Chinese companies often take liberal inspiration from internationally successful products, with pretty blatant trademark and IP infringements, and products sold with names that laughably represent the real thing- for instance, you will run into many a Nii or a Play System on Chinese streets.
With that said, it appears that one of these Chinese products is now trying to make it big in the US. It is called the OBox, and it is being backed by Snail Games, who are currently massive in China, having expanded from a browser-based MMO developer to both hardware manufacturer and the nation’s fifth biggest cellphone service provider.
At CES 2015, they showed off their OBox and W3D initiatives, both designed to gain inroads into the US market. The OBox is powered by the Nvidia K1 processor, and Snail Games has a pretty progressive plan to let retailers offer different variations, with the options being offered being as mundane as different storage capacities, to different HDMI setups, and even different processors; the consoles are all modular, meaning even if you scrimp and get the cheapest possible option now, you can upgrade with the better parts later.
The only kicker? It’s an Android console.
So that’s another promising product doomed to failure, much like the Ouya, the Fire TV, and the Google Nexus Player.
The W 3D is not a console- it is a smartphone, and it too runs on Android, except this has buttons, meaning high end gaming options might actually be a thing here. It has an 8-core MTK6595/2.2GHZ CPU, meaning it rivals the Vita, if not far supercedes it, in terms of premium handheld hardware… it also has a glasses free autostereoscopic 3D screen, so that’s the 3DS’s signature feature covered there as well.
While it would be foolish to count Snail Games out, considering what all they have accomplished in China, do remember that China is a very different kind of market, and Android based gaming has, so far, completely failed to take off in the US.
We will see.
Source: The Verge
