A friend of mine was playing a spelling game with her 3-year-old the other day. She held up a card that read "we," and explained that it was spelled "w-e."

"But Mommy," said her child, "we is spelled w-i-i."

Nintendo gave its Wii console a very strange name in 2006, and then one-upped itself by calling its current gaming platform the Wii U. When Wii U promptly failed to make a splash in the marketplace, many industry watchers immediately found their culprit: What killed Wii U must have been the name.

These flames got fanned again this week when Dan Adelman, a 9-year veteran of Nintendo and the head of its downloadable game business, quit the company. This is an interesting story in and of itself. In sharp contrast to his counterparts at Microsoft and Sony, Adelman was heavily restricted from interacting with players, press and indie developers in any public-facing capacity. One day, Adelman responded on Twitter to a fan who was upset that Nintendo locks its game consoles to only play software from their particular region of the world. "I feel your pain," he replied. This slight crack in Nintendo's facade was all it took to get Adelman permanently banned from Twitter.

Now unmuzzled, Adelman is free to express his opinions about Nintendo's direction, and wasted no time in making the Wii U name the fall guy again. "The value of the GamePad hasn't been justified. But the name Wii U is abysmal. I think that cut sales in half right there," he said on Ask.fm.

I am not here to sing the praises of the name Wii U. It is a silly name, but no sillier than Wii. But the name is not the problem per se.

It is absolutely true that Nintendo botched the introduction of Wii U in a very specific way. Nintendo doesn't like to talk about what's inside its hardware. It doesn't like to talk about the processor, the RAM, the functionality. This, it seems to me, is for two reasons: One, Nintendo's tech specs tend to be behind its competitors' and would thus not look good in a head-to-head comparison. Two, Nintendo wants to put the focus on its software and controllers.

It took this approach to the extreme when it introduced Wii U at the E3 show in 2011. On stage at its press conference, it did not show the actual console on the screen! On the show floor, it went to great lengths to keep people from even looking at the box by putting the nondescript Wii U consoles into lockboxes that obscured almost everything.

Where's the Wii U? Nintendo hid the new console at E3 2011. WIRED

If you didn't know any better – and lots of people didn't! – you'd think you were just looking at a new controller accessory for Wii. As compiled by Ben Kuchera at Polygon, people who didn't know Wii U was a new machine included Jimmy Fallon, CNN and even some retail sales clerks as late as the fall of 2013.

Sony had a glimpse at this issue as well when it announced the PlayStation 4 in February of last year. Even though it unleashed a significant amount of information about what was inside the box and left no one confused as to the fact that it had just announced a new gaming platform, many were still puzzled as to why they hadn't been shown the actual console.

Why did it matter so much, to see what would surely be a hollow, nondescript piece of molded plastic?

I think that, contrary to Nintendo's belief that consumers only begrudgingly buy a piece of gaming hardware because they must buy it in order to play software, hardware makers actually do have to make people want the box itself. They can't just push the box to the background. Perhaps this is irrational, because it is, absolutely, logically true that a game console (especially a traditional locked-down box like Wii U) is useless without games. But who says that consumers are logical? It may simply be the case that before people will drop hundreds of dollars on a new game platform, they want to be excited about having that actual item in their house.

That's where Nintendo tripped up on introducing Wii U. The name might have helped some of that if it were more high concept: Wii U, on its own, does not communicate "This is a new console" in the manner that "PlayStation 4" does. But this is not the cause of its failure, just a missed opportunity to overcome the messaging issues created by Nintendo's misguided messaging strategy. "Xbox One" doesn't say "new console" any more than "Wii U" does, but nobody is confused about Microsoft's machine.

But even Nintendo's botched press conference is not the cause of Wii U's poor sales. The problem is that people do not want the Wii U.

The reasons for this are manifold. Wii U has staked out a weird middle ground that nobody seems to be standing on. On one flank it has the high-end videogame consoles, which are actually not that much more expensive than a Wii U. On the other are tablets and smartphones, which represent a much better value for more casual players. Wii U isn't the perfect fit for anyone who isn't already motivated to buy it because they're fans of specific pieces of Nintendo software. Then, they do (sometimes begrudgingly, as Nintendo suggests) buy the hardware because they've just got to play the new Mario Kart, or soon the new Smash Bros.

Those who say that people would want a Wii U if only they knew what it is have the cart before the horse: If people wanted a Wii U, they would figure out what it is. They don't know what a Wii U is just like I don't know what an "Ariana Grande" is (Starbucks drink?).

Especially kids, who have a remarkable capacity to learn every minuscule detail about products that are available – if they want them. If kids wanted to buy Wii U en masse, it wouldn't matter a bit that their parents think it's an extra controller for Wii. They'll set them straight, quick. This commercial in which kids pitch the idea of "upgrading" to Wii U is not for kids. It's for parents whose kids aren't doing these pitches themselves.

When the underlying problem is that consumers fundamentally do not want to buy your product, it's easier to just find a convenient scapegoat. It must be the name. It must be the commercials. It must be anything other than a fundamental flaw in the product. This is especially true if you're, say, Dan Adelman, who has spent the better part of his professional life working long hours under high-stress conditions to create these products.

And he's right that Wii U is a nice piece of gaming hardware. It's got some great features and I use mine quite a bit. Wii U's problem is that there aren't enough of me out there. Call it whatever you want.