iQue DS
[Now Art Directing| Take 5]
I China, Nintendo is known as iQue. Not really sure of the reasoning behind it (probably a legal matter), but soon they will be releasing the DS over there. You can even see on the silver unit that the NintendoDS logo has been replaced with an iQue DS logo. As with all the other DS units, it looks like this one will be region free as well.
Submitter: earthchild
Nick - July 18th, 2005 - 
James Montagna on July 18, 2005 at 12:26 pm
The reason that the Nintendo products are called “iQue” in China is because Japan and China really, uh, aren’t in the best standing with each other. A product that does not have a Japanese sounding name is more likely to sell. That’s why Nintendo avoids using their real company name as much as possible.
NekoTsukimi on July 18, 2005 at 12:39 pm
That seems almost weird seeing something so very Nintendo-y look like a (for lack of a better phrase) cheap Chinese knock-off
ERon on July 18, 2005 at 12:53 pm
It’s weird that the unit still has the “Nintendo” logo on the top.
4ndy on July 18, 2005 at 1:00 pm
I hope Sin and Punishment comes out on the DS. After all, it was released for the iQue.
M4tt on July 18, 2005 at 2:06 pm
DS in china will cost like 60 dollars. In china, all games are on flashcards, you can go to a kiosk, pay like 4 dollars and get games flashed to your card. If they were not cheap, everything would be sold illegally anyway.
Courtney on July 18, 2005 at 2:15 pm
So is this like that N64 thing where all the games are built in?
4ndy on July 18, 2005 at 3:27 pm
The ones sold in malls? No, those were actually illegal.
Handpuppet on July 18, 2005 at 4:41 pm
If I’m not mistaken, there was a device released in China by Nintendo called the “iQue” that allowed people with it to download games onto flash cards at bookstores and the like. This was to curb the ludicrus amount of piracy of Nintendo games there. If I remember correctly, it could play NES, SNES and N64 games. I imagine this is named “iQue” DS, just so the product recognition will remain among Chinese consumers. The evasion of a Japanese brandname is also a good point.
(Hell, there may have been an article about the iQue here on 4cr. I remember reading about it somewhere…)
Dejital on July 18, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Yeah, I wrote an article here:
http://www.4colorrebellion.com/archives/2005/06/02/nintendo-ique
Ben on July 19, 2005 at 5:23 am
I was speaking to my Chinese friend about Ique and he was saying that it’s really unpopular because people don’t want to play old games when they could just go and download new ones for free. He doesn’t really get the whole piracy = illegal jig. I’m guessing they’re releasing the Ds over there because they’ve got a pretty tight piracy prevention on the Ds.
Baldridge on July 22, 2005 at 2:24 am
You know, I’ve always thought that sounds like ‘iPod’, ‘iMac’ and ‘iTunes’ and so on… even the shiny blue logo has the same ring to them.