Nintendo Wii

http://revolution.ign.com/articles/703/703502p1.html
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6148462.html

I personally liked Revolution more, this just sounds gimmicky, more-so when they keep using it as a pun. ;/

[EDIT] Added Gamespots take.

Your post showed great restraint, well done. When I first heard the news I almost wiid myself laughing.

WEE WEE

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

Walk into game and say:

"Can I have a wee?"

I was more in a befuddled state of mind at the time of see'ing it, was like, wtf is Nintendo making now....oh, the REAL Rev's name.

Tbh though, I get the feeling it'll catch on, it's simple, and it seems to roll off my toungue better then "Revolution", although that's possibly because I say "we" everyday.

I was looking forward to getting a Revolution. I don't know if I can buy something named "wii."

LOL Man, I hope to god this is a joke!

short for Weird, I gather. I remember feeling the same when I heard of the Cube... And that's settled in alright.

:/

I vote for Nintendo WTF. Hey, its better than Wii. And people thought VIsta was the worst name ever.

I'm still sitting here thinking wtf were they smoking?

I was dissappointed when katana became dreamcast.. Dolphin to GameCube was whatever. Longhorn to Vista.. meh.

But-- I think this one really takes the cake as far as bad name changes go.

even cnn is making a "wii" joke: http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/27/commentary/game_over/nintendo/?cnn=yes

wii?! com'on, thats the best they can do after the 'cube' and the '64'?!
I think they should have just kept revolution. This cant be what really is the name, thats is really kind of retarded.
Too bad so many people will make so many bad(yet funny) puns about it.

;() MUHU HAHAHAHAH HAAAAAAAAAA

Wii oh wii... ¬_¬

I'm not buying anything that sounds like someone taking a piss, sorry it's too much. I'm not getting this purely on the principle of it having the most ridiculous name in the world.

Yes, the puns will be never ending. :/

I can see why they had to change the name from Revolution... Wii is gonna take some getting used to, though.

Oh man ... I liked Revolution. Oh well, Wii it is. Whatever, as long as it's fun to play.

I liked revolution too, Wii just seems really stupid, pronouced "we" I guess they are trying to suggest a family, or community or something, unless its some Japanese word.

maybe the PS3 will be renamed PiiiS

LOL thats gone and cracked me up grey.

as gamers, Revolution is a better name. But Wii is friendly, and sounds cute, and will appeal well to the masses. It is a change.

I can see it catching on. I'd like to see a Wii in every home...

"What console would you like sir?"

"I'll take the PiiiS, please"

FFS :/


Good? I don't want good, I want f***ing AWESOME. What's the Japanese for that?

Kids at school will be saying:

"My Dad and I were playing with my Wii last night"

"Do you want to come over after school and play with my Wii"?

"I'm grounded. My Mom won't let me play with my Wii for a week."

Playstation :P

Hehe, good one ;)

Btw, what colour is your Wii?

As I read elsewhere:

The Sony PSiii pronounced : "Sigh"

you realize that kids in the USA don't really think urine when you say we. Actually, weewee means penis and wee doesn't really mean anything.

So, it isn't that funny to us.

now, call it the caca or the pee, then we are in business.

Pfft, maybe the XBox 360 should've been named the XXX-Box 360, LOL... There, maybe THAT'LL make you think twice... MuwHAHAHAHAHA!!! WOOT! (Sorry, this thread just got me going today for some strange reason)...

wee still means urine/urinate here in the USA. It has the same meaning as "pee".

Perhaps they'll rethink it for some places. I mean Revolution was a kick ass take names kinda name and we know how Reggie Fils Aime is ;) It can also be used in a new wave, everyone rise up and fight the status quo ... so in my opinion Revolution was far better because it gets both gamers and people who are sick of the norm. Wii ... well I guess we'll see how they do. Up until now I really didn't think they'd lost their marbles but man, I guess when they decided to go radical they wanted to go all the way. Personally, I think Revolution was far enough.

Wii are the bloody reptiles who go WII!!!!
--Nigel Cochran, fusion rock guitarist.

"
Good? I don't want good, I want f***ing AWESOME. What's the Japanese for that?"

Subarashiiiii!

actually that means 'super!'...

When you're a kid and you wanna go Wii! ... but you ain't got drugs yet!

Nintendo loses millions of credibility points. I think the system will be doomed now. It's just got to be a hoax,
Then again, they did use the god awful gaycube name instead of Dolphin which was a sleek looking system till they turned it into a purple tomy toaster.

it means piss here in the uk. Looks like you're wrong.

How can a huge company like not understand what a disaster calling it wii is?

ALso, it's true that ii does mean good in Japanese. But what's the W doing there?

I don't think it's as much a disaster as everyone thinks. Everyone always hates the names of new systems. Then they learn to like them. People hated the name of the Revolution I think. I'm fairly certain they despised Dreamcast over Daikatana. Of course there are still people who haven't gotten over the name change from Dolphin, like ENAY, but even that name had it's detractors. :-)

sswift, remember what happened to the Dreamcast?

Case closed ;)

I was talking about the USA, one eye...

and kuron. I've only heard people exposed to the UK in some mannor understand Wee and urine.

Either through the TV, or because they know people in the UK.

The 2 sub-languages are starting to merge some tho.

People in the US might understand wee to mean pee, but in the same way they understand what the boot of a car is. They know what it means, but when they hear we, they don't think piss.

oui oui on the other hand, is instantly linked to weewee.

Here in N.Ireland wee can also mean small as well as pee, it depends on where you say it in the sentence. Either way Wii is a really stupid name. I guess its no worse than GameBoy.

> People in the US might understand wee to mean pee, but in the same way they understand what the boot of a car is

Must be a regional thing, like soda and pop. Here in NJ taking a wee has always been known as the bodily function.

While it is true that people generally dislike the names of new systems, in this case, as has been demonstrated here and on numerous other forums and in the press, phonetic "Wii" is often associated with genitals and/or bodily functions by English speakers.

Nintendo would have realised this in their name-evaluation process, but, since the final decision probably occurred at the Japanese head office, by Japanese speakers, not enough emphasis was placed on the potential English connotations.

I wonder if they should have called the system:

Nintendo [insert Japanese word for penis]
or
Nintendo [insert Japanese word for urination]

Ah well, I still want one.

Hm... you don't have one already?


Okay, that's enough :/



I think the whole "Wii" thing will blow over pretty quickly.
By claiming that "wii" sounds like genetalia, people are also saying that the word "we" sounds like genetalia. In other words, they're insulting themselves.

The other solution that Nintendo could probably come up with for the English market is a totally unpronounceable logo (thanks to fancy fonts, etc.) so that people won't call the system by name :P

Hey, at least Nintendo HAS a name for this thing. We have to remember that Sony is just incrementing version numbers, and XBox 360 is also sort of a version incremention (and makes no sense; 360 implies they went in a new direction, then gave up and headed back to where they were -- the number they are looking for is 180).

jeez, this thread has totally altered my thinking

That name just makes me think more and more that I'll be glad when nintendo just dries up and goes away. :)

perhaps regional in the USA... after all, people near me take rides in am byou lances and where I grew up, the clothes need warshed.

@Damp, regional, it probably is, but I grew up in the south, lived in California and now live in a Yankee state and everywhere "wee" was used interchangable with "pee".

My wife still gets after me about that one. ;c)

Yeah, I remember that PlayStation sounded sick about 10 years ago when it first came out... However, PlayStation did seem to catch on, and look how successful it's been... Now with the PS3 on the horizon, that's gonna be something to think about...

Yes, I know that it sounds like an embarrassing name, and there's gonna be some contraversy about Wii, maybe they may change the game to be more "Americanized" before too long, they may want to have Nintendo keep the Revolution name for reasons therein. At least it'll sell far better with the name "Revolution."

Wii!

My friend and I were joking about it and we decided ... yeah it's pretty much perfect. You know how Mario goes down a slide ... Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

I can hear it now!

Girls can have wiis too.

And, as POedBoy said, "Mommy, I wanna go play on Tommy's wii!"

Wii means piss. It's that simple.

> Of course there are still people who haven't
> gotten over the name change from Dolphin,
> like ENAY, but even that name had it's detractors. :-)

Crap names will always be crap names. Nothing crap ever gets better with time :) I think Playstation is a pretty cool name. DS is also a cool name, but I still hate PSP. I still call it the Sony Paint Shop Pro.

And Gamecube and X-Box + X-Box 360. Stupid stupid names which don't sound cool in the slightest, but compared to Wii, they're almost legendarily good names. :) I thought Gamecube was a great hoax, shame it was true.

quoted for hilarity

I like almost every name consoles have had, with a few exceptions - DS and Wii.

Im still trying to figure out how I would tell the salesperson I want to buy a Wii. In Norwegian, "Wii" is just a sound you make when you're very happy or having an orgasm (girls).
You'll just end up saying "Hey, yeah .. I want to buy that Nintendo thing.. you know, the new thing they made.. the revoltion?.."

"Oh, you want the Wii."

"NO! Um... NO. I'm not looking for that. Uh... I'll... just... find what I'm looking for somewhere else."

Wii think Nintendo is taking the Piis.

- II stands for "good" in Japanese
- the "W" stands for "Very", but Japanese people simply can't pronounce the "V" ;-)

Yeah, Wii, it's almost like Intel's Viiv, in a way... At least Viiv's an abbreviation (another topic with that one). However, I wonder if Wii could be an abbreviation now that I'm thinking about it...

Jokes aside, I think it sounds alright... but... saying that.. if it flops .. like the gamecube... it will end up being called "nintendo why?"

I've observed japanese people in FFXI say "w" when they think something's funny - as westeners use LOL.
If the "ii" stands for *good*, wouldn't a direct translation be "LOL, thats a good one!" ?

Yeah, it's for sure with names like "GameCube" and "Wii" this may wind up putting Nintendo in the same position as Sega was in when the Dreamcast came about. Then when the PS3 comes about, Nintendo may wind up being a software-only company like Sega, it's bound to happen... Nintendo may realize that the Wii may not sell as much as they may expect.

I doubt they'll become a software only company. The whole point of their consoles is that they control the hardware. I could see them maybe falling into making peripherals for other consoles, but that's pretty unlikely. Also, people keep forgetting Nintendo's strength in handhelds when they predict the company's doom.

That's real pressure weeing !!

Well, if you have big names like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Donkey Kong, Nintendo may sell well with names like those (they have in the past), then they may have an okay chance... After all, it's names like that you can't find on an X360 or PS3...

> I've observed japanese people in FFXI say "w"
> when they think something's funny - as westeners use LOL.

w in Japanese chat rooms is to do with warau, an abbreviation for the verb for (Laugh/smile). But that still doesn't have anything to do with the W'eeeeee bit.

wii is more like an abbreviation for the word 'unchi'.

ENAY, my stranger friend, my unknown-forum-guy-I've-never-spoken-with-before - I was kidding :)

I wasn't ;)

don't make me smack you, stranger! ;)

"Wii" can mean piss... so does "we" and "whee".

I'm sure you've all said both in very weird places.

*cough*Perverts!

Just when you thought Nintendo was acting really intelligently

I would've taken a bullet for the Revolution, until now...

Least on the upside we shouldn't be see'ing any games for the system that tag on the systems name to the end of the game level (remember all those "Super <gameName>", "<gameName>64" &, "<gameName>:DS" games...).

ey, whats Wii turned on its head? M!!
maybe its a nintendo pastry?

Super Mario Wii
Zelda Wii
Metroid Wii
F-Zero Wii
Pilotwings Wii

... I don't know I can see it. Sure it sounds like a 3 year old pronouncing all your favorite games with a screwed up "3" on the end but ...

I wonder if Geordies will call it the 'wye aye' (man).

with the ii spelling... i could see people calling it why.

it's going to be called The Console Formerly Known as Revolution...

Super Mario Formerly Known as Revolution
Zelda Formerly Known as Revolution
Metroid Formerly Known as Revolution
F-Zero Formerly Known as Revolution
Pilotwings Formerly Known as Revolution

I don't know ... Wii might be better ;)

You gotta admit though, that's quite a crapload of free advertising Nintendo came up with there, regardless of whether or not the people liked the name change.

Yeah, I think that's why they did it, in part anyway.

It's a stupid name, but no one will care once they get used to it. Pretty much sums up what I think of nintendo though. If your going to try and be controvercial, they could at least try and do it in a cool way. (crazy japanese)

Yeah, but Wii isn't even crazy Japanese. It's just plain and simple stupid!

It is a very bizarre name. I'm thinking maybe they'll rename it for the west?

They've sworn up and down that's the final name. Anyway, I think they got what they wanted out of it. Everyoneone and their grandmother is making fun of them. No publicity is bad publicity.

Can't wait to play Super Mawiio and Pilot Wiings... oh, and BTW PS3 is being renamed to PIIIS

You know I could see that ... Pilotwiings for sure ;)

That's almost like renaming the XBox 360 XXX-Box Three-Sex Toy (Man, that was bad)!! Needless to say, that would so right along with PIIIS and Nintendo Wii. Why not?

With all these cheesy console jokes, it's time to get in my infamous X-Bol-X joke. (remember to say it fast)

Goodbye, poor thread.

:'(

Goodbye Aurora more likely. Seen how many threads he's posted that in???

Anyway back on topic, I appear to be the only person who thinks it reads more like 'nintendo why?' =]