The Revolution Won't Be Televiised

By now you've probably heard the internet collectively groan as Nintendo announced the official name for its forthcoming console. CNN Money is probably the best source for it, but it's everywhere now. The Revolution as we know it is over.

Say hello to "Wii" and say good-bye to any respect Nintendo may ever have from the fans who grew up with it.

Bill Harris of Dubious Quality is quickly becoming the Zen master for gamers because of such accurate statements like this:

Don't even try to tell me you're surpriised. Nintendo is your slightly creepy uncle who never made it past the fourth grade and can't have a normal conversation, but he's a world-class banjo player.

That's as accurate a statement on this idea as any I've heard. Nintendo has routinely confounded gamers for 20 years now and that trend doesn't appear to be going anywhere soon. I honestly do not understand a company that is so completely in its own world that it still thinks anything it does is a license to print money. If that idea is in hand-helds they're spot-on. If it's in marketing a new console that ALREADY HAS THE PERFECT NAME then they prove themselves to be very, very retarded.

Nintendo has a "kids only" rep in a lot of people's eyes and this sure as heck won't change that. Gamers have already positioned themselves into the usual camps of haters/lovers/indifferent and those party lines won't change between now and when the console launches this fall. This remains my most anticipated console of the next generation because it does exactly what the others don't: It innovates, tremendously. But then the Nintendo marketing department (read: the slow kids in class) gets involved and names it something stupid and suddenly the luster is gone.

That's not the way you go into E3, guys.