For 15 long years, our repressed console comrades over in China were heavily locked down with choices as the government banned the purchase and use of home consoles. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal report, young Chinese children and adults can finally enjoy console games and be exposed to the wonderful titles that were restricted by such limitations.
The purpose of the nationwide ban back in 2000 was the Chinese government’s short-sighted initiative to protect and shelter Chinese youth from the corruption of video games on their impressionable minds. It didn’t help that several parents helped to give this law the go ahead, and thus created this absurd legislation.
What ended up happening was simply the migration for gamers in China going for the alternative, and that was PC gaming. This saw the sharp rise of online gaming the year after the law was made. It was a shallow attempt that merely hurt the efforts of consoles and sales over in China where the potential does indeed exist.
So now that China can buy consoles and developers can start churning out Chinese localization for their games, it’ll take a very long time for the console market to reach the PC market in terms of profitability, but the growth will be steady.
Good luck to our fellow gamer brethren in China!