Remember the Vii? In case you don't, the Vii was Chinese ripoff of the Nintendo Wii. It had a rather cheap motion sensing gimmick and few games inbuilt. Now it seems the French are taking a leaf out of the mighty Chinese book of ripoffs, all at a low price.

We all remember the hilarity surrounding the Chinese answer to Nintendo’s Wii, the Vii. Now it seems a French company is doing the same thing and releasing its own family-friendly, casual-gamey, motion-sensey device for living rooms.

The device, which retails at EUR39.99, features a vibrant portfolio of games including Baseball, Ping Pong, Bowling, Boxing, Football and Tennis.

While it’s easy to laugh at what is blatantly an attempt to horn in on the Wii format at a budget price it is, in a sense, quite worrying. What bothers me is that the growth in casual/family oriented gaming could mean a downturn in the quality of both the hardware and software in production.

For those of us who have been gaming for a while it’s easy to know where we stand. We can identify what each console or format offers to us and correlate that with what we want as gamers. However, those who are not yet gaming, wherever they may be, blissfully unaware they are in the cross-hair of Nintendo or whoever else will not have this pre-existing knowledge of implied quality and may only see the price.

StarJet via thatvideogameblog.com »