Foreign Games Consoles Can Now Be Sold In China

The Chinese Ministry of Culture has officially confirmed that all foreign games console makers can now sell their hardware in China, so long as they register in Shanghai’s free trade zone. However, they haven’t said that the now 12 year long bad will be lifted entirely. Either way, this is of course great news for hardware manufacturers and it’s going to open up another potentially huge market to the games industry that has been effectively sitting dormant for quite some time now.

The catch here is that the hardware and software can only be sold and promoted in Shanghai’s free trade zone and there will be plenty of rules and regulations that will need to be met, but unfortunately these have yet to be detailed. Hardware manufacturers will need to apply for approval for specific product models before they can be sold there, while software and game contents will need to meet guidelines for violence and material that could be politically sensitive, although this much is true of most countries where games hardware and software is sold.

The ban has lasted 12 years and was put in place to protect children from potentially physical and mental harm from gaming and gaming content, but as for what has made them change their mind on this remains to  be seen, although I suspect the reasons are financial given the current global economy.

Thank you ZDNet for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of eTeknix.