Your first point is a general fact about how inept the consumer can be. When we're talking about people that are that low on the totem pole, a new name wasn't going to help. At all. So it's not really reasonable to critique the name off of that, in my opinion. They could have called it the JEVUS 67-12 and that's not going to help matters any more.
What Nintendo is hoping is that they'll hit the greatest swathe of their demographic by doubling down on existing terms in their Brand ("Nintendo" and "3DS"). What they get by calling it the "New 3DS" is that it makes it more likely a consumer will remember it. Why? Because it is an unusual naming convention, and the name is what the parent would want to ask for anyway.
"What's this thing called?"
"The New 3DS" (Alt: New Nintendo, depending on what the parent typically calls it)
"No, I'm asking what it's called?"
"That is what it's called, it's the New 3DS"
That's more likely to stick in the parent's brain than something else might, so it's already a stronger branded name than pretty much anything else they could think of.
I mean, "New" isn't going to help or hurt in the case where the parent has absolutely no clue what they want. But it will help in cases in where the parent sort of knows what the product is. And if the name can spawn just that tiny interaction above in a significant portion of the demographic, that's massive for branding purposes
The naming-and-software thing has been a problem for each of the DS generations. DS > DSi > 3DS, and now New 3DS. It's a product of NIntendo releasing multiple versions of the same product, with different capabilities. There's absolutely going to be confusion, yeah. But Nintendo actively doesn't want to brand the new product differently, because that would be horrible for their sales.
It's way better to have confused parents buying incompatible products than to just abandon your brand image. I mean, it would be best for the consumer if Nintendo would stick to 1 device per cycle. But it's way better for Nintendo to brand all those products uniformly.
And remember, Nintendo doesn't WANT the stores to stop selling 3DS games, because 3DS games are nearly all of what the New 3DS plays. The only compatibility issue is with the newest games and the older 3DSs. SO Nintendo would hope that as the number of New 3DS products rise, it puts pressure on parents to get the new system.
Does that suck a ton for retail employees? Absolutely. But Nintendo is going to laugh all the way to the bank.
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IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.