Hevy

Actually, the movie more in place with Joysticks and The Wizard (being they're from the 80s) would be 1984's "Cloak and Dagger," which was basically a commercial for the Atari 5200. What sucked was that the movie features a "Cloak and Dagger" game for the 5200 that I really wanted (being a kid at the time as well as an Atari nut), but Atari, being retards, never released the game. Corporate synergy wasn't a big thing back then apparently. But it's actually not a bad movie overall. It's decidedly average, which practically makes it the "Ghandi" of video game-related films.

Ok, I will dare to don the tinfoil hat since rest of you sissies have given up.

So Nintendo trademarked Wii. And what exactly does that prove? The better question is: why wouldn't they trademark Wii? If I were in Nintendo's marketing department, and I had this publicity stunt planned, I'd have trademarked Wii as well. From a marketing perspective, if you're trying to "sell" people on something (in this case, that Wii is the console's real name), you would think of trademarking it. Part of your job is to trademark stuff everyday.

Besides, even if it is just a stunt, the word "Wii" is now forever etched in Nintendo history. You wouldn't want another company to try to capitalize on the exposure you've given that name, even if ultimately you don't intend to use it. It would actually be incredibly stupid not to trademark it.

Something in the back of my head still thinks that Nintendo is going to announce that the name "Wii" was just "disruptive marketing." I mean, had Nintendo just announced the name of the console as Revolution, how many headline would that have grabbed. Basically none since that's what they (and we) have been calling the console all along.

But if you announce some goofy name ahead of E3, and really try to sell the public on the name (including TM'ing it), and then say "fooled ya" at E3 and change it back to Revolution, well, that makes people notice. From a marketing perspective, it's actually quite ingenious. In fact, it's a much smarter manuever than naming your console two weeks before the biggest annual gathering of fans and press in your industry. In fact, naming the console on April 27 makes no sense UNLESS this is a marketing stunt.

There are two thing that still make me think Wii is just a marketing stunt.

1. Wii is bad for naming games. What sounds better: Super Mario Wii or Super Mario Revolution? Smash Brothers Wii or Smash Brothers Revolution? Do you really think Nintendo hasn't thought that far ahead?

2. I've been checking wii.nintendo.com for something to come up since the announcement last week. Until today, it's been nothing but "page cannot be displayed." Finally today, it's a lame mirror of revolution.nintendo.com. Nintendo's webmasters probably noticed people like me trying to get to wii.nintendo.com and figured they better slap something up there before people figured out that THERE IS NO Wii.

Hey, I'm not discounting the chance that Wii is going to be the new name of the console. It remains a distinct possibility. But I still think there's a chance it's just a stunt. I guess we'll find out next week.

But I really don't see why "Revolution" fans would give up just because Nintendo trademarked Wii, when regardless of Nintendo's intentions it would have been ridiculously stupid not to trademark it. Jeesh!