Nintendo and Wii

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel. Nintendo eventually developed into a video game company, becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over 85 billion dollars.

According to Nintendo's Touch! Generations website, the name "Nintendo" translated from Japanese to English means "Leave luck to Heaven."

Besides video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team in Seattle, Washington.



The Wii console was known by the code name of "Revolution." The Nintendo Style Guide refers to the console as "simply Wii, not Nintendo Wii", making it the first home console Nintendo has marketed outside of Japan without the company name featured in its trademark.

While "Wiis" is a commonly used pluralization of the console, Nintendo has stated that the official plural form is "Wii systems" or "Wii consoles."

Nintendo's spelling of "Wii" with two lower-case "i" characters is meant to resemble two people standing side by side, representing players gathering together, as well as to represent the Wii Remote and Nunchuk.

The company has given many reasons for this choice of name since the announcement; however, the best known is: “ Wii sounds like 'we', which emphasizes that the console is for everyone. Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii ”

Despite Nintendo's justification for the name, some video game developers and members of the press reacted negatively towards the change. They preferred "Revolution" over "Wii" and Forbes expressed fear "that the name would convey a continued sense of 'kidiness'  to the console."  Initially, jokes based on the name appeared on the Internet, since then the name as been accepted.