Gaming consoles are illegal in China

[subbie]

Indeed, there's two big questions here:
Whether it's actually region locked to play nothing but NTSC-C software. (which effectively AFAIK would make it not PS1 backwards compatible)
What games were released in the format.

I can't say since I haven't seen one but I would guess they re-released stuff from HK. Sony Asia has localized quite a few games for PS2/PS3/PSP for the HK & TW market.

-edit-
I would offer to do some recon soon since i'm heading to shenyang in a week but last time looking for gaming stuff was a bust (there is one small corner place inside a pc parts mall but that was all I came across). I also don't wish to piss off my mother in law (drove her crazy last time trying to get my iQue fw updated).

[moribund112]

Gaming consoles are technically illegal in China. But, in every major city - and in some smaller cities, there are shops everywhere. Go to Guangzhou and take a look at the subway stations near the universities, there are huge gaming shops. Pretty much any release you want comes into the mainland through Hong Kong - so most of my PS3 titles I purchased over the years are PS3 releases that usually come with bilingual manuals in English and Chinese, and sometimes the game itself will be in Chinese or English. This was the case with at least a dozen titles I can remember off the top of my head.

If you want to know more about the Chinese gaming scene, check out www.tgbus.com. It's probably one of the biggest gamers portals in the mainland. There are a lots of gamers, tons of people have consoles, and it's not nearly as backwards as everyone thinks. Of course, due to the fact that piracy is so prevalent, you don't see as many players on live or PSN, but they're around and you can usually hook up with a few through the forums if you're interested in gaming with them or practicing your Mandarin. So yes, while gaming consoles are "illegal," so is pornography, yet it's available in almost every electronics mall or shopping center if you look in the right places.

Just another poorly written article by a western journalist with little knowledge of what really goes on there. If you go to a Chinese city, you should be able to find a games shop. Ask around - a simple sentence like "nali mai dianzi youxi?" is probably sufficient.

[Shadowlayer]

Any chinese gaming blogs in english? or even spanish, I can handle that

[Lum]

Gaming consoles are technically illegal in China. But, in every major city - and in some smaller cities, there are shops everywhere. Go to Guangzhou and take a look at the subway stations near the universities, there are huge gaming shops. Pretty much any release you want comes into the mainland through Hong Kong - so most of my PS3 titles I purchased over the years are PS3 releases that usually come with bilingual manuals in English and Chinese, and sometimes the game itself will be in Chinese or English. This was the case with at least a dozen titles I can remember off the top of my head.

If you want to know more about the Chinese gaming scene, check out www.tgbus.com. It's probably one of the biggest gamers portals in the mainland. There are a lots of gamers, tons of people have consoles, and it's not nearly as backwards as everyone thinks. Of course, due to the fact that piracy is so prevalent, you don't see as many players on live or PSN, but they're around and you can usually hook up with a few through the forums if you're interested in gaming with them or practicing your Mandarin. So yes, while gaming consoles are "illegal," so is pornography, yet it's available in almost every electronics mall or shopping center if you look in the right places.

Just another poorly written article by a western journalist with little knowledge of what really goes on there. If you go to a Chinese city, you should be able to find a games shop. Ask around - a simple sentence like "nali mai dianzi youxi?" is probably sufficient.

They weren't saying China didn't have a large game scene. They said games/consoles specially intended and marketed for the mainland have not been successful. Hong Kong is treated differently by publishers.

[moribund112]

Which is weird because all of Nintendo's consoles have been huge. The xbox 360 was a big hit, and tons of people bought a Nintendo Wii. The machine intended for the Chinese market, the iQue, is a horrible bloody disaster. I don't think most people even knew it was available, and if they did, they didn't buy it. I used to see them several years ago for sale in some department stores, but they've completely disappeared at this point. I suppose the iQue is selling somewhat well with its DS version (because I think the iQue DS has larger memory to store all the Chinese characters?), but everyone is still using flashcards because the games that do come out in Chinese are coming out way too slowly and the prices aren't realistic. Hacking groups will have Chinese translations of games out on the net in a fraction of the time it takes a legitimate release to be made.