I never thought about it in that way , I guess it is genius for the very reason that I never realised that until now.

It was a solid decision. Like pretty much everybody I hated it at first but it works quite well and the brand has developed into a household name quite quickly.

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?

It only took me a couple days to get over the fact I wouldn't be getting a "Revolution" but once I did, I realized right away just what a stroke of brilliance the name is. People were talking about it ALL OVER. And like they said, easy to pronounce, and fun to say.

It's way better then Xbox or Playstation, I mean come on a X box?? what's that? or Play station?? don't they mean a Play console? a station isn't some small little thing that sony wants us to believe.

Mii!!!

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.

Xbox is retarded. Sounds like a steroid. Playsation sound childish.

It was brilliant since you could remember it right away, if you liked it or not, because its so catchy. I had to get used to it first cause i thought it sounded very strange but afterwards there was no better name for it. I guess maybe the same could happe to Wii that was done with the name "Playstation", so when you are talking about a gaming console you say just wii. I know alot of people, mostly "casual gamers", who just use playstation for any game console. Some of them even know that there are others with different names, but playstation is just the most common. If done right, Nintendo could do the same with Wii.

As far as hearing the name and liking it I really didn't, I thought it was dumb and part of me still does.

However my opinion has nothing to do with marketability. There's many ways to spin the name Wii, it sounds like we as in we can all play it, it is an inclusive sound. It doesn't sound technical and threatening and there are no numbers in the name which tend to make people shy away as it implies technical prowess to the subconscious mind.

in terms of market appeal and marketing it to the masses, it's an amazing name for those reasons and many more.