Nintendo Revolution Renamed 'Wii'

Retroneous writes "The Nintendo Revolution has had its name changed to the Nintendo Wii." Confirmation on the official Revolution site. Update: 04/27 16:32 GMT by Z : More information available from a Gamasutra article: "New details on the disc format have also been revealed: 'Instead of a tray, a single, innovative, self-loading media bay will play both 12-centimeter optical discs used for the new system as well as Nintendo GameCube discs. Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content.'"

Oh Good Lord

[Synesthesiatic]

Wii Nintendo, Wii? Gotta say that's a very bad name. It doesn't make me think of video games at all, and opens itself to too many easy jokes (Wii Bother?). Maybe it sounds clever in Japanese, but I think the Revolution was a much better name for the console. But what do I know, I don't have a marketing degree or anything.

Oh no.

[RyoShin]

Congratulations, Nintendo.

You've been building hype. New downloading. Twenty years of backwards compatibility. Brand new interface. Small. Sleek.

This is one gigantic step backwards. One, huge, gigantic step backwards.

I could go on a rant about this for a few paragraphs, but I'm too dismayed. Instead, I think I can some up everything I'm thinking in one sentence:

This is going to be known, gargonly, in America as "Nintendo Piss".

Fucking dammit.

This name is..... interesting

[CuBeFReNZy]

I personally wouldn't vote for this name. It's too odd sounding for a video game system. Their explanation for why they choose this name makes a lot of sense, but they shouldn't have to explain the name to convince people about anything. The system's capabilities should speak for itself, not a name. I guess in the same way I got used to "DS" I'll get used to "Wii".

Japanese name only?

[revlayle]

I wonder if the offical name for Europe and North America will be different? Much like NES and SNES was the Famicom and SuperFamicon (respectively) in Japan.

Of course, back then, those systems were released in Japan first and the original Japanese names were never used as part of the marketing campaign in other parts of the world.

Re:The question now is...

[RyoShin]

This might be the best way to go.

If we can keep the "Revolution" moniker alive and well in gaming circles and sites, and only refer to the "Wii" name when talking about the name itself, we might be able to convince Nintendo that this was a stupid fucking idea.

Of course, names can be changed before actual release.

Ultra 64, anyone?

This still pisses me off, though. Even "Nintendo GO" was better than this.

Re:April 1st was 26 days ago

[RogueyWon]

It's not an April 1st. Right now, the only explanation I can think of which casts Nintendo as anything other than a bunch of utter muppets is that this is the first half of some multi-staga announcement, in which it's revealed, once the initial furore has died down, that "Wii" is either an acronym for something less stupid, or the start of a longer name. For this reason, I'm holding back right now, for fear of being made to look stupid later.

However, I've commented on Nintendo's decade-old talent for self-destruction before, so it's entirely plausible that this is, in fact, nothing more than a really good example of them shooting themselves square in the foot again.

That Said

[Rydia]

People are overreacting to this. It may be a dumb name, but the majority of the population isn't going to instantly think "wee" and giggle, or worry about jokes on a playground. If anything, it'll get kids talking about it, and all publicity is good publicity. But the whining about the loss of the revolution name is a bit silly, people alternately saying that the masses are sheep for buying marketing while simultaneously talking about how they won't buy it because the name is so silly.

Actual reaction will doubtlessly be in between.

I think people have the wrong idea..

[jonnythan]

It's not that bad. Really.

They clearly state that they intend to bring the video game system from "gamers" to "everyone else." "Everyone else" doesn't want an "X-Box" or a "Playstation" or a "Revolution" or a "Super Whiz-Bang Toy 2010." They want something simple, sophisticated, intuitive, and a little artsy. "Wii" fits the bill for that type of goal.

I don't think the name is going to appeal to the gamer sect at all, but then again the gamer sect doesn't really give a shit about the name - they care about how cool the games are.

Actually the gamers would probably buy any console if it said "Bad Ass Motherfucker" on it, but, barring that...

.... all the way home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I get the name and it's sort of neat. No, it doesn't work when you have to explain the concept to people (especially in 'merica). I think you all are missing the point that this name is not aimed at teenage boys who are self-conscious about their size and lack of female companionship. Sure, they could have named it the GameCube720wtfbbqpwnedhax0rb0x3n but his isn't aimed at teen to 20 something males. This is aimed at my friends who now have children.
Think about some of the DS titles that have gotten major attention. Brain Teaser and Nintendogs?! Guys don't admit to playing them but women are snapping them up like crazy. This name is aimed squarely over our heads at at the remaining 90% of the market that don't call themselves gamers.
Is the name kind of ghey. Yup. Especially compared to Revolution. Is this a potentially brilliant marketing move, probably. Are all of you who wanted a "Revolution" still going to buy one anyways. Yes, you just won't tell your friends about it quite yet.

Re:April 1st was 26 days ago

[joe 155]

You are right, about the code name thing... what I'm not sure about is how good it is to build up a brand idea around a name, such as revolution (or Longhorn for that matter), and then change it to something stupid sounding that people will feel silly saying, Vista/Wii (which I'm sure they must know is pronounced the same as the word for piss), and that people don't really know or associate with the product... shooting ones self in the foot, methinks

Re:And one Xbox to rule them all....

[SScorpio]

The Playstation brand has been keeping Sony afloat for a few years now. Unless they really mess up the PS3 in some way expect it to be a success.

Nintendo while not number one has been having constent profit, and has had one quarter in company history that was not profitable. This was causing by the extra investments and the USD taking a dive in value. But over 100 years of profit looks good.

Microsoft while a rich company does not have limitless funding. Shareholders will eventually get upset with all the money being pissed away. While it remains to be seen what happens this generation, I'd be extremely suprised if Microsoft killed off both Sony and Nintendo. Hell it will be surprising if the Xbox360 turns a profit 1/2 through it's life cycle.

Yeah! The Good News!

[Shadow Wrought]

This is actually great news. See, every time Nintendo does something with a console, there is always one really stupid thing about it. With the wii (did I just really write that?) its the name that means that we can simply keep calling it the Revolution and it won't suck.

Kudos to Nintendo for getting their stupidity out of their sytem early, and in a manner which won't affect the machines performance.

Re:Make it less useful, please.

[Rydia]

Because Nintendo doesn't want them to use it that way. Because no one actually uses their system for that, since they all have DVD players. Because people who don't want to use the system for that don't want to pay extra for a useless feature.

The list goes on and on.

Hilarious

[realmolo]

Seriously, that's the dumbest product name EVER.

I have a feeling that it's not going to last. In Japan, maybe "Wii" doesn't sound ridiculous, but in English-speaking countries, it sounds stupid. I'm sure Nintendo of America is having a nice long talk with Nintendo of Japan right now.

Re:DVD "attachment"

[mikeisme77]

The XBox didn't play DVDs out of the box. By requiring an attachment to play DVDs, they shave a couple bucks off licensing fees required to play MPEG-2 files and whatever other licensing fees they would otherwise have to pay on ALL consoles when not ALL consumers will actually use the DVD viewing capability. As I more than likely won't use it as a DVD player, I'm happy to not have that extra cost passed down to me.

On another note... when I first saw the 'Wii' in the headline, I thought somebody had taken the 'f' out of 'wifi'...

Re:April 1st was 26 days ago

[lucabrasi999]

What I'm less sure about is how good a name "Wii" is.

Well, at least they didn't name it "Monday" [com.com].

Re:Oh no.

[shiznatix]

This is one gigantic step backwards. One, huge, gigantic step backwards.

Uhhh are you kidding? A name change in the product is suddenly a huge step backwards? And this was modded 'insightful'!? Whats insightful about a idiot saying a name change will make it a complete and total failure of a product!?

Re:Why wii? Confusion with Wifi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read their official homepage, they explain their reasoning for the name as um... weird as it sounds. I don't know if I'm taking a liking to it, but hey, it's Nintendo, it'll probably catch on, despite it's name.

Re:Why wii? Confusion with Wifi?

[fbjon]

That might be on purpose, actually.

Re:Oh Good Lord

[venicebeach]

It's WE, not WHY. At least get the jokes correct.

Seems to me one of the problems with this name is that it's not immediately clear how to pronounce it from the way it is written.

Re:That Said

[iapetus]

It may be a dumb name, but the majority of the population isn't going to instantly think "wee" and giggle

I dispute this claim.

Re:April 1st was 26 days ago

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

decade-old talent for self-destruction

????

I fail to see how nintendo can be talented at self-destruction if they've been doing it for a decade.

I mean, I have no inherent abilities at self-destruction, but give me free reign at Nintendo & I'll run the company into the ground in less then a month.

Re:Oh no.

[Guppy06]

I'd buy it even if it were called "OMG PONIES!"

Seriously though, if your buy/don't buy decision revolves around the name of the console (as opposed to the games, or even just shiney specs), then you're not the target audience. You don't broaden the game-buying audience by being all 1337, you instead make it approachable by people who are currently put off by exactly that kind of attitude.

If they were trying to be badass and edgy, they'd probably call it "Xbox" or something.

Why are you looking for validation of your masculinity in your video game purchases to begin with?

Okay, WTF

[RyoShin]

The Slashdot blurb has been updated.

Owners will have the option of equipping a small, self-contained attachment to play movies and other DVD content.

I really, really hope I'm reading this wrong, but my understanding of this statement is that the Revolution will have an external DVD player?

No chip I just pop in the back to enable DVD functionality. No special remote to use DVD functionality. No, it's an entirely seperate unit that you plug into the Revoltuion.

Why the fuck even bother with that? You can get small-as-hell DVD players now for about $40 at your local Target (which will probably be cheaper than the Revolution add on.)

Did Nintendo just take one huge shit of bad ideas and release them all on one day, or did they take small shits progressively and just hold off on flushing them all?

Nintendo, you're working backwards! PLEASE STOP!

Re:First Pun!

[SetupWeasel]

what fucktard thought that custom optical discs would be a good idea?

The same fucktards that want to make pirating games difficult without breaking the game or your system.

Re:"Touching is good...", "Wii-wii..." Oh My

[Guppy06]

Oh, I fully accept the kiddy aspects of my Magical Purple Lunchbox of Joy (aka GameCube). Real adults actually like being kids again. The denial aspect is instead for the competition, which is actually marketed to teenagers, i. e. mental juveniles that are trying hard to look more "mature" and "adult."

If you're buying video games to support your personal image, aside from being a lost cause, it suggests you're not all that interested in games to begin with.

Re:Oh Good Lord

[SetupWeasel]

Whenever I use the first person plural pronoun, I think of urine too.

No, you think of urine because:

1) You already heard the cheap joke.
2) You don't like Nintendo.

Look deep into your heart and tell me that PS3 doesn't sound like "Piss 3."

Re:No DVD playback out of the box? Whee...

[TheCrackRat]

I don't think the reason DVD playback was left out was because of difficulty to implement, I think they probably didn't want to pay the license fees and raise the price. Not everyone needs another DVD player, and people who already have one don't want to pay for another one.

http://wiiwiiwii.ytmnd.com/

[casualsax3]

My contribution

Re:That Said

[Daetrin]

people alternately saying that the masses are sheep for buying marketing while simultaneously talking about how they won't buy it because the name is so silly.

I haven't seen a lot of people saying that. My perspective is that i bought a GameCube, i thought it was lots of fun, i didn't mind that it was a small purple cube with a handle. Lots of other people however made fun of it for being a small purple cube with a handle, they made jokes about lunchboxes, they said it was kiddie, they went out and bought an XBox or a PS2 instead. GameCube marketshare falls (or rather, fails to rise as much as it could) so less developers make games for the GameCube and my ability to play fun games on the GameCube is adversely affected. Likewise if Nintendo sticks with "Wii" i'm still going to buy a Wii, i expect it will be fun, but i expect a lot of other people will make fun of it and go buy a PS3 or an XBox 360 instead.

If it's fair to categorize people as sheep and non-sheep (i'm not going to get into that argument) then the non-sheep are not unaffected by the actions and attitudes of the sheep. That's why people who consider themselves to be non-sheep get so pissed off about the actions of people they consider to be sheep. If it didn't make a difference the non-sheep wouldn't care.

Re:N Wii

[thatguywhoiam]

Call it the 'N Wii' instead of the 'Nintendo Wii' and it doesn't sound so bad.

Ennui (ennui): Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: "The servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about their masters" (John Barth).

Hmmmmmm.

Petition?

[the_other_thing]

Why doesn't someone who can speak more eloquent than I start up a petition [petitiononline.com]?

Re:Oh Good Lord

[DemonSkyy]

Obviously their devious marketing scheme is working... Just look how much Wii are all talking about this thing...

Re:Oh Good Lord

[badasscat]

Wii Nintendo, Wii? Gotta say that's a very bad name. It doesn't make me think of video games at all

And "Revolution" does why?

"Revolution" makes me think of guillotines and blood running down rain-soaked streets to chants of "Vive la France!"

Not video games.

Anyway, "Revolution" is a name that makes promises that it can't necessarily keep. It's a good code name, because it's hinting at what Nintendo *wants* to happen. But it's not a good product name because once it's on the market for a while, people are going to judge it by whether it's lived up to that name.

Names like PlayStation, GameCube, Xbox, etc. are better names because they don't make any promises beyond basically describing what their core function is. (The "Xbox" is so named because it ran on DirectX.) Same with names like "Nintendo Entertainment System" or "Atari Video Computer System". The best names just say what the system does and nothing more - it's the system itself that does the talking. And the names become iconic because of that - not because there was anything special about the name itself. Form follows function - that's as true with iconic names as anything else.

I'm definitely not sold on "Wii", just because it smacks of one of those outsource naming firms that companies hire to come up with "hip" and "cool" names with wacky spellings for common words. The problem with "wii" is that it leaves themselves open to derision - it's got a sound that we all know but a spelling that doesn't belong to any real word, so we're left to interpret it how we want. And part of that interpretation, for me, anyway, is that they're trying way too hard. That's even beyond the fact that all I can hear is Homer Simpson saying "wheeeeeeeeee!" whenever I see the logo. (I was going to suggest that it might have been fine if they'd just called it "We", but then I realized they'd get a whole bunch of "Entertainment for women" jokes.)

But they were right to give it a proper name other than the Revolution code-name. I just don't think they really picked the right one.

Re:Why wii? Confusion with Wifi?

[fm6]

Your retail experience must be at Radio Shack. That's the only chain where the clerks throw around terms like "data transmission standard" and expect the customers to know what they're talking about.

Re:Oh no.

[Thorkytel Ant-Head]

The fact that GC owners, more than the other two consoles (because the other two have more games), have to buy a second console in order to play most third-party games is a bad thing, yet so many Nintendo fans seem to represent it as a badge of honor. It's not.

Yep, the GameCube is not a good first console. However, it's a great second console. If you already own a PS2, there's not much reason to buy an Xbox, or vice versa. However, the GameCube has its share of great, exclusive games, and it is low priced, which makes it a fantastic second console.

As for third-party support, Nintendo is not going to win by competing with Sony and Microsoft for games that are released for all three platforms. Where they will succeed with games that would only be possible on their new console. Look at the Nintendo DS for examples of that. Nintendogs. Brain Age. Nintendo is not looking for the "Which version of Burnout 3 should I buy?"market. They're looking for the "this game would not be possible on any other console" market.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's Because They are Japanese

[Nazmun]

It's the only way I can justify their explanation:

http://revolution.nintendo.com/ [nintendo.com]

It's like a goofy choice for english wording in the middle of japanese anime, except in the real world.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think someone forgets how stupid the highly technical consumer thought the name iPod (and for that matter iMac) sounded; many people (who would go on to buy one version for themselves in the future) said "Why would I want something that sounds like a disease where something is growing on my eye. I've got an 'eye-pod'"

Don't forget that "Playstation" sounded like a little kiddy-toy that you put in front of a toddler that they banged wooden posts into; XBox sounded like a name someone came up with to sound cool.

All names suck ...
We forget how crappy iPod, Playstation and XBox were because our apprieciation of the product makes up for how crappy the name is.

External = Dongle. Drive is built in.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's NOT what the TFA is trying to say (albeit badly). The Revolution has a single, built in drive that can handle both regular sized discs and the smaller ones from the Gamecube. The fact that the single drive can do both sizes without using a tray is probably what they're calling innovative. This is nothing new though, any of us following Nintendo have known this for months.

As for the external bit, I'm sure it's just going to be a dongle that enables the DVD playback license, just like on the Xbox. The dongle probably plugs into the USB port or something (the fact the Rev-er, Wii has USB ports and flash card ports to me is incredibly awesome, by the way).