Sony Sees Gaming Opportunities, Rough Times In China

Posted by simoniker on Wednesday February 4, 2004 @12:14AM from the zing-and-zang dept.

Thanks to Frictionless Insight for pointing to a China Daily article discussing Sony Online's moves to introduce its MMO titles into China, as it has "found a Chinese partner to help it run its shooting game PlanetSide", and is "also trying to find partners for the forthcoming EverQuest II." While a Chinese gaming entrepreneur suggested "Western game companies are much superior to their South Korean counterparts in terms of graphic quality and game designs", a Shanghai-based analyst retorted that "...most Chinese game players like fashionable heroes and heroines in games more than picture quality and game plots, the strong point of South Korean and Japanese game developers." Elsewhere, GameScience has a translated article noting Sony's struggles in launching the PlayStation 2 in China, as it's argued, with regards to both imported hardware and pirated software: "There is simply no way for the official goods to compete with the [widely available] pirate versions."

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RTFA by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-04 00:30 · Score: 1, Insightful

* Import Playstations are cheaper than the official ones.
* Pirate software is cheaper than the official ones.

Coupled with the fact that there are only two (2!) Chinese region games - and the official Playstation consoles have crippling region locks that won't play import / pirate games - nobody in their right mind will buy one. It is a chicken & egg situation.

"Region locks are great!" Yes, keep telling yourselves that, Sony.