Wii: Who's laughing now?

Friday 27 April 2007
Today, some bright spark from thealways-topical NeoGaf forumshas reminded us of a very special anniversary. Did you realise it was a year ago today that Nintendo renamed its new Revolution console, giving it the much less powerful moniker of 'Wii'?

It was a rebranding that triggered such a negative response the internet had a minus sign over it for days. If you don't remember the sort of pun-tastic complaints that flash-fried the web, then why not take a step back in time with our response round-up from last April.

But, now we've got comfortable with handling Nintendo's Wii, you have to ask - did the piss-poor name really cause people to shun the console in the shops?

Did it heck. Nintendo recently announced that it had sold 5.84 million Wiis worldwide since the console launched last Christmas. And demand has been so consistently rabid that blue-sky thinking analysts have predicted Nintendo won't be able to make enough Wiis to satisfy the demand until 2009.

Well done Nintendo. Although we still find it hard not to snigger inside when we hear someone 'asking for a Wii'...