Iwata a Firm Believer in Wii
We may have snickered, but Nintendo's top man says he had no doubts about the renaming.
Do you remember the Revolution? Nintendo raised many eyebrows when it renamed its new console Wii last month, causing outrage on message boards and tittering among pundits. But with a successful showing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo now under its belt, the name has ingrained itself in the minds of the Nintendoscenti. And besides, Nintendo never saw what the fuss was about anyway.
"I have never thought the name was a mistake," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said at a briefing in Tokyo this week, reported by GamesIndustry.biz. "Some people seem to have a problem with it now, but I think they'll grow to like it."
More important than the name, of course, are the games, and Nintendo has made clear that it's thinking hard about them. One new Wii feature that went public this week was that you would in the future be able to link the console to the DS.
While interesting, the Wii-DS conglomeration is hardly a novel concept. Some may remember Nintendo's ill-received connectivity push in the previous generation, which at that time involved hooking up the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube. Developers didn't get behind the idea and it quickly sank.
Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games
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