Gamevice, Inc. (formerly Wikipad, Inc.) is a

Simi Valley Simi Valley (; Chumash: ''Shimiyi'') is a city in the valley of the same name in the southeast region of Ventura County, California, United States. Simi Valley is from Downtown Los Angeles, making it part of the Greater Los Angeles Area. T ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

based tablet and tablet peripherals manufacturer specializing in gaming products. The debut product was the Wikipad, a proprietary

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

tablet hardware engineered for mobile gaming, which featured a detachable controller. Gamevice later came to market with a peripheral only product, rebranded under the name Gamevice. The company was founded by Matthew Joynes, James Bower, and Brendan Iribe. Appointing the current CEO Phillip Hyun.

History

Wikipad

At the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event ty ...

(CES) in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish language, Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the List of United States cities by population, 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the U.S. state, state of Neva ...

on January 10, 2012, the Wikipad was shown with both a 2D and a glasses-free 3D-enabled device. In May 2012,

Gaikai is an American company which provides technology for the streaming of high-end video games. Its technology has multiple applications, including in-home streaming over a local wired or wireless network (as in Remote Play between the PlayStation 4 ...

, a

cloud gaming Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or gaming-as-a-service or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game rem ...

service which

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

acquired two months later in July 2012, partnered with Wikipad, Inc. to integrate its streaming service into the tablet. The Wikipad was originally scheduled for an October 31, 2011 release, but was delayed indefinitely on the day it was originally supposed to be released. The Wikipad was released on June 11, 2013 in the United States with a price tag of $249. In March 2014, a game control mapping tool was announced for the Wikipad to help map touchscreen game controls to the physical Wikipad controller in an effort to improve gameplay. Also in March, the price of the Wikipad dropped to $199. In June 2014,

OnLive OnLive was a Mountain View, California-based provider of cloud virtualization technologies. OnLive's flagship product was its cloud gaming service, which allowed subscribers to rent or demo computer games without installing them on their device. ...

cloud gaming support was added to the Wikipad.

Reception

Eurogamer ''Eurogamer'' is a British video game journalism website launched in 1999 and owned by alongside formed company Gamer Network. Its editor-in-chief is Martin Robinson. Since 2008, it is known for the formerly eponymous games trade fair EGX ...

rated the Wikipad's screen size and intentions as nice, saying it had "its heart in the right place", but decided that the lack of compelling Android games, high launch price, and outdated specs and software limited the appeal of the device. IGN gave the Wikipad poor reviews taking into consideration the lack of games in its library, flimsy construction, and software that was considered dated, even at the time of the device's release. It concludes that "The Wikipad is a mostly failed attempt at turning an Android tablet into a gaming handheld." An aggregation of reviews done by

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editor ...

shows the average review score of the Wikipad among critics to be 58/100.

Gamevice

In January 2014, Wikipad, Inc. announced a new controller called Gamevice to expand its mobile device coverage. The industrial design for the Gamevice controller was developed by RKS Design. Gamevice is a detachable controller with a classic

D-pad A D-pad (short for directional pad or digital pad; officially referred to by Nintendo as a +Control Pad) is a flat, usually thumb-operated, often digital, four-way directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern vi ...

; twin triggers; A, B, X, and Y buttons; and dual

analog stick An analog stick (or analogue stick in British English), sometimes called a control stick or thumbstick, is an input device for a controller (often a game controller) that is used for two-dimensional input. An analog stick is a variation of a joy ...

s. On January 31, 2017, a new Gamevice controller was released for the iPhone 7. On February 15, 2018, Gamevice announced and launched a

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before bein ...

-themed controller bundle, which includes a Gamevice controller, a carrying case for the controller and a download code for Minecraft on iOS.

Legal

In August 2017, Gamevice filed a lawsuit against Nintendo in the

United States District Court for the Central District of California The United States District Court for the Central District of California (in case citations, C.D. Cal.; commonly referred to as the CDCA or CACD) is a Federal trial court that serves over 19 million people in Southern and Central California, m ...

, alleging that the design of the

Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a tablet that can either be docked for use as a home console or used as a portable device, making it a ...

conflicts with its patent on the design for the Wikipad. The lawsuit sought damages on existing Switch sales and banning further sales of the console. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed by Gamevice in October 2017. However, in March 2018, Gamevice initiated a second patent infringement lawsuit on Nintendo related to a different set of patents. Gamevice also sought action through the

United States International Trade Commission The United States International Trade Commission (USITC or I.T.C.) is an agency of the United States federal government that advises the legislative and executive branches on matters of trade. It is an independent, bipartisan entity that analyz ...

related to patent infringement under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, and was seeking to block imports of the Switch into the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. On October 10, 2019, the lawsuit against Nintendo has ended, alleging the U.S. International Trade Commission has determined to affirm the conclusion of the presiding administrative law judge's initial determination that no violation of Section 337 has occurred. On March 27, 2020, Gamevice filed a new patent-infringement lawsuit at the USITC against Nintendo in addition to appealing the previous case that it lost. It ended in favour of Nintendo.NOTICE OF COMMISSION DETERMINATION NOT TO REVIEW AN INITIAL DETERMINATION TERMINATING THE INVESTIGATION WITH RESPECT TO A PATENT CLAIM
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References

{{Reflist , 30em Tablet computers Android (operating system) devices