Sunday, November 4, 2007

Vii is out now !

Yes it's the 威力棒 Vii, not the Nintendo Wii. Our super distant relatives have done it again. After reverse engineering CPUs, mobile phones, cars and a whole chunk of stuff, the world's factory now give us the 威力棒 Vii !

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The Chinese guys must have spotted a potential market when the over priced and perpetually unavailable Nintendo came back in 2006. The resulting gaming knockoff looks and plays like the Nintendo Wii, including the star feature, the motion sensor controllers.

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However, apart of that, the Vii isn't a outright clone of the original. The most glaring difference is the lack of compatibility with Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo Wii games. It doesn't seem to have a optical drive, so I assume that it uses cartridge of sorts for games. It do come with some built in games right out of the box.

This also signifies that the the Vii has it's own software and hardware architecture, and basically, it stole the appearance and input controller from the Nintendo Vii. From what it seems to me, it's just a proprietary console made in China that doesn't offer any additional games yet. So for the China folks, this knockoff will be a good and cheap substitute of the real thing, since the little kids are unlikely to be able to tell the difference anyway. Since there is already a library of games built-in, and Nintendo Wii games are largely a load of crap anyway, the Vii indeed makes a nice alternative.

The Vii is so new that there is none posted in eBay yet and no pricing information available. I doubt any of the Vii will land in Singapore, so don't bother to wait for it.

Original Article from Engadget

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