The Wii Controversy: Is Nintendo fooling us all?

Everyone must have heard about it by now – the disaster of a brand name that is “Wii”, the supposed new name for Nintendo’s Revolution console. With thousands of Wii jokes now in circulation, Nintendo fans all over the world in shock, and haters laughing their asses off, how come no one has questioned the actual legitimacy of the name? Of course, we got a press release straight from Nintendo filled up to the brim with pretentious phrasing. But couldn’t it be that they’re toying with us all, merely utilizing the backlash as free advertisement?

The name and branding blog Snark Hunting is one of the first to step forward and call out their doubts – and they’ve got some good points. The first one we should all have witnessed ourselves now, possibly without realizing it.

“Allowing your audience time to vent is not SOP in a name announcement, and also telegraphs that Nintendo knows what a stinker this name would be.”

In their opinion, it’s not possible to come up with a worse name for a product – and people’s reactions mostly seem to show that. But here’s the most interesting aspect so far – no trademarks for “Wii” have been registered.

“This is unprecedented for Nintendo and it is not possible that this is an oversight.”

This leads the author to the conclusion that Nintendo must have registered the real name under a dummy corporation, to be revealed at E3. The whole truth has yet to show up, it seems. Is the name genuine or not? Whatever we may think, articles like these will boost up the hype even higher. And with that – Wii or not – Nintendo has already won. Clever.

Everyone must have heard about it by now – the disaster of a brand name that is “Wii”, the supposed new name for Nintendo’s Revolution console. With thousands of Wii jokes now in circulation, Nintendo fans all over the world in shock, and haters laughing their asses off, how come no one has questioned the actual legitimacy of the name? Of course, we got a press release straight from Nintendo filled up to the brim with pretentious phrasing. But couldn’t it be that they’re toying with us all, merely utilizing the backlash as free advertisement?

The name and branding blog Snark Hunting is one of the first to step forward and call out their doubts – and they’ve got some good points. The first one we should all have witnessed ourselves now, possibly without realizing it.

“Allowing your audience time to vent is not SOP in a name announcement, and also telegraphs that Nintendo knows what a stinker this name would be.”

In their opinion, it’s not possible to come up with a worse name for a product – and people’s reactions mostly seem to show that. But here’s the most interesting aspect so far – no trademarks for “Wii” have been registered.

“This is unprecedented for Nintendo and it is not possible that this is an oversight.”

This leads the author to the conclusion that Nintendo must have registered the real name under a dummy corporation, to be revealed at E3. The whole truth has yet to show up, it seems. Is the name genuine or not? Whatever we may think, articles like these will boost up the hype even higher. And with that – Wii or not – Nintendo has already won. Clever.