The video game industry may have found its blue ocean as China opens up game sales in their Shanghai free trade zone.
First hinted at an article in the South China Morning Post, China Daily now confirms that the Chinese government is going to open up Shanghai's free trade zone for the console companies, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, so that they can officially start selling video games in the region. The Ministry of Culture confirms that these companies will be required to register in the free trade zone, but declined to provide further details.
It is highly suspected that a precondition to allowing video game sales is for these game companies to start manufacturing their game consoles in the region. Of course, it is already public knowledge that Foxconn already does manufacturing for all three, as well as other tech companies. Foxconn has a large number of their factories in China, but is Taiwanese owned.
As explained in the China Daily article, the video game console ban has pushed Chinese gamers online, where gaming in the area has seen its largest expansion. Beijing based analyst Xue Yongfeng claims there can't be more than 1 million console gamers in a population of over a billion.
China Daily also reasserts the original reasons for the ban being concerns with games and their content in harming the country's youth. It is highly likely that even in this controlled experiment, games will go through heavy regulation, and even possible censorship, before they can be sold to Chinese gamers' hands.
Finally, they reassert that the ban is still in effect, but they will be monitoring performance in the region. I suspect that their motivation in taking these actions are economic more than social.
Source: China Daily
