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[Go_Ly_Dow]

Not sure if any of ya'll have this info, but I was curious after hearing Black Myth Wukong is moving PS5s of the shelf over there. My Chinese friends back in University never cared for consoles and exclusively played mobile games and a few PC releases.

• Is there any data on how many consoles have been sold there - Switch, Xbox, PS4/PS5 etc?
• Do most games, Indie, AA, AAA release there or is it very selective?
• Any sales data for notable games/franchises?
• What's the crack with the impact of Government censorship/restrictions on games? - are games altered so that they can release in the market? (such as how Insominac dropped their principles and readily removed the pride flags and LGBTQ content for the Middle Eastern release of Spiderman 2 for $$$)
• Any other interesting points unique to games releasing in China?

 

[TintoConCasera]

Do most games, Indie, AA, AAA release there or is it very selective?

They have full access to Steam, so atleast on PC, yeah, they got all the games.

Any other interesting points unique to games releasing in China?

Afaik, when it comes to consoles they don't have all games available, only the "approved" ones. I would guess they are getting PS5s as a sort of "cheap" way to be able to play Wukong without the need of a good PC.

All this is based solely on what I've readen here and on a certain videogame imageboard, so I might be wrong.

 

[LectureMaster]

Yeah in the mainland, in order to publish a console game, you need to apply for approval from the government - and the process could take ages. China does not have a rating system so it is pretty much up to the officials to determine whether your game is appropriate or not. This caused extreme barrenness in the console market.

On the contrary, Steam has been a grey area for over a decade now where dev can directly publish games following Valve's rule and bypass Chinese government at all - which promoted the prosperity of PC gaming in the county.

That being said, the console base in China is actually not trivial - almost all players are residing on Hong Kong region storefront for PS, XBOX, and Nintendo. It is easy to buy and pay in HK store using Chinese Yuan. I could dig later to find some data of the console sales figures.

 

[Woopah]

Couple of key points from Niko Partners:

China’s domestic console market generated $2.29 billion in 2022, up 7.8% YoY. This includes revenue generated from hardware and software via legal sales and the grey market. The number of console gamers reached 16.7 million in 2022, up 8.3% YoY.

 

[Zathalus]

PS4 sold 3.5 million in China and the goal for the PS5 is to double that. The most recent sales info we have for the PS5 in China comes from a two years ago which were at 670k sold. Estimates were around 1.5 million total due to imports. The reason imports are so high is that Chinese PS5s have a limited game library to comply with Chinese state rules which make them way less popular compared to the unofficial import market.