400°

China confirms foreign game consoles can now be sold

China is relaxing their once strict console ban in Shanghai's free zone.

Zodiac3930d ago

What about game restrictions? It took this long to get the consoles, so there could be some pretty heavy content restrictions.

PopRocks3593930d ago

With some luck, maybe those restrictions will be lifted at some point too.

justastranger103930d ago

Uhh this may seem unknown to many people, but China hates Japan. Period. Long bloody history between the two. MS will win china no contest.

guitarded773930d ago

If Australia has such heavy censorship, I don't expect China to lift many restrictions. They will probably require PSN, Live and Nintendo Network to have their own network center and servers in China and regulated by the government... like how they do with any major website. I'm happy for the people of China getting the chance to play some new/different games, but I wouldn't expect them to have a lot of options. They could give away all games for free through any of the networks, and I still wouldn't create a Chinese account. People fear Kinect 2 having access to see what you're doing, but in China that would be a legitimate concern (not that it's not legitimate elsewhere).

Bereaver3930d ago

China has some pretty funny restrictions. Like.... they can't have skeletons in games.....

That's what took one WoW expansion such a long time.

Even in LoL. The items in the game haven't changed but once you reach the stats area where it shows kills/deaths/items bought, the items with the skulls are now different.

Athonline3930d ago

@justastranger10

They do, but actually the rich people in China, love Japanese products as they have no trouble affording them (more than 1 million millionaires at China). I recall from my Uni days, we had lots of Chinese students, all them with a Nikon/ Canon dSLR, a Sony Vaio or an Apple Macbook and a Wii/PS3 as their console...

They like "in-fashion" stuff they know/ heard about. Nintendo and Playstation brand names are much stronger in Asian countries -thus a bigger "wow" factor.

nosferatuzodd3930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

china would rather go with japan than America remember that youtube is allso banned over there and i remember when all the psvitas got gobbled up by people from main land china no one in hong kong could get one anywhere

HammadTheBeast3930d ago

@justastranger

Wow. Now that is just ignorance lol. Yes, China and Japan haven't been on the best terms in the past, but you're basing your stuff off of something you probably remembered from some random article or textbook.

gaffyh3930d ago

This story just reminded me of the "China Don't Care" t-shirt that Ryan Davis designed :(

kreate3930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

China does have issues w japan yes. Japan is also not their ally.

Japan still believes part of china belongs to japan.

But asian culture is too similar.
Ps4 is more culturally comfortable while xbox is too foreign.

Try showing master chief and gears of war to a bunch of asians....
Than show ni no kuni, tales, final fantasy.

This is why japan is more important than u think. If u fail at japan, u pretty much failed in asia. Last time I heard, asians dominate the world in numbers. I wonder whose gonna pick up all those consumers.

Than on the other hand, chinese/asians love mickey mouse, iphones, american cars.

Except japan, they don't like american cars.

MysticStrummer3930d ago

N4G better get ready for a meltdown if China puts 360 back on top of PS3 worldwide, which is definitely possible.

nukeitall3930d ago

@justastranger10:

"Uhh this may seem unknown to many people, but China hates Japan. Period. Long bloody history between the two. MS will win china no contest."

It is the truth!

Disagree all you want, but facts are facts!

Chinese hates the Japanese, because of the invasion. Some of them old timers are still around.

That is why American cars are selling gangbusters in China, despite Japanese car being more reliable.

It's like going to Michigan and buying a Japanese car. They do exist, but there are ain't that many of them.

ProjectVulcan3930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

This comes at a critical point in time, months before a new generation. The manufacturers will now be scrambling over themselves to sell their new consoles in the Chinese market officially.

Whoever wins China can dominate this generation. Of course consoles were sold before less than officially, but lifting this ban could define the next generation and help turn the tide of the industry.

UltimateMaster3930d ago

Finally, they'll be able to buy legitimate consoles instead of clones....

AzureskyZ3930d ago

@just you really dont know their culture all that well do you-- chinese suck up japanese products faster than crack addicts will to do an act to get some more crack. From japanese anime to japanese pc games sells extremely well. If i had to put money on i would say ps4 is gonna sell alot more unit than xbox on the simply fact that it will have more titles tailored to asian audience.

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cyclindk3930d ago

Well they didn't say anything about games being allowed, just the consoles.

3-4-53930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

They were already being sold:

As:

Jintendo, Zbox & Praystation

Good for worldwide sales though. I'm assuming this will boost Sony PS3 sales and maybe even PS2 sales once again.

husomc3930d ago

it's good, if everyone is playing games there'll be no one to make the game consoles

+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 3930d ago
hollabox3930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

True but it's a step in the right direction considering what the policies were just a month ago.

Zodiac3930d ago

Definitely a good step. I hope China plays nice with content restrictions. Gaming could definitely use another big market, or potentially great market to go with America,Europe, and japan.

FlameHawk3930d ago

Only reason they uplifted the ban was because they couldn't successfully clone other consoles.

hollabox3930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

I think China is looking at the bigger picture regarding potential import tax on consoles. Lets face it, the video game industry is big business and growing with Forbes reporting $67 Billion in revenue in 2012. Just about every one has played a video games in their life no matter what age, race, and sex. China is looking at their population being over 1 billion, which means about 300 million house holds as potential buyers.

dcj05243930d ago

Dang. Thats a lot of cash.

Bhuahahaha3930d ago

you can actually buy lots of modified 360ps3/wii and psp/nds at gray markets (no they're not hidden its blatant over there)

Bowzabub3930d ago (Edited 3930d ago )

This is great news.

weekev153930d ago

Imagine they dont censor the game content. I just heard a collective "ka-ching" noise as the dollars and yen signs just rolled into the collective eye sockets of every console maker and game publisher out there.

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180°

Bethesda Needs to Reduce the Gaps Between New Fallout and Elder Scrolls Releases

Waiting a decade for new instalments in franchises as massive as Fallout and Elder Scrolls feels like a waste.

Read Full Story >>
gamingbolt.com
-Foxtrot11h ago

Microsoft have Obsidian but I feel it's Bethesda who just don't want to play ball as they've always said they want to do it themselves.

Once MS bought Zenimax in 2020 they should have put the Outer Worlds 2 on the back burner, allow Bethesda to finish off its own Space RPG with Starfield (despite totally different tone why have two in your first party portfolio with two developers who's gameplay is a tad similar) and got Obsidian for one of their projects to make a spiritual successor to New Vegas.

When the Elder Scrolls VI is finished Bethesda can then onto the main numbered Fallout 5 themselves.

The Outer Worlds 2 started development in 2019 so putting it on the back burner wouldn't have been the end of the world, they'd have always come back to it once Fallout was done and it would have been nicely spaced out from Starfields release once they had most likely stopped supporting it and all the expansions were released.

If they did this back in 2020 when they bought Zenimax and the game had a good, steady 4 - 5 years development, you might have seen it release in 2025.

We are literally going to be waiting until 2030 at the very earliest for Fallout 5 and all they seem bothered about is pushing Fallout 76.

RaidenBlack9h ago(Edited 9h ago)

Its not just only Todd not playing ball.
Obsidian have made a name for themselves in delivering stellar RPGs, but most famous once have always been sequels/spin-offs to borrowed IPs like KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Stick of Truth etc.
Obsidian wants to invest more in their own original IPs like Outer Worlds or Pillars of Eternity with Avowed.
Similar to what Bluepoint & inXile wants to do or Kojima is doing (i.e not involving anymore in Konami's IPs).
So yea, even if New Vegas has the most votes from 3D Fallout fans, Obsidian just wants to do their own thing, like any aspiring dev studio and MS is likely currently respecting that.
But a future Fallout game from Obsidian will surely happen. Founder Feargus Urquhart has already stated an year ago that they're eager to make a new Fallout game with Bethesda, New Vegas 2 or otherwise. Urquhart was the director of the very first 1995's Fallout game after all.
And don't forget Brian Fargo and his studio inXile, as Brian Fargo was the director of Fallout's 1988 predecessor: Wasteland

KyRo5h ago(Edited 5h ago)

Obsidian should take over the FO IP. They're do far better with it than Bethesda who hasn't made a great game for almost 15 years

Duke195h ago(Edited 5h ago)

I disagree. Part of these games is the support for the mod community. If they move to releasing a "next game" every 2 or 3 years, the modding support plummets and the franchises turn into just another run of the mill RPG.

Make the games good enough to withstand the test of time, to keep people coming back to them and expanding on them with mod support.

--Onilink--2h ago(Edited 2h ago)

I dont think anyone is saying they need to come out every 2 years (not to mention almost no game is released that quickly anymore)

By the time Fallout 5 comes out, it will be more than 15 years since Fallout 4 came out (same with ES6 coming out 15 years after Skyrim). Even if you want to use F76 as the metric for the most recent release, that one came out in 2018. It will be a miracle if F5 comes out before 2030

The point is that for a studio that doesnt seem to operate with multiple teams doing several projects at once, that their projects normally take 4-5 years as a minimum, and that now they even added Starfield to the rotation, it becomes a 15+ years waiting period between releases for each series, which doesnt make sense. Imagine that Nintendo only released a mainline Mario or Zelda game every 15 years…

They either need to start developing more than 1 project at a time, let someone else take a crack at one of the IPs or significantly reduce their development times

Duke191h ago(Edited 1h ago)

Why should someone else take a crack at one of the IPs? Look at what happened to Final Fantasy as a recent example - there is pretty clear FF fatigue setting in because they are now pumping out titles in the franchise every few years. Pumping out more games faster doesn't always make a series better.

There are plenty of options to make new games, not just create more titles in the same universe at a faster pace.

mandf2h ago

Yeah I’m going to say it, who cares about the modding community when making a game? Half the time developers only tolerate modders because they fix there game for them.

Skuletor4h ago

Yeah, let's all advocate for smaller gaps between series' releases, then we'll probably get headlines about how the series have dropped in quality and they could have benefited from more time in the oven. Let them cook.

SimpleSlave3h ago

"how the series have dropped in quality and they could have benefited from more time in the oven" So every Bethesda game then? Got it.

Listen, I would agree if this was about From Software or something, but Bethesda?

🤣

C'mon now. What timeline are you from?

Skuletor1h ago

Think about it, they're already bug filled messes on their current schedule, can you imagine how much worse it would be if they rushed things?

Duke191h ago

I mean you aren't wrong. People are going to complain about anything

isarai3h ago

Hows about you focus on quality, just a thought 🤷‍♂️

Sciurus_vulgaris2h ago

Bethesda [or Microsoft] would have to reallocate internal and external studios towards fallout and elder scrolls titles. Bethesda has the issue of developing 2 big IPs that are large RPGs on rotation. If you want more Fallout and Elder Scrolls, development will have to be outsourced.

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