China is closed off to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo’s consoles, meaning the first console available for sale in that country – aside from the knockoffs, of course – will be home grown. Today the iSec, renamed from the “eBox” announced last year, was unveiled.
Made by a Beijing company that’s funded by Lenovo – China’s largest PC maker and a very recognisable brand in the west – the iSec uses motion-sensing technology similar to Kinect, and many of the launch games demonstrated focused on exercise. Other titles shown were sports and adventure titles involving skateboarding and monster-fighting. It doubles as a Karaoke machine.
The iSec’s games are being developed by studios in China, North America and Europe. The console’s maker, Eedoo Technology, says it will consider selling the unit overseas after it sells one million units in China. The iSec’s price was not disclosed.
Lenovo-backed Video Game System Unveiled in China [PC World]
Lance McDonald
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 2:55 PMIt’s funny when IT/Entertainment companies don’t seem to realize that the lowercase “i” at the start of a product name denotes “Apple”, not “Computer related”.
mbryant
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 5:44 PMExcept it doesn’t. Plenty of other companies have used the lowercase i prefix before the iMac, and continue to do so.
kell
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 7:06 PMIt might denote ‘Apple’ to some people, but not necessarily everyone. I’m sure I read somewhere that Apple tried to trademark the ‘i’ prefix but this was knocked back, so it’s certainly not a formal/legal identifier.
BALLSCLINTON
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 11:00 PMiagree
Steve0410
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 12:44 AMOh they know. But this is China where copyright infringement is a fairly foreign concept.
Data-Cain
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 1:12 PMhahaha :D
Azza
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 10:11 AMI’m sure i saw the i as a prefix before ipods came along…
Neil Mac
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 10:33 AMActually stands for “information”. Like the little ‘e’ at the front of things stands for electronic. Apple didn’t create it, they just happened to use it on a product that millions of people bought, used and added to their vernacular.
choosk
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 8:26 PMactually.. the i is supposed to stand for interactive. i remember seeing a documentary about it on discovery channel a few years before the imac got released. this was during the PC technology boom (almost reaching 1Ghz processor power)
Marek
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 6:28 PMSo it’s still basically a Wii/Kinect knockoff.
Sam Timmins
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 7:14 PM“iSec!”
Yes, indeed you DO.
(Picture that quote with a New Zealand accent if you don’t get it.)
picky
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 9:46 PMhahaha 1 million units in china is not a big target!
Andy
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 10:31 PM“i” doesnt denote Apple only the fanboys think that. heaps of products used that before apple
Lord Bob
Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 10:49 PMStrangely enough I find my self really interested to see how well this does. I wonder what the specs are?
Scott
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 12:29 PMI have little faith for this machine.
Also, didn’t the MP3 brand iRiver do ‘i’ before Apple?
Ty
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 2:13 PMI’m sure the iSack will wake a fine addition to my Wee.
Marlor
Sunday, May 8, 2011 at 4:20 PMThis isn’t the first console in China. My girlfriend grew up in China, happily playing Contra and Mario Bros on her Famicom. It was very popular there in the 1980s, just as the NES was here.
Maybe it was a grey import, but if it was, there were an awful lot of them imported. All her friends remember them as well, and the games were available in the big department stores.
Then, more recently, iQue sold localised versions of Nintendo’s consoles.
Nintendo has a long history in China. Mario is just as familiar to Chinese gamers as he is to Western ones.
joe
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 12:11 PM@Marlor the Famicom was the name of the NES in China and Japan, it was exactly the same. It was just marketed with a different name.
Franz
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 8:57 PMUh, I don’t think these will be playing games like our consoles do, Knowing China, I think they will be for punishment, and/or helping train kids/youths into soldiers etc lol