Topic: NEW Nintendo console to launch in China

[Top Ramen]

Nintendo is going to release the iQue Player, a machine that can play SNES and N64 games that are downloaded on flash card media, for the US equivelent of $60 in China. The new console is aimed at the Chinese consumers who cannot afford today's high-priced technology. That should limit the market to oh say, 750 million people?

http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/news/news_6075768.html

Top Ramen

[Hybrid Hunter]

Hopefully no pirates hehe.

[Bill Aurion]

The games, however, are going to be something like 5 bucks, so I say that doesn't limit much at all...As for pirating, the kiosks are made so that it will be hard(if not plain impossible) to pirate the games.

[Terranigma Freak]

Man, I think Nintendo is gonna fail the Chinese market. I love Nintendo but when I was back in China is 2000, I find the lack of Nintendo knowledge very disturbing. These people didn't grow up with Mario. Very few people actually know what's Zelda, Metroid, Star Fox. They think garabage like FF8 is good and has zillions of Genesis games. I tried to look for a good deal on some rare SNES imports and the people were like, what's Super Nintendo? One of the main reasons is because Nintendo cracks down on pirate companies and China is pirate central. I bought quite a few PC games for 7 Chinese dollars. That's less than one US dollar. Sega doesn't crack down on pirates so Genesis games are everywhere. People in China even make their own Genesis game hacks. ENTIRE GAMES, even pirate versions of Resident Evil. Well I'm not sure about RE, they might have just switched the sticker of the game to dup idiots into buying. When my cousin went to buy the PC version of Resident Evil 2, we ended up with a PS emulator and a Resident Evil 2 ISO. One last thing, people there are graphics whores, as long as the graphics are good, they don't care about gameplay. Do you seriously think people will look at SNES and N64 games there and care? Let's pretend there's no Playstation 2, PC games there are just as advance as PC games here. It's almost like they don't even understand the concept of good gameplay. They play those crappy Gundam games even though they suck, they keep buying those. I myself am Chinese and I just feel very ashamed to be associated with people like that.

[AgentSeven]

I love China, my next trip there is planned for early 2005.

Your'e right they may have an uphill battle there, but this brilliant little machine is perfect fo a market filled with piracy and Big N knows it.  Heck they may even be prepared for the idea.  Their thinking might be that as long as Nintendo's brand names penetrate the market, they will tollerate a little piracy.

As for the Chinese not knowing Nintendo's products, I'm not sure if it's entirely true.  Although you are right about FF8, yuck!  Still, China is the capital of GBA pirate carts.  GBA is huge over there.
Plus you can buy a bootleg Famicom in just about every shape and size you can think off.  I have seen them in the shape of N64 controllers, pseudo X-Box's and even in the guise of the PSone.
Quite hillarious.  

Recently, I purchased a Chinese made, bootleg Mario cart.  On the cart's label Mario is pictured with Capatain Crunch and Snow White! lol!  

In the end, I want one of these systems!!!!!!

[Ocarina Blue]

I think this is a good time to make a move like this. China has already started to significantly boost imports on the back of huge exports, if there is a good time to do this, it's now.

[Undisclosed]

Capt Crunch and Mario?  That's crazy

Has anyone seen a picture of this new system?  I'm excited to see what it will look like.

[Bill Aurion]

Right here Ag...Undisclosed...^_^'

iQue

At least that's the controller.  I have no idea what you play it on...

[Grey Ninja]

Heh.  I would really love to shake the hand of the smart bastard who thought that up.  It's the PERFECT console for China.

[Termin8Anakin]

I like the fact that the flash cards will only work with the console it was bought with. Very smart idea.
If Nintendo wanted to do something like this for consoles, it would take a little more brainpower to try and figure out how to make it work in the case of mulitplayers, LANs, online, even borrowing games from a friend.

But it's a good idea nonetheless.

[KDR_11k]

That's a whole lot of DRM and the manifestation of everything MS ever dreamt of. That's the punishment for piracy, China!

[ThePerm]

WHAT DID I TELL YOU PEOPLE? I said wouldn't it be cool if Nintendo released a system that was a combo n64/snes. YOU GUYS SAID IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. twas my first thread on this forum. MUWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAH

[Yuji Miyamoto]

I am hopin this console system comes to my country

[ThePerm]

it may end up in my colleciton someday

and if your Yuji Miyamoto then wheres Shigeru Naka?

[Yuji Miyamoto]

i read another thread in this forum, where someone mentioned nintendo and rewritable carts long ago

ique will probably spawn some sort of bootleg flash cart device allowing pirates to load whatever games they wish for free.  id bet nintendo doesn't care, just as long as people buy the system,they already ignore flash carts for gba, which are everywhere

perm takes credit for a lucky guess

[Terranigma Freak]

It's called Nintendo Power. NOT THE MAGAZINE. Nintendo Power is a device that allows your to burn SNES games into the cart. It was made by Nintendo during the death of the SNES area. They were still making some SNES games. People buy this Nintendo Power cart, they go to some shop, pay the price and plug in the cart to have the game downloaded into it. They can erase the game and download a new game if they wanted. I myself would love to own this SNES/N64 combo. BTW about the price of the carts... 60 bucks? They can buy a PC/PS(not sure about PS2) games for less than 1 US dollar... I doubt the people there will care about this machine.

[Oldskool]

It seems that China is the king of console piracy, while Russia is the king of PC game piracy.