Nintendo Wii

I didn’t really have much of a reaction to the name, but I’ve been reading what the gaming world thinks of it. It’s all rather silly really.

[edit] Actually I did, I started thinking about what their plan is. It fits in really well.[/edit]

Perhaps this is a way Nintendo will enable it to reach out to the mass market, there’s dickhead gamers everywhere giggling at it. Soon enough the wider market will just see it as a brand, but certainly a distintive brand. They are definitely seperating themselves from the other consoles with this name. The non gamers will be intruiged by it. The way grandma’s are using and talking about iPod’s now, that’s Nintendo’s hope. That it becomes a ubiquitous term for an experience.

Thinking about it, the Wii will offer an experience unavailable from any other medium. PC’s and the other consoles have no way of acheiving what the Wii can (not out of the box anyway). So people who think about some particular task they want to perform with this thing will be thinking of nothing other then the Wii. Since there is nothing else like it.

It’s a medium, not a console. Wow I should go into marketing.

To achieve that, will really come down to software. From the few bits of info on Wii games in production at the moment, it seems feasible. For instance ubisoft are making a Yukuza game where you’ll do you’re own sword slashing, and supposedly you must become simpler and more efficient in your slicing as you progress through the game.

But the real power of the wii will be in non games, like braintrainer stuff. And unconventional games, such as a puzzle game where you slide blocks around with the controller physically. It fits that slogan they came up with for the DS, “Touching is good”. It’s a little sexy really. That’s not the Nintendo of old. That’s a Nintendo that went to Apple marketing school.
Okay, I refuse to further their cause without pay any longer.