Wii has got to be the most savvy name announcement we have seen in many years, and it could be the most viral name announcement since Yahoo! Sure, the buzz is a all negative (News, Blogosphere) but thats part of the beauty.
Because we dont believe that Wii is the real name. We think Nintendo is setting you all up to be Punkd at E3, generating a massive amount of positive buzz when the scam and the real new name are announced.
Crazy? Here is the first clue, By letting the gaming community vent now about the name, they will be less distracted as launch titles for the system are announced and initial reports about what its like to play the games begin to come in. Allowing your audience time to vent is not SOP in a name announcent, and also telegraphs that Nintendo knows what a stinker this name would be. Second, its not possible to engineer a worse name for this product.
Third, and this is a big one, there are no trademarks registered by Nintendo nor by any dummy corp in the U.S or over there for Wii. This is unprecedented for Nintendo and it is not possible that this is an oversight. If Wii were the name, they would have registered it. In fact, no new trademarks have been registered by Nintendo at all. This leads us to conclude that Nintendo has in fact registered the real name under a dummy corp, which is SOP when trying to keep a name a secret prior to launch.
Given that their video game audience is the same demographic as Punkd, this whole campaign is perversely elegant. Except of course for failing to make the illusion complete by registering a TM for Wii.
Keep in mind, this whole PR campaign cost zero dollars. And yet, some naming experts just dont seem to get it.