Wii mockers should eat humble pie

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 30 May 2007 08:11

Your IT - Entertainment

When Nintendo first announced that its next console was going to be called Wii, a lot of IT journalists thought the company was crazy - who would buy a product with such a stupid name?

And what process could lead a company to adopt a product name that sounds like a childish term for urine?

Some of us aired our opinions publicly, others saved them for frank exchanges of opinion with their colleagues.

Still, it did allow for some punny headlines: "Wii go nuts in Japan", "We need more Wii", "Wii will, Wii will rock you – Guitar Hero comes to Nintendo", and "Wii like to Boogie" are just a few from this site alone. I resisted the temptation to call this story "Wii were wrong".

And there was the "Hold your wee for a Wii" fiasco  where a woman died after participating in a bizarre competition run by a Californian radio station.

Once the Wii appeared, some commentators pointed to its relatively low specs, others made derogatory comments about "cheesy" games.

Guess what, guys? Nintendo was right, and we were wrong. As I recently reported, Wii is outselling Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 by a country mile.

The reason for Nintendo's success is that they have largely ignored the demands of geeks and  hardcore gamers, and produced a system and games catalogue that appeals to regular people from kids to grandparents. In retrospect, it's hard to be surprised: there are a lot more of them than there are serious gamers.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."