My views on Wii

In case you hadn’t heard, the Nintendo Revolution has been renamed the Nintendo Wii.

It’s worthwhile listening in to the latest Penny Arcade Podcast discussing this topic, it’s pretty amusing.

What made me laugh was this (from the official website):

“So that’s Wii. But now Nintendo needs you. Because, it’s really not about you or me. It’s about Wii. And together, Wii will change everything.”

Ultimately, I think it’s the same sort of thing as the new radio station in Christchurch. They wanted to get some publicity, so they read the entire phonebook from beginning to end on air, four times.

They won best publicity event in the recent radio awards.

I’ll give you an example.

Last night I was with a group of people, about three of twelve are gamers. But I felt quite comfortable sharing the news that the Nintendo Revolution had been renamed the Nintendo Wii.

That’s nine people who didn’t even know that Nintendo were making a new console. Now they do. Flip, if other people are doing this, it could be a huge marketing coup for Nintendo.

I guess there’s one problem with that theory though. It requires gamers to not only have friends, it requires them to have friends who aren’t geeks.

Now that’s just wiidiculous.