Throughout the years, iQue has been out of public sight, strayed away from everything happening in the gaming industry. When gamers in China are cheering for Xbox One and PS4's official release in Mainland China, they could barely remember the existence of iQue; when Pokémon fans in China are going wild over the series' first ever official Chinese language release, not many of them knew that the company wass the one in charge of its Simplified Chinese localization.
On May 31th, 2016, iQue announced on its official website that adding funds with iQue point cards was no longer supported on the DSi shop. For many, the news itself was not as surprising as the fact that the company was still in business.
iQue is a forgotten company. Throughout the years, iQue has been out of public sight, strayed away from everything happening in the gaming industry. When gamers in China are cheering for Xbox One and PS4's official release in Mainland China, they could barely remember the existence of iQue; when Pokémon fans in China are going wild over the series' first ever official Chinese language release, not many of them know that the company is the one in charge of its Simplified Chinese localization.
Founded 14 years ago (as of 2016), iQue was more a bystander of the gaming industry in China. In the past 14 years in China, single-player games have lost their appeal, online games have gained their popularity, Smartphone games crashed into the market, and consoles made their ice-breaking attempt. However, iQue was out of all these changes.
The author interviewed five different former iQue employees who worked at different times in different departments, and pieced up this forgotten history of iQue with their fragments of memories. Much information only exists as rumors and was hard to validate, so this article may not be 100% accurate and objective, but should still be enough to serve as a reference for those who are interested in this topic.
Due to the request of anonymity and hiding personal details, these five former employees were not differentiated and will only be collectively referred to as "iQue former employeea" in this article.
"Yen is here today too, let’s give him a warm welcome!" Howard Lincoln announced to the audience, at the E3 Pre-show press conference, on May 12th, 1999.
Dr. Yen stood up to the audience’s applause.
During the conference, Nintendo announced the console with the codename “Dolphin”, known as the GameCube when it was released. The team who developed Dolphin’s GPU was led by no other than Dr. Yen. He was 45 years old back then, and has been working around Silicon Valley for over a decade.
Dr. Wei Yen（颜维群） was born in Taiwan. He had a brother 3 years older, named David Yen（颜维伦）. David had been getting good grades since he was young and was a top student for his parents. Dr. Yen hated to be called “the younger brother of David Yen”, so he always chose a school different from his brother’s choice, be it the secondary school or university.
In the 1970s, both of the brothers went to the U.S. for further education, with David studying at University of Illinois and Dr. Yen at Purdue University, where he later earned a Doctorate degree. Dr. Yen first worked as a researcher at HP. Two years later, the brothers, along with three other people, co-founded Cydrome. They entered the microprocessor market, with David in charge of hardware and Dr. Yen in Charge of software.
This was their first attempt at starting their own business. The companies lasted for four years, reaching a maximum of 180 workers at its peak. Later, due to the rise of high performance workstations, Cydrome’s products lost their market and the company was finally shut down in 1988.
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