Curmudgeon Gamer
13 May 2006
Nintendo wins: Wii have moved beyond the name
A week ago, you couldn't go two videogame blog posts without hitting a lame pun on the Wii name. The jokes have stopped, for the most part, and Nintendo is having the last laugh. They chose the name they thought best, and then decided how best to maximize the announcement and their E3 presence.
Here's how their plan worked:
Too bad Sony couldn't copy Nintendo's savvy as quickly as they mimicked Nintendo's controller.
Here's how their plan worked:
- Pick a name: Has all the desired features: novel, easily remembered, and a double meaning that suits their strategy. They were serious about the name, and picked it for the long term.
- Time the release right before E3: Know the discussions generated, primarily by the hardcore gaming audience, will be incredibly intense and negative.
- Suffer stoically: Right up to E3, secretly appreciating the attention, knowing it will pass.
- Don't hide, embrace it: At the E3 conference Nintendo dropped one Wii joke and then proceeded to use it often and without pretension.
- Focus: What's important? Not the name! The new controller, the new games, the virtual console, the network.
- Everyone moves on: By the end of E3, everyone's focus is the controller and the games. They're using the name just as naturally as they use Nintendo DS and GameCube.
Too bad Sony couldn't copy Nintendo's savvy as quickly as they mimicked Nintendo's controller.
Labels: nintendo
--jvm at 21:55
Comment
[ 3 ]
Comments on this post:
I like how everyone likes the Wii despite the fact that the games that used the controller were universally incomplete or shit.
By 
zachary, at
14 May, 2006 01:56
Can't you say that about 98% of the games at E3? They're either incomplete or incomplete shit. If they were complete, they wouldn't really be that useful for E3 now wouldn't they (the only exceptions are new releases).
By 
n0wak, at
14 May, 2006 22:49
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