Gamevice suing Nintendo over Switch design

Nintendo has always been considered a company that likes to experiment and create new devices that might seem weird but in the end prove to be great, ergonomic, state of the art technology. Well, except for N64 controller, no one had enough hands for that one. Oh, and the Wii U controller as a second screen. Anyway, Gamevice is suing Nintendo!

Gamevice might not be familiar to you, but they have something called a Wikipad – an Android-based tablet featuring clip on controllers. It came out in 2013, powered by a quad core Nvidia Tegra, shipping as a Google certified product.

Although Switch came out this year, Nintendo has been researching the concept for some time prior, of course. Even back in the time of early Wii U concepts in 2012, gamepad prototypes existed with detachable parts. Another difference is that Switch’s joy-cons slide out of position (the Wikipad controllers are clip-on) and can be used without actually being attached, which is not the case with the Wikipad’s controllers.

Nintendo Switch has been the runaway success among the consoles of 2017. For a time it seemed that even Nintendo was surprised by its success, with some shops lacking Switch for days or weeks. However, the ramped up production soon caught up with demand, which means that today there are already 4.7 million Switch units worldwide, and the sales do not show a much slower drop-off than PS4, for example.

Gamevice is not the first company to sue Nintendo, but this only means that Nintendo is used to this type of legal endeavors. Looking at the situation, it seems that Nintendo’s lawyers will not break a lot of sweat over this, but we will follow the events as they unfold, just in case.