May I Go Wii Now?

In what could take the title of Most Stunningly Bad Product Naming Decision away from Pocari Sweat or Calpis (never name a beverage after something that sounds like a bodily secretion in ANY language), Nintendo announced the official name of their upcoming next-generation video game console yesterday.

Let me point out, before we continue, that the code name for the project, the Nintendo “Revolution”, was a perfectly suitable one and very much in line with Nintendo’s philosophy of continual innovation and development of new video game experiences. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just gone with that.

So, now that that’s out of the way, dig this: It will be called the “Wii.” At first glance, I thought this was pronounced “why” as in “Why in the blue hell would I want to buy this?” I was wrong. It’s pronounced “we.” Or “wee.” Yeah, that’s MUCH better.

In searching Yahoo to find the news item I linked above, it asked me “Did you mean “nintendo wifi?” Google interprets it correctly, but still, this is not what you want your product name to do in a search engine.

“Hey, Billy, do you wanna come over this weekend? I just got some more ChinPokeMon!” “Nope, I’m gonna stay home and play with my Wii.”

“Mommy! Let’s go to Best Buy! I wanna Wii!”

“Put this disc in your Wii, let’s see what happens.”

On the upside: it’s marketing decisions like this that make my decision to get on the Xbox 360 bandwagon look that much wiser. I wouldn’t have bought a Revolution anyhow, but NOBODY is gonna buy a friggin’ Wii. If the Sony folks would just announce when the Asstastic Buttsnoggler is gonna hit stores the cycle will be complete.