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iQue Company. Part 2
In the previous article «The Emergence of iQue Company», we learned that when people talk about iQue Ltd., they usually mean iQue (China) Ltd., which is registered in China and still (as of 2022) conducts business there.
But what exactly is hidden behind iQue Ltd., and why was this company needed? We may never know, but there are various assumptions about the appearance of this organization: from tax evasion or corporate structure development to hiding the ultimate beneficiary.
iQue Office
I tend to think that, firstly, Nintendo simply did not want to show that the parent company owning iQue Ltd. was Japanese. This is indirectly confirmed by Nintendo itself. For example, at the 72nd annual general meeting of shareholders, Satoru Iwata said: «I myself have encountered several times in the past that what I said in Japanese was spread in China in a completely different context and meaning than what was actually said. This distorted information was perceived by people as quite unpleasant, although I never said such things. Thanks to this sad experience, we learned that any business statements about activities in China must be made in China itself». And secondly, if we are talking about creating a company, it is easier to make a new organization with the right owners than to try to introduce an additional entity into an already existing company by issuing additional shares.
And we could stop here if I hadn't accidentally noticed a few things that led me to write this article.
iQue Company Developments
If you are not a very experienced collector or console history enthusiast, you may have either never heard of iQue or may have accidentally seen a Game Boy Advance console with the iQue logo. But this company released many Nintendo consoles under its logo:
iQue Game Boy Advance
iQue SP
iQue Micro
iQue DS
iQue DS Lite
iQue DSi
iQue 3DS XL
iQue 3DS XL
But these are almost completely identical to Nintendo consoles. Often the difference was only the addition of Chinese language to the firmware, and in the case of Game Boy Advance consoles, even that was not necessary.
Let's be honest, calling these consoles "developments" of iQue is a stretch.
But there was one console released by iQue, and although it had a direct counterpart (Nintendo 64), it was a significantly upgraded device. I'm talking about the iQue Player.
It's hard to find any similarity between these consoles, but the bottom one is an improved version of the top one. You couldn't insert cartridges into it, but it came with a flash cartridge on which you could record purchased games.
I wrote more about the iQue Player in the article: «The History of Nintendo in China - iQue Company».
You can see photos of this console in the article: «iQue Player Photos».
iQue also developed the GameCube 2 under the name iQue Box.
iQue Box
You can read more in the article: «The Closed GameCube 2 Project – iQue Box».
The codename for this console was «BB2» - BroadOn Board 2.
Why did I go into such detail about these two developments? It's simple: only by carefully looking at the only patent of iQue did I realize that iQue did not develop consoles at all, and the entire future path of Nintendo heavily depended on a third party that was directly affiliated with iQue.
iQue Player Patent
If you look at the first page of the iQue Player patent, you will find that one of the inventors listed is Professor Wei Yen, and the patent owners are two companies: BroadOn Communications Inc. and iQue Ltd. Both companies are listed as being located in Palo Alto, CA.
So it turns out that the iQue Player and BB2, that is, BroadOn Board 2, are not just codenames for the console, but developments of some third company that is not iQue Ltd.
iQue Player patent
And why is the address of iQue listed as Palo Alto, California, and not the Cayman Islands? After all, in the previous article, we came to that conclusion. And how are these two companies even related?
On May 22, 2003, iQue Ltd. filed documents with the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) to register the iQue trademark.
iQue Ltd. trademark registration application
After some time, they received a response that the trademark conflicted with an earlier application from Garmin. Indeed, the latter had released a PDA called iQue.
iQue Garmin
But rejection is normal; it happens. What's interesting to us is not that - the full details of the iQue organization were listed there. So, iQue Ltd. was indeed registered in the Cayman Islands.
The CEO of iQue Ltd. is none other than Professor Wei Yen.
What's interesting is that, for obvious reasons, Wei Yen only signed the application, but someone had to fill it out and submit it! And the person representing iQue's interests was a certain Sherri Suto, whose address is listed as: USA, California, Palo Alto, 3400 Hillview Ave, and email sherri@broadon.com.
If you had visited the broadon.com website at that time, you would have seen this image:
broadon.com website
From this, we can understand that such an organization was indeed located at that address. Note that it was previously called RouteFree Inc.
From other data, we can learn that Wei Yen was also the CEO of this organization.
CEO Wei Yen
So, we can consider it confirmed that these two companies are affiliated, and very strongly so.
Let's try to draw some intermediate conclusions. For myself, I have determined that iQue Ltd. is just a technical intermediary that didn't take off. iQue (China) Ltd. is the office of a Chinese company where they handled marketing, game localization, and other things. But the head of this structure was BroadOn Communications Corp., which was responsible for developing new innovations.
BroadOn Communications Corp.
In trying to trace the fate of BroadOn Communications Corp., I found an interesting note stating that this company was called RouteFree (which we confirmed above), and later it was renamed iGware. After that, the company was sold to Acer and became Acer Cloud Technology.
I couldn't find confirmation of these words, but I accidentally saw news about the sale of iGware to Acer, and there was a screenshot of the iGware.com website.
Compare the websites of BroadOn and iGware – they are identical.
So what do we end up with?
Epilogue
Now the history of the iQue company becomes much clearer than before.
There was a simple three-part system. BroadOn Communications (owned by Prof. Wei Yen) was the technical developer of all iQue consoles and many parts of Nintendo's home consoles. It was known for a long time that BroadOn and Wei Yen developed graphics processors for Nintendo, but I was only able to connect all this into one chain now.
Nintendo Console Graphics Processors.
iQue (China) Ltd. essentially performed auxiliary functions: they handled game and firmware localization, marketing, and other activities.
And iQue Ltd. was purely a technical intermediary between these companies.
The most interesting thing about the relationships between these companies is that the failed iQue Player project, the unreleased iQue Box, and iQue NetCard became the basis for the creation of the Nintendo Wii (this became known from Zammis Clark's leaks).
The Nintendo Wii is Nintendo's main home console, which sold 101.63 million units. So iQue was a driver of progress for Nintendo!
And in the end, it turns out that what seemed like a failed attempt by Nintendo to do business in China led to the creation of the new and extremely popular Wii console, partial development of the 3DS and Wii U, and according to various sources, also to the emergence of the online game sales architecture that still operates on the Nintendo Switch.
