Disruption! Oceans! Swimming in the Fun Part!

Friends, aficionados, fans, codgers, yoots, I want to take a moment to discuss your behavior over the past 24 hours. With a minute-by-minute detailing of your psychological turmoil over the naming of a consumer product, a flurry of streaming attention across every second that would make Jack Bauer green with envy and nausea, you have done exactly what a team of marketing and PR folk want you to do: You’ve guaranteed their success.

The Wii.

This is the recently revealed moniker of the new Nintendo game system that has been tempting the consumer populace and enthusiast press for two years. From E3 2004 to April 27^th, 2006, Nintendo has piqued interest not with gameplay or graphics but with an input device and something infinitely more effective than any product display: language. While Sony has shown off some very pretty pictures and Microsoft has rolled out an army of b-list celebrities to get the saliva flowing in anticipation of their products, Nintendo has spent their time rattling off a number of esoteric phrases designed to intrigue everyone. Disruptive Technology. Blue Ocean Strategy. Revolution.

Befuddling and idiotic in the way only marketing speak can be, Nintendo has said again and again that their plan is to diversify themselves wholly from their competitors and to create a new product that effectively drives the technological development of an industry in a new direction. Sure, it would be much simpler to just say, “We gonna do something different and we gonna be different from everybody else and stuff. You’ll like it!” but it’s more effective to confuse the audience just a bit, to keep them scrutinizing and discussing what they’ve been told. Nintendo gave everyone fair warning, told the lot of people paying attention to be prepared. And yet, as each of these tactics have been implemented, the gaming community, not to mention the gaming press, has responded like a room full of six year-olds who just found out that Santa’s actually a Coca-Cola ad.

The freehand controller and the name Wii itself are inherently disruptive. They are foreign concepts introduced to a rabid audience that abhors change and once they were introduced they elicited constant discussion and consideration. After Tokyo Game Show 2005, the industry was abuzz over how silly it seemed that a television remote was supposed to be revolutionary. Eight months later the discussion continues, from the more fanatic blogosphere to the most mainstream of media outlets such as CNN, NBC’s Today Show, and MTV.com. Commentary on Nintendo’s new controller evolved from infantile jabber to thoughtful consideration as its functionality became legitimized by industry developers and coverage became more widespread.

The name Wii is silly and phonetically impossible to pronounce when first seen in print. It’s a far cry from a name like Revolution, which is strong by definition and culturally significant in Western territories, but nigh on unpronounceable in Japanese.

Semiotic-ally pretentious, lending itself to quick satire, and seemingly the latest in a string of peculiar brandings from a company with a shaky history over the last decade, the Wii seems like a bullet to the foot and the community has spoken on this very subject loudly, constantly, and poorly for the past day. Take Matt Cassmasina of IGN’s clever point that Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize Wii as a real word or CVG’s headline “Nintendo takes piss with final Rev name” as just two examples of the press’ intelligent response to the announcement. And who could forget the hundreds of thousands of forum posts across the net pointing out that now gamers can say, “I’m playing with my Wii.”

It has, to put it bluntly, disrupted the industry. It has taken up every inch of mind space available with E3 only two weeks away. By talking and joking and ranting and doomsaying, gamers have delivered to Nintendo one of the biggest marketing victories likely to be seen across all industries in fiscal year 2006. Congratulations, House of Mario. You’ve won this round.

So, everyone addressed above, let me say this: If you hate the name so damned much, stop talking about it. Be silent. Stop braying at each other using zeroes instead of vowels. You’re only making it worse for yourselves by doing what a company, a business, wants you to. Instead, talk about the games that you’ll be playing for the first time come November, games that are wholly different from any others you’ve played over the past thirty years. For everyone else who has taken a second to think about it and considered the intent behind Wii, thanks for giving our pastime a good name. Finally, for everyone who hasn’t started playing yet, see you soon.