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April 28, 2006
Just A Wii Identity Crisis
UPDATE:
There's a REMOTE Wii-MOTE possibility that the name is just an elaborate viral campaign by Nintendo. There are NO trademarks registered in Japan, Europe or America. On top of that, the domain name does not belong to Nintendo and the official link to the Wii is still revolution.nintendo.com. Makes you go humm.
Okay, so with all the hoopla on the net over the official name of Nintendo's next generation game console, I think it's the perfect time for me to put in my 2 cents.
So let me start with Nintendo marketing; they were successful. The whole internet, everyone from CNN to bloggers like me are talking about it. Until now, Nintendo often had to compete with Sony and Microsoft for media attention. Even within its own industry, it's an afterthought.
Here's where Nintendo triumphed. With E3 coming up in just a few weeks, you have to fight for press and at this point it fulfills one of my rules for branding; identity should be reactionary, be it positive or negative. Humans have a tendency to only remember the best and the worst of things and ironically, it's the worst of things we remember most. This rule of thumb is true across all mediums. Why are some of the most successful songs sad? Why are some of the most violent imagery the most embedded ones? The negative connotation is just stronger in humans. Call it some weird function of brain science. I don't know why, I just know it does.
Nintendo's paragraph long explanation and animatics is another issue. Okay, we get it, wii means we. It's about community, it's about the masses. Unfortunately, one of the other rules of branding is never needing to offer an in-depth explanation. It either should come intuitively or with time. That paragraph long explanation is better suited for media as a press release. For the general public, a simple short tagline would have been much better. To this day, I still love Motorola's old branding tagline, "Motorola, The Heart of Smart." Nintendo PR says they just want people to know where they're coming from. I get it, I think most people get it. It's just most people don't see the connection yet. Hopefully, after E3 we will all get it and say Wiiiiiiiii!
I really don't think the name is all that bad. Oh sure, the word itself has an association with pee in the English speaking world but news flash people, English isn't the only language out there. So why not keep the code name? Well, because did you know the letter "r" in Revolution is EXTREMELY difficult for most non English speaking Asians to pronounce? Hell, I've heard the letter "r" in many European languages and it doesn't sound like how it is in English. Wii is much easier to pronounce universally across all languages. So I think we can all be a little more open minded and objective here. Give the name some time.
Now, what I do have a PROBLEM with is the design of the logo. Everything from the font to the kerning to the color scheme screams APPLE APPLE APPLE! It's nothing new to latch on to the market segment leader and milk them for their mojo, but if Nintendo came up with what I thought was the best logo between the Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox, I expected more creativity here. Place any parent company logo next to the Nintendo one and it doesn't make sense. Place the Apple logo there and all of sudden, it looks like some future Apple product to grace the covers of www.apple.com
Here's where Nintendo does something I call leeching. When you leech off another brand, you're trying to ride it's wave. Sure, you achieve the same cool, sexy, and sleek that Apple has but now you're subject to copycat criticisms and for a console destined to be revolutionary, the logo design doesn't quite live up to it. It's a mistake, a HUGE one. There are TONS of other sans-serif fonts out there. Why choose one so similar (if not the same) as Apple? I understand current Nintendo press media are in favor of the white and grey monochromatic color scheme and that they want everything to be cohesive, but does the logo have to be the same EXACT shades Apple uses?
So to conclude, the name itself is fine. It's dumb now, but it will be good later. The name is there to get attention (and it does that), the console needs to sell and if it does, the name will become the lexicon Nintendo so wants it to be. The logo design is in need of a creativity injection. This is video gaming, not hardware appliance. That delicate balance between the two is very important for consoles to be accepted in home entertainment centers so I understand why Nintendo did it. I just don't think they were successful. The meaning of a word can change over time, but the actual icon of one rarely can. Once it sucks, it sucks forever.
This won't stop me from buying a Revolution Wii. I'm there for the games and the opportunity to play something new, in new ways. Hell, my real name is "Long". Do you know HOW MUCH I HATED my name when I was a kid???
"long duck dong"
"long ding-a-ling"
"long john silver"
"is your last name short?"
I love my name now and appreciate its beauty. In English it means length but in my native language, it means DRAGON. I hate to think of all the people that missed out on the chance to play with get to know me based solely on my name. Don't do that to Nintendo. Give it a chance mmkay?
Posted by tranism at 12:25 PM | Permalink
Comments
did you hear the story over on Kotaku that Wii might be fake...? they actually said "nintendo may be Punking us."
well, either way, people are talking about it.
Posted by: ray at April 28, 2006 3:15 PM
That is pretty interesting about it possibly being fake... Though I'm not convinced. Wii.com has been owned by Willamette Industries, Inc. since 1994 though, so Nintendo would be forced to deal with them... I imagine they've been talking to them about purchasing it. And they probably didn't want to file for the trademark before they announced it... It's possible they sent in the paperwork the same day. Most of Apple's trademarks never show up before their announcements, so that doesn't seem too unusual.
I can't find any information about who owns it, but NintendoWii.com points to http://redirect.nintendo.com/cgi-bin/domclean2.pl?nintendowii.com/ which then redirects to Nintendo.com, so it seems all but certain that Nintendo themselves set it up.
Anyway, I dig the name just for being weird, and I can't wait to play it.
Posted by: Mike Piontek at April 28, 2006 5:53 PM
Normally I dislike companies ripping off the Apple aesthetic, however the videogame industry is the one place in desperate need of a brand along the lines of Apple.
Sonys design during the PS2 was pretty decent but the PS3 is just a train wreck. The less said about the embarrassing xbox and xbox...360 the better.
Posted by: James Hicks at April 29, 2006 6:00 PM
The other day I was in Apple's cafeteria playing a white Nintendo DS Lite, and someone commented that it looked very much like an Apple-designed product. My response was, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, no?"
Nintendo is very much into all things Apple at this point (except releasing drivers for their USB WiFi adapter and such), but at least they are admittedly so. It would be different if they were channeling Apple's mojo and pretending it was their own originality. For the time being, if you can't trump the industry paradigm of style, why not imitate it and give credit to its originators?
Posted by: T. Holbrook Walker at April 30, 2006 8:45 AM
This is cool, you have to try it. I guessed 74854, and this game guessed it! See it here - http://www.funbrain.com/guess/
Posted by: Allison Trump at May 23, 2006 5:19 AM
Man your predictions were sooo right. good job
Posted by: pointblizzy at May 9, 2008 10:46 AM