Wii.T.F.?

With E3 2006 just around the corner (May 9-12), Nintendo last week decided to unveil the new name of their next generation console: Wii, pronounced 'Wee'.

The minute the story broke, the game community was all over it. Needless to say, it didn't take very long to deliberate their verdict, which was: the name sucks. From Nintendo's point of view, its simple visual and phonetic identity will be universal and easily understood across the globe; this can't be said about its previous name, the 'Revolution.' Although 'Revolution' aptly describes its unique controller, it did sound strikingly similar in theme to Xbox's '360'. You can read the official naming logic of those crazy Japanese here. My thought is that if the games for this resonate with people, you can call this 'The Shit Box' and people will buy it in droves. Personally, instead of 'Wii', I would have pushed for 'Wu,' as in Wu-Tang Clan fo' ever muthaf**ker, but that's just me.

Based on Nintendo's history of games on their consoles, with the exception of Resident Evil 4, the Wii (did I just call it that?) won't be my cup of tea. There's something... seemingly impure... I find in playing these Nintendo games- with those squeaky odd sounds, cute anime looking, dwarf-size characters, that make me feel like I should join the priesthood after playing- and not in that good-priesthood way. I admit, the innovative new controller is something that I'm interested to try out and see how it works with different games, but if all I'm doing is using it to jump over a turtle in a Mario game, I'll pass. If you need a primer of how this new controller works and how it's supposed to 'revolutionize' playing games as we know it, check out the controller teaser video here:

I hope to get my hands of this mofo when I'm out at E3 next week- stay tuned for more info.