Viimote, Vii Sports and all that?!

Oct 2, 2007 07:50 GMT  ·  By

We've already shown you that funny Wee DVD player and compared it to the Nintendo Wii. Bad choice of a name for a gadget considering that it's a synonym for urine... Now, another copycat and wannabe makes its way out of China, bearing the name Vii. The good news is that this typical Chinese gadget might be cheaper than the original Wii and that all the titles designed for Nintendo's console might work on it.

I'm curios to see if this Vii is compatible with the Wii, considering that they're lookalikes and they probably have the same features. So, if you've been waiting for many months and saving money in order to buy a Wii, now's your chance to go shopping for a presumably cheaper gaming device. However, I have a feeling that this console will only be available in China, since the Asian producers usually use this move to make a gadget popular in their country, delivering it to the rest of the world afterwards. We're expecting a Zbox and a PZ3 right now, arriving from China, in order to complete with their twins. Third world countries will surely appreciate such fake versions of famous consoles, since they're cheap, but the owner of a genuine Wii will surely be frustrated by the advantage of the new buyers. The gaming device even comes with a Viimote, doing a swell job of copying Nintendo's acclaimed console.

If things stay like this we'll each be making our own consoles 10 years from now and all major producers will only sell components instead of whole devices. It may sound like a utopia, but gamers are getting more and more acquainted with the "guts" of their "toys" relying heavily on the DIY methods, when they break down. Will the Vii top the sales of the copycat market like the Wii did with the genuine consoles market?