Ban on games consoles may be lifted
interpolator
Now we're not talking Afghanistan here, but the most populous country in the world: China! Apparently game consoles have been banned in the Middle Kingdom for the last years (although it didn't stop the Chinese from getting them).
And I was wondering why you could only buy grey import consoles from Hong Kong or South Korea, but no consoles localized to Mainland China. My theory was that piracy is so rampant that it's not worth it for Sony, MS and Nintendo to enter a market when they have to make profits on the software and not hardware. Actually when buying a Korean Wii (with an ingenious homebrew hack to translate the entire interface into simplified Chinese) at the local Shanghai electronics bazaar, I was offered a 500gb USB hdd with tons of Wii games for an additional $40. On display were all kinds of Wiis from various regions of the world and all kinds of special PS3 versions in blue, white or bright red - strangely enough, the special versions (all from Japan) were never hacked, unlike the black ones. At the counter were shoe boxes with pirated DVDs for the 360 and other systems. In the background some folks were busy loading up new PS Vitas with pirated games.
But apparently it was not the free market that kept the consoles out but the overly concerned ("someone think of the children!") government. Who'd have guessed? Interestingly enough you could see promo events for e.g. the 3DS at local malls, although I'm not sure if they ever got officially imported into mainland China.
It should be pretty interesting to see what happens when China goes ahead and opens the market for consoles, and if giants like Microsoft and Sony manage to tackle this quite difficult market.
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2013-01/28/content_16178722.htm
edit - fun fact: my studio makes games for consoles (banned in China) and games for facebook (also banned)
And I was wondering why you could only buy grey import consoles from Hong Kong or South Korea, but no consoles localized to Mainland China. My theory was that piracy is so rampant that it's not worth it for Sony, MS and Nintendo to enter a market when they have to make profits on the software and not hardware. Actually when buying a Korean Wii (with an ingenious homebrew hack to translate the entire interface into simplified Chinese) at the local Shanghai electronics bazaar, I was offered a 500gb USB hdd with tons of Wii games for an additional $40. On display were all kinds of Wiis from various regions of the world and all kinds of special PS3 versions in blue, white or bright red - strangely enough, the special versions (all from Japan) were never hacked, unlike the black ones. At the counter were shoe boxes with pirated DVDs for the 360 and other systems. In the background some folks were busy loading up new PS Vitas with pirated games.
But apparently it was not the free market that kept the consoles out but the overly concerned ("someone think of the children!") government. Who'd have guessed? Interestingly enough you could see promo events for e.g. the 3DS at local malls, although I'm not sure if they ever got officially imported into mainland China.
It should be pretty interesting to see what happens when China goes ahead and opens the market for consoles, and if giants like Microsoft and Sony manage to tackle this quite difficult market.
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2013-01/28/content_16178722.htm
edit - fun fact: my studio makes games for consoles (banned in China) and games for facebook (also banned)
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Must be psp games, Vita games themselves still remain secure (though the platform is still failing in all territories so I'm not sure how much it matters).
Probably, PC games have to go through an extensive government review.