Almost a week after the Lenovo G02 was discovered by the internet, along with the potential legal issues that would most certainly trail behind it, the US-Chinese brand recently gave a statement to tech outlet Tom’s Hardware about the G02 retro gaming handheld. The company says that the console isn’t available outside of China, but that may not necessarily be true.
Let’s rewind a little bit for now, and go back to when news of the Lenovo G02 broke, and what it actually is. So, as a brand, Lenovo would sometimes allow different manufacturers – small to medium manufacturers, typically – to use its name and plaster it on their products. This practice has a name: white-labelling or just creating white-label products.
It’s a practice that allows the brand to sell their products under the name of a major brand, which in turn increases the chances of it getting traction or any attention from the crowd. For that matter, Lenovo isn’t the only brand that does this, and as we mentioned, memory maker Biwin also does this all the time and counts Acer as one of its many customers. This, by the way, does mean that the final product is never listed on any of the brand’s official sites.
But, as this incident has undoubtedly proven, mass producing products and then allowing the manufacturer to slap your branding on said products could prove to be detrimental. The Lenovo G02, in this case, is a retro gaming handheld, pre-loaded with literally thousands of old games and ROMs, ripped from Sony, Sega, and Nintendo.
It’s the last gaming brand that Lenovo is clearly worried about, as it is the most lethal fruit from a poisonous tree; Nintendo is biblically famous for being one of the most litigious companies in the world of gaming, sparing no expense in going after people and parties that it alleges have illegally created pirated copies of its games via emulators and hacking their consoles.
Lenovo said that the G02 do no include memory cards or preloaded games, leading it to believe that someone else may have added the illegal ROMs after the device had left the production line. For another matter, it says that it does not authorise the sale of the handheld outside of China, nor does it allow it to be sold on sites like AliExpress, and that any such sales that occur are unsanctioned by it or its authorised licensees.
AliExpress, for that matter, doesn’t generally advertise the ROMs but product page we got the product from has a slide that clearly details the ROMs that would get Lenovo in hot water.
(Source: Tom’s Hardware)
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