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China Lifts 13-Year-Old Foreign Console Ban
hypnosec writes "China has lifted the 13-year-old foreign gaming console ban, which it imposed back in 2000 as a way to protect the nation's youth from unhealthy content that may adversely affect their mental health. The temporary lift of the ban, which was announced Monday by the State Council of PCR (Google Translation into English), will make way for international console vendors including Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo to setup production facilities in the newly created Shanghai Free Trade Zone and sell their consoles throughout the country. The vendors will still have to go through local checks, including the ones from the Cultural authorities to ensure that they don't violate any of those rules."
First why is that a down side, other than for those Chinese people. After all for every 1 hot gamer girl they will have to go through thousands of basement boys.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
They still need to lift a ban on weed and frozen pizzas (if there is one) to get the full Western "console experience"...
Yes. If by restricted you mean pirated faster & furiously.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In Peoples Republic of China game restricts YOU!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why not just import 12 or 14 year old foreign gaming consoles?
Geez! Why can't you be quiet?!? Now I'll have competition from other slashdotters!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Let me guess, you're not a native English speaker. Let me also surmise that you don't live in the UK, US, NZ, AU, or Japan. Because in those regions....people actually pay money for software.
The only people wanting to start conversations about "flip-top" PS2's and HDLoaders on the PS2 Linux forums were not in any of the above countries.
The reason developers/publishers put more emphasis on console games (which are actually computer games since consoles are special purpose computers) is because console gamers spend money. Especially so compared to PC gamers in Eastern Europe and the Second/Third World.
Your comment is wrong (about countries). In AU and NZ, hacking rates were higher because many releases were Japan-only or US-only, so the "smaller" markets would have more mod chips and such getting around restrictions because the number of legitimate titles was restricted.
If all region codes were eliminated for all markets (not even needed now, as HD PAL and HD NTSC are essentially compatible, PAL/NTSC being one of the reasons I kept hearing for why they were "necessary"), then piracy would decrease, not increase. When they make it harder to buy legal content, more people will pirate. But they want to sell the same thing for $10 in India, $50 in the US, and $100 in NZ/AU. So NZ/AU will pirate because they are paying 10x what others are for the same content.
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