IQue

iQue Ltd. (神游科技 Shényóu Kējì) is a Chinese video game company founded in 2002 as a joint venture between Nintendo and Chinese–American scientist and entrepreneur. It became a 100% Nintendo-owned subsidiary after Wei Yen left the company. It localizes and distributes Nintendo consoles and games for the mainland Chinese market, under the iQue brand.

History
iQue Ltd. was founded with a registered capital of $30m in December 2002 and established its headquarter in in May 2003. Investment from both parties (Nintendo and Wei Yen) include capital, technology, patents, software copyright and other intellectual properties. According to some former employees, iQue stayed independent in its financial and marketing in the first few years, and was a cooperation partner of Nintendo instead of a subordinate agency. Prior to iQue, Nintendo had introduced the Game Boy Advance console to China via a Hong Kongese sales agent named Mani (万信 ), but faced several challenges such as the rampant piracy among Chinese game retailers and the government's ban on video game consoles, which led to the partnership with Wei Yen to solve these issues via localization. (Mani remained as Nintendo's agent in Hong Kong and Taiwan up until the DS era.)

On November 17, 2003, the highly-localized (神游机 ), based on Nintendo 64 but with anti-piracy mechanisms, was released. The iQue Player was unique that all the components were inside the controller and that it loaded games from a single, 64MB flash memory card with digital signatures instead of tradeable cartridges. Games for the console must be digitally purchased and written to the flash memory cards, at first through "iQue Depots" (神游加油站 ) – interactive kiosks in big cities where the player could bring their flash memory cards and iQue Tickets (神游票 ) to download, buy, store, retrieve games – and since October 2004 through an online service called iQue@Home (神游在线 ), which provided the same services to players at home via client software and the Internet. There were also multiplayer accessories (共游盒 and 共游机 ) for family gaming. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the design has to do with the low income, undeveloped logistics, and rampant piracy in mainland China. 14 games were released.

The iQue Player did not become a commercial success as expected, having only sold 8,000 to 12,000 units instead of the 1,000,000-unit goal Wei Yen claimed internally. Nor had the promise that "hundreds of games will be launched soon", printed on the back side of the packaging box, been fulfilled due to low speed of government approval (although the released titles had been praised for good localization). The "神游盒子 " console, which was going to be a localized version of the Nintendo GameCube, was also canceled.

On June 8, 2004, the iQue Game Boy Advance (小神游 ) was released. Unlike the iQue Player, it had no regional lockout or anti-piracy mechanism, featuring interoperability with Nintendo's version of the Game Boy Advance. Four months later, the similar iQue GBA SP was released, followed by several new designs and official contests. The iQue GBA series sold well, reaching 200,000 units in 2005. At the same time, there were efforts to develop edutainment software, but failed. A total of 8 games were released during the console's lifespan.

On July 23, 2005, the iQue DS was released. It can load iQue DS, Nintendo DS as well as GBA games, but iQue DS games could not be played on the Nintendo DS, which was otherwise region free. The deluxe version sold via large markets had  and WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!. The iQue DS Lite released in the June of 2006 followed by supporting flashcarts, and the DS series sold well, reaching 300,000+ units. Only 6 games were ever released.

In 2007, iQue's version of Wii was approved and planned for sale in 2008, but later canceled. The iQue DSi was released in 2009.

After the Nintendo takeover, iQue released the iQue 3DS XL in 2012, with two titles (Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7) pre-installed. No other titles have been released by iQue since. However, titles from Nintendo Hong Kong and Nintendo Taiwan that featured a Simplified Chinese interface could be played on iQue 3DS XL, including Mario Tennis Open, New Super Mario Bros. 2, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

iQue discontinued all services in mainland China in 2016, but remained doing Simplified Chinese localization for Nintendo Hong Kong.

Released

 * iQue Player – Nintendo 64
 * Que Game Boy Advance – Game Boy Advance
 * iQue Game Boy Advance SP – Game Boy Advance SP
 * iQue Game Boy Micro – Game Boy Micro
 * iQue DS – Nintendo DS
 * iQue DS Lite – Nintendo DS Lite
 * iQue DSi – Nintendo DSi
 * iQue 3DS XL – Nintendo 3DS XL

Canceled

 * Wii
 * iQue Player-like devices with games from the NES and SNES. It is unclear if these were just planned additional downloads for the already existing iQue Player, or if they would've been separate consoles entirely.

Other localized Mario games
These games are localized by iQue, but not distributed by iQue. iQue can be seen credited in these games' credits (except Mario Kart 8 Deluxe).

Trivia

 * In the late 2010s, many iQue-related assets were leaked from a server hack of BroadOn, another electronics company led by Wei Yen. This included source code and prototype versions for games such as Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Kart, alongside dozens of other Nintendo titles.
 * All of the consoles published by iQue were likely done through loopholes of the Chinese video game ban, which lasted from 2000 to 2015. The ban specifically states the barring of home game systems and arcade machines, but did not mention plug & plays (e.g. iQue Player) or handheld devices (e.g. Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS). Separate games for these devices still required approval from the Chinese government, however.
 * This is likely also why the Wii's planned iQue distribution was canceled, which would not qualify under those loopholes. It was seemingly blocked from distribution by the government at the eleventh hour, despite being approved beforehand; a similar situation also happened with the PlayStation 2.