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Nintendo said yesterday that the next-generation game console it has been developing under the code name Revolution would be given what the company believes is a revolutionary name: Wii.

Pronounced "we" — or in the French market, "oui" — Wii replaces what had always been a working title for Nintendo’s new system, which will go head-to-head with Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 console and Sony’s coming PlayStation 3.

Sony announced last month that it was delaying the release of its new machine until November. Wii is expected to go on sale about the same time.

The name was developed over six months in Japan.

A Nintendo spokeswoman said it was meant to indicate that "Wii is a platform for everyone — not just the gamer or the nongamer."

The dual "i" is intended to suggest Wii’s game controller, a tall, thin white unit reminiscent of a television remote control. Used with one hand, the controller is motion-sensitive: players will swing the remote to simulate play in a golf or tennis game, for example.

"NGage and Gizmondo are cool names," said Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, referring to previous products aimed at gamers. "But consumers relate to the coolness of the product, not the name."

Games for the new console are expected to be previewed next month at the Electronic Entertaiment Expo, the annual video-game trade show in Los Angeles.

via nyt.

At first it seemed to be nothing more than a routine, if damaging, case of counterfeiting in a country where faking it has become an industry.

Reports filtering back to the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese electronics giant NEC in mid-2004 alerted managers that pirated keyboards and recordable CD and DVD discs bearing the company’s brand were on sale in retail outlets in Beijing and Hong Kong.

Like hundreds, if not thousands, of manufacturers now locked in a war of attrition with intellectual property thieves in China, the company hired an investigator to track down the pirates.

After two years and thousands of hours of investigation in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in China, Taiwan and Japan, the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company.

Evidence seized in raids on 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan over the past year showed that the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In the name of NEC, the pirates copied NEC products, and went as far as developing their own range of consumer electronic products - everything from home entertainment centers to MP3 players. They also coordinated manufacturing and distribution, collecting all the proceeds.

more at iht.