Previously Nintendo gave us a long line of games consoles from the NES, SNES, GameBoy (and later spinoffs) through to the current N64 and the portable dual screen DS. It is fair to say these names are pretty dull, but safe.

They have tried to be more imaginative with their latest creation, which is due out later this year, and have called it Wii. Yes that’s right, it is pronounced wee. I’m sure companies do lots of research into finding names which are not offensive or have unintended meanings in other languages - something like a games console is an international item after all. So this seems a very unfortunate choice of name by Nintendo.

The console itself is going to join to Xbox 360 vs PS3 battle, and might be the best as it is the latest of the 3 to be released. Of course that depends if people are willing to wait that long. Once people have either a 360 or PS3 they probably won’t need a Wii as well.

Let’s hope they don’t bring out a portable version, the wee-wii ?!