Asus Eee Stick looks very familiar

(Credit: Asus)

Asus has announced its first-ever motion control wireless joystick that the company is calling the Eee Stick. Now where have we seen this before? Ah that's right; it's almost an exact copy of the Remote/Nunchuk combination that you use with your Nintendo Wii. The Eee Stick uses a 2.4GHz RF USB dongle and requires two AA batteries for each controller.

The Eee Stick will allow you to "get into the swing of gaming" as it will be bundled with certain Eee PC and Eee Box products. While the Eee Stick will work with any PC, Asus recommends using it only with games designed for the device (which come packaged along with it). Unfortunately, there is no information about what any of these games are or what they actually look like.

The Eee Stick can operate in three modes: 3D Motion mode will emulate any movement along any axis on screen, Pointing mode will be used as a "light gun," and Tilt mode, which will sense movement forward, backward, and to the sides.

(Via Engadget)

[strippedblueyahoocom]

i smell a def. lawsuit. anyone else?

[thomasterranova]

Hopefully this is all just a joke. In which case, it's funny.

Even the name is a rip-off. "Eee" sounds just like "Wee." How can these retarded rip-off artists live with themselves. Maybe if they expended the same effort into R&D that they spend on figuring out how to rip off Nintendo without getting sued, these parasites could actually create something useful of their own.

[thomasterranova]

Hopefully this is all just a joke. In which case, it's funny.

Even the name is a rip-off. "Eee" sounds just like "Wee." How can these retarded rip-off artists live with themselves. Maybe if they expended the same effort into R&D that they spend on figuring out how to rip off Nintendo without getting sued, these parasites could actually create something useful of their own.

[jonesns]

can anyone say.....lawsuit???

[tosandrew]

I see a lawsuit on its way! it looks almost exactly like a wiimote except for the buttons!

[Christopera]

How the he$% are you going to play games on an Eee PC? The screen is too small to check your email let alone play games!

[shawn1313]

ha ha ha that's AWESOME

[iwuzbord]

the advertising on the bottom of this page are for the Wii, and if the advertisements see a similarity, i think nintendo's lawyers will too.

[make_or_break]

I'm not so sure about Nintendo winning a lawsuit. The Eee Sticks are not meant for the Wii in any way, so they don't compete directly with Nintendo. There's a good chance that most the tech within the Wiimote is licensed from other companies, so there's nothing there that Nintendo can gripe about. As for the Eee Sticks' appearance...yeah, they look VERY similar to the nunchuck, but Asus DOESN'T copy the actual Wiimote for the other hand. Fact is that the Eee Sticks functionally is more like a two-piece, wireless version of the venerable gamepad layout as much as lit resembles 1/2 of the Wii controller system.

When joysticks were the main gaming controller, they all looked the same as well. Every steering wheel controller for the PS2 looked so much alike. Third party console controllers all resemble the actual ones made by The Big Three. And Nintendo certainly DOES NOT own the right to the color white. So if Asus copies the griplike nunchuck styling, where's the legal infringement in that? They didn't copy the actual Wiimote or the specific way it functions. Gaming peripheral companies have been doing these sorts of things FOR AGES.

[siedpe13]

id love to use something like a wii remote for pc fps

[Lemon5]

Lol, wow, this is kinda cool... i guess? I mean I really didn't think the Wiimote was all that amazing. For a company who wanted to make controllers easier, Nintendo made the Wiimote pretty confusing. W/E though. This is going to suck, no one is going to buy it (the Asus thing).