Nintendo Wii

I guess they are hoping that it will piss all over the competition…

They really are taking the piss….

*groan*

They just keep on coming

They really are taking the piss….
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thats like the 100th time i have heard that joke, aready its getting more over used than the PSpoo…

i wounder will the name grow on people, when i first heard the Dreamcast name i thought it sucked, same with xbox, but i like them now

I dont mind the name, all publicity = good publicity and all that, you could call it anything and id still be buying it, i think its gone past the point of fanboyness and is now in the realms of realistic excitement.

OMG!
Mario Wii first screenie!!

http://content.ytmnd.com/content/2/4/7/24726e326049f91b41bc427edeb231f2.jpg

someone posted in our forums

Anyway, that whole line about the name being palattable in every language is hogwash. There is no native sound for “wi” in Japanese, the closest approximation would sound somewhere between “ui” and the intended “we”. Young Japanese won’t have a problem with it, but older ones will probably give up trying to pronounce it after a few months. Here’s hoping that the Japanese market comes up with an easier-on-the-stomach moniker for it.
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but i don’t know how true that is

i cant wait to get one!!! im gona throw a house party the day i get it so all my friends can come around and play with my wii.

We have seen the general response from English speakers on Nintendo’s console renaming — from Revolution to Wii — but how about a foreign market where Wii does not evoke phallic imagery? A friend of ours fluent in Japanese took a gander at the Japanese news site News 19 to gauge the response in the Land of the Rising Sun. Here are the highlights of what he found:
post 39: “Wee is an english baby word for pee or penis according to foreign forums. This might be bad. May be this is why foreigner’s response is pretty bad.”
posts 47-49: “I think Revolution was a better name.”
posts 60, 62: “It is better naming than Revolution.”
post 116: “It looks good if you write it, but awkward if you say it.”
post 122: “‘Can I have Wii.’ It’s little bit embarrassing to say it.”
The other posts are puns “with a drunk noise that Japanese people make (some people say something similar to ‘wii’ when they are drunk in Japan), associations with the wrestler Stan Hansen (he does not know why, and neither do we), and the “rest are mostly making fun of the fact that it is pronounced the same as ‘wee,’ or, in Japan when you say yes, you sometimes say ‘ui-,’ which is similar to ‘wii.'” It’s fascinating to have some insight as to how other languages are taking to the new name.[/quote:aa58e860db]

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/28/f…esponds-to-wii/

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.[/quote:15a2d4ce50]

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/30/1748242

Maybe so. It’d be an interesting move from Nintendo…

someone posted in our forums

Anyway, that whole line about the name being palattable in every language is hogwash. There is no native sound for “wi” in Japanese, the closest approximation would sound somewhere between “ui” and the intended “we”. Young Japanese won’t have a problem with it, but older ones will probably give up trying to pronounce it after a few months. Here’s hoping that the Japanese market comes up with an easier-on-the-stomach moniker for it.
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but i don’t know how true that is[/quote:8030b58a5f]

I’m no scholar of the Japanese language, but I know enough to tell you it’s not hard at all to pronounce. Japanese pronounciation is very straightforward, unlike English (it’s the reading the fancy characters that’s hard ;) )
From what the dictionary tells me, the Japanese have an obscene word that’s pronounced “wi” (the ‘i’ is pronounced like the ‘y’ in ‘angry’) and given it uses katakana, I think it’s just the “wee” from English.
As for “ii” I read in an article that it is a word meaning “good” and indeed, my trusty dictionary tells me it can mean “good, nice, pleasant, fine, excellent, agreeable, ok”.
As for the pronounciation, it’s hard to “explain” for an English speaker, but not hard at all to pronounce. Think something like “weehee” but with short “ee” sounds, all pronounced in one go.

Still, it’s a silly, silly name
Even in French it sounds stupid (but at least not obscene) :lol:

i read an article recently on the reasons behind naming the console “wii”. In the japanese language they use is whats called “kanji”, and if im correct kanji is used to depict the meaning of the word or sentence, e.g. in “wii” the w would represent we, as a community of game players, playing together (i.e. europe, asia, u.s.) and the two i’s representing the controllers for the console but also co-op playing and interaction. i think the flash animation on the nintendo wii site shows the meaning well. im starting to like the new name more and more, short and sweet, easy to remember, but in the end, does the name of a product ultimately judge its success? if microsoft,sony and nintendo joined together to develope a single uber entertainment/games console, and gave it no name, would it effect sales?

It may be silly but at least its more orginal and fun than “Xbox 360” and “Playstation 3”.

I think Nintendo deserve a pat on the back for being a bit different.

I’m no scholar of the Japanese language, but I know enough to tell you it’s not hard at all to pronounce. Japanese pronounciation is very straightforward, unlike English (it’s the reading the fancy characters that’s hard ;) )
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Its been said on Japanese forums that is difficult to pronounce…. see Darksaviour post above. Pronunciation is not always as straight forward as it seems, you should hear me murdering the French language.

(boring languages discussion, sorry)
LOL, French isn’t easy to pronounce either, because of all the fancy vowel sounds that just have to be learnt and of some rules that make a given vowel being pronounced one way or another; and all the silent consonants that confuse you English speakers.
In comparison I like Japanese pronounciation (the first thing I usually try to learn in any language) because like I said it’s straightforward.
Straightforward like German, if you will. It looks complicated, but there is only one correct way of pronoucing what you are reading. And despite the use of Kanji characters (I believe the technical term is ideograms, r_mc_gowan, btw, as opposed to the Katakana and Hiragana which are just syllabic, again, AFAIK) it’s not as hard as, say, Chinese, with its tonal pronounciation…

r_mc_gowan:
I saw the video, and I agree with you that _visually_ it’s a good _logo_. I like the way they think about it. It’s just that the choice of word is poor. Maybe they could go the Prince way and simply create a unique symbol, you know? A new Kanji character, so to speak. That would certainly work, for a Japanese audience. Maybe they’ll just rename it for European/English speaking markets, like happened with previous consoles in the past. As for ‘W’ looking like a Kanji character, I’m afraid I can’t find anything obvious: there is one for “mountain”, one for “river”, and that’s about it. There is a “put together” kanji that almost looks like to ‘I’… but really it’s a far fetch and the meaning isn’t really related to “togetherness”.

but anyway, you are right, as long as the console itself changes things, who cares.

(sarcasm on)
Maybe they could use a svastika as the logo to give a new positive meaning to an ancient symbol that has been much abused. After all it means good luck in Indian, and is used to indicate shrines, IIRC, on Japanese maps…
(sarcasm off)

I suppose it’s a bit like parents naming their children with ridiculous names, somehow being completely oblivious to the abuse the kids are gonna have to endure throughout their childhood :?

Still, I have to say, it’s the first time in my life I am actually considering buying a console, without having even seen any game made for it. In my book, that says something :P

(sarcasm on)
Maybe they could use a svastika as the logo to give a new positive meaning to an ancient symbol that has been much abused. After all it means good luck in Indian, and is used to indicate shrines, IIRC, on Japanese maps…
(sarcasm off)[/quote:ab87c65c96]

Here, this is a bit older then the modern use…
http://www.gamestoaster.com/photos/shanghai/26a_0043.html

That was just a standard spiral pattern, which you would easily find in, say, Celtic knotworks or more commnly in key patterns (again in Celtic art). No, what I’m talking about is that sort of things:
name…
The last Penny Arcade podcast (well, it’s just a MP3 really) expressed my feeling very well, actually.

“Maybe they could use a svastika as the logo to give a new positive meaning to an ancient symbol that has been much abused.”

Too late. We beat ’em too it:

http://www.freeradicaldesign.co.uk/