Honestly, I think even the 360 successor name was dumb when I first heard about it. I guess it means all degrees of freedom, I just take it as spinning around in a circle and ending up exactly where you were before.
Wii U and Xbox One are both equally up for potential confusion on the name alone, only that Microsoft will spend much more advertising dollars to ensure the common folk will know the difference. My parents were confused on NES and SNES formats all the time (they just called the systems "Nintendo" to keep it simple), but the difference is that they are now part of the target audience with this console generation.
Sony has been the only one so far to keep the home console names bland but consistent, and Sega name-jumped on the diametric opposite spectrum throughout its hardware career. Were either of these companies more or less successful based on their naming scheme? The power of the name doesn't really hold much value to its core users, just the base specs and game libraries.
Now to the masses, Richard probably has the best point, the Wii branding has just been worn out. Most people associate "Wii" with that little, graphically underpowered white box that they grew tired of already (besides Netflix streaming, of course), and the Wii U name doesn't do much to change that. The original Wii HD name people were kicking around would of been more successful in my opinion, kind of the "Super" counterpart of the current market.
Not that I wanted it to be called that though, just a thought.
