comments about this. Mission accomplished, Nintendo. Your marketing guys probably deserve their exorbitant salaries now. I hope the console lives up to all the talk. Also, I dont know Japanese, but I believe I heard about some point pictograms have a relation to words in Japanese. That makes the Wii/Controller/Multiplayer concept somewhat Japanese in its thinking. I applaud them for an original name for a product as well, instead of the cheesy techno names like the Playstation or the XBox. What tired thinking.

Finally, how dumb an idea would it be to call a product the revolution if for whatever reason it ended up sucking? It would be an even bigger disaster.

Even Japanese TV thinks it sucks!

Yesterday I was watching the Saturday morning talk shows here in Tokyo and they were talking about it. One of the commentators actually said, "In English that word means piss, why didn't they just name it kuso("shit" in Japanese)?!" All the other hosts laughed and agreed.

And might I be the first to say

Wiiiiiiii! [firefoxflicks.com]

'Wii' just a gimmick?

Let me answer your question with a question...

No shit?

Archaic kana

The japanese can pronounce it just fine. The language used to include kana with the wi sound ( in katakana and in hiragana), and now they use a kana compound, , like they do with other foreign sounds.

The growth of a brand

From the article:

The moment you have to begin to explain your branding in pedantic detail - which Nintendo is doing through both its spokespeople and its promotional material - you're screwed.

On the surface, this seems quite logical. After all, a good brand should be instantly recognizable to the observer. People should immediately know what you are talking about, and why it should matter to them.

But what the writer is missing out on is the fact that ALL brands must go through a building phase. Even the name 'Revolution' had to be spoken, explained, and repeated. (Let's be honest - the name wasn't an obvious fit until AFTER we saw the controller!)

But I digress, back to the point of my post. Every brand must be talked up to become a useful marketing tool. I used to work for GTE. I was there when they merged with Bell Atlantic to become 'Verizon'. Boy did that sound like a stupid name. I remember all the internal e-mails and printed flyers that were circulated, explaining to all of us just why this was such a cool name, pointing out all the absurd meanings behind the name, the logo, even the frickin' colors for crying out loud. But look at the Verizon brand now. Instantly recognized. You immediately know what services they offer, and why you need (or don't need) them.

As cool as the name 'Revolution' was, it's appeal was primarily to the current gaming audience. Just as with the Sega Genesis, the significance of the name was only meaningful to those already interested in the video game industry.

Which is not Nintendo's target audience. Not anymore. It costs too much to cater to such a demanding lot. And the word 'revolution' doesn't exactly conjur up an image of friendly fun for the soft core mass market.

So even though all of us here wish the Revolution name had stuck, that doesn't mean that this name won't actually be a more marketable, more recognizable choice for Nintendo.

And a plea to those companies making game console "skins" - a nice flashy Revolution logo will sell like HOTCAKES!

We are the Knights...

Am I the only one who can't stop hearing "We are Knights who say Wii!" over and over in their head?

I guess it's time for my meds again.