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 remaining as Nintendo's agent in Hong Kong and Taiwan uptill the DS era.)

On November 17, 2003, the highly-localized (神游机 ), based on Nintendo 64 but with anti-piracy mechanism, 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 cilent 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.

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. 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, and games for it could also be played on the Nintendo GBA.

Localized consoles

 * iQue Player – Nintendo 64
 * iQue 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