China Lifts Nationwide Console Ban Again!

Games consoles and China haven’t exactly gone hand in hand, with the government having a nationwide bad on the manufacture and sale of games consoles. Some of you may be thinking that this ban was already lifted last year, and you would be partly right. The previous ban lift was only for companies registered in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, which a lot of companies can do, but it’s not going to be ideal for all resellers in the country.

China’s Ministry of Culture has now approved that the manufacture and sale of consoles are allowed anywhere in the country. This means that companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are free to stomp in with marketing, hardware, promotions, games and a whole lot more to the Chinese market, which has been going relatively untapped for quite some time; not counting imports of course.

Local censorship is still going to be a challenge for developers and publishers, but that can be managed one step at a time. The main battle for consoles now is PC and mobile, which obviously have had the market to themselves for a very long time, so it may take some time for console hardware to make an impact there.

Thank you Engadget for providing us with this information.