Pointing The Finger

[can't stop what's comin' up]

You may have noticed that I've been questioning the Wii a bit often lately, wondering how many purchasers still use theirs and what your relationship to the lil' white angel is (see the poll in the right-hand sidebar for the current stats). This is not, contrary to some assertions, evidence of any bias on my part against either Nintendo or its console. For the record, I love my Wii, although I haven't been excited about any of its games lately and no longer use it with the same frequency that I did in the first year.

My curiosity's prompted by nothing more and nothing less than the Wii phenom, and by association, the Wii Fit sensation, which currently seems to be the largest driver of the console's mass-market sales. When a console sells 2 million units in a recession month that's not December, one would be remiss in not raising one's eyebrows just a little bit.

So I've been paying a bit of extra attention to advertising, attitudes and communication surrounding Wii both within the "gamer community" and outside of it -- and I noticed something distinct.

It's nothing more earth-shattering than the way people pronounce the game title "Wii Fit."

Yeah. I find that people who feel that Wii Fit is a bizarre, possibly hostile mainstream fad put the emphasis on the word "Wii" -- Wiiiiiii-fit, they say, as if levying the "blame" on the platform for allowing a video game console to be treated as an "exercise product" quickly purchased and more quickly neglected.

Heartened and less jaded consumers, however, emphasize the word "Fit" -- wii-FIT, they declare enthusiastically, as if determining their aims for the purchase.

My scientific study reveals -- well, pretty much nothing. But it raises the question: How do you pronounce Wii Fit?

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