| Faxanadu said: Actually, I guess with GameCube they wanted to get something like the PlayStation. Equally strange names. Wii is good, simple and overall a great product name. Why people think it is more sexual than XboX, I dont know. What does X stay for in the US? |
To quote Bender. "The X makes it sound cool." The letter X is basically just used in marketing to make things sound more edgier or extreme or whatever. Probably had something to do with Generation X, I don't know. The name Xbox probably just comes from DirectX. Even the logos aren't that far off.
As for the original topic, my initial reaction to the name change to Wii was thinking it was a really dumb idea. In hindsight it actually was quite brilliant. A simple one-syllable, three letter word made for a great viral marketing. People tend to insert it in a lot places and inadvertently advertise it without thinking. Even insults like "Wii-tard" are just helping to make the name more familiar with everyone. Nintendo made sure to downplay their own company's name to help this new brand name grow ever stronger, and not confuse it with any of their other consoles.
Like someone else already said, they made sure to announce BEFORE E3 to give people time to recover from the initial shock so that everyone would be focusing what "Wii" was when the time came. It was really quite genius retrospect.
