No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had - Samuel Johnson
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Lenovo is building a games console
CHINESE PC VENDOR Lenovo is going to enter the video games market by building a games console.
Lenovo has a history of building gaming laptops and PCs but it apparently has decided that it wants a slice of the console action and is gunning for Microsoft rather than Sony or Nintendo.
The company told China Daily that it set up a splinter group of 40 engineers called Eedoo. The engineers were gathered to work on what it is unimaginatively calling the "Ebox", making no attempt to hide where its ideas came from or what it plans to compete with.
A complete clone of the Xbox, the Ebox will have a gesture control interface like Kinect and will use a webcam to read the gamer's movements. So unlike Sony's Move or the Nintendo Wii, no actual controller will be required.
Lenovo even said that it intends to pitch the price just lower than the cost of the Xbox. It is expecting to roll out the Ebox in the first quarter of 2011.
"We are the world's second company to produce a controller-free game console, behind only Microsoft," Eedoo president Jack Luo told China Daily."
"Our product is designed for family entertainment. EBox may not have exquisite game graphics, or extensive violence, but it can inspire family members to get off the couch and get some exercise," Luo said.
Sounds like a terrible plan, right? Well no. The Vole's Xbox 360 is still banned in China thanks to China's Ministry of Culture legislation. Xboxes are manufactured there but they are all exported to other countries so there is a huge gap in the Chinese market for an Xbox, sorry, we mean Ebox. µ
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Lenovo is going down the tubes. Our work used to be IBM (and eventually Lenovo) laptops by the hundreds. We literally have over 2000 of them in use right now. We recently did an RFP contract to supply our laptops for the next year and Lenovo's proposal was ridiculous, coming in 10's of thousands of dollars higher than the rest while pushing consumer grade laptops with 1 year warranty (while the other companies pushed business class laptops with 1-3 year warranties).
China's Ministry of Culture Legislation Agenda:
1) Ban most American items
2) Copy banned items
3) Sell cheap rip offs
4) Repeat 1, 2, and 3.
It's a terrible plan overral. I mean, MS could enter this market losing millions of dollars just because they had the financial muscle. They also had the software muscle as well as some experience in the video games arena with their video games division.
All of which lenovo doesn't have.
Even if it's to be sold only in china I think it's a terrible idea. Developing video games has gotten more and more expensive these days, and to spend all that money only in one market seems really stupid. Unless the thing it's going to use ps1 technology that is.