PlayStation coming to China

This is massive, massive news. Where to even begin with this? Things aren't going to change over night, but things are definitely going to change this gen.

First Xbox, now PS. China has 1.4 BILLION people. If only a fraction of them like Infamous than shit is going to explode over there!

Are more Chinese studios going to start appearing? Will westerners flock to China's growing economy to start their new studios?

How will censorship factor in to this whole thing? China has really strict network traffic monitoring and all kinds of crazy shit. Will this be conducive to smooth multiplayer and peer connecting?

1.4 BILLION PEOPLE U GUYS!

Not to burst your bubble but it was already available if you wanted it badly enough.

On top of that, only half those people probably have the funds to afford it. Though that may change in a few years at this rate.

Just look at the movie industry if you want a glimpse of the future in this regard; Pirates 4 made over a billion due to 76.9% of the revenue coming from overseas.

You aren't bursting his bubble as your comment really isn't adding much here. Do you think millions of people are going to import PS4s to China? Especially when the games don't support Chinese?

It's possible to get basically any product anywhere, doesn't mean that product is going to catch on because of the import requirement and your country not being supported by it.

Wait...did you just say "only" when referring to 700 million people?

@privodotmenit: what he meant was that their is a huge grey market already selling ps4s in mainland. Most major shopping areas will have a grey market video game store. While having more translated games might help, there has already been a precedent for this by games made for the Hong Kong market. In the past popular ps3 games were readily available for purchase with both traditional and simplified chinese language options. I myself have copies of uncharted 2 and heavy rain that have chinese language options.

I have a hard time fathoming that a large number of chinese consumers will pay full price for games when they have become used to buying the last two generations of console's games for 75 cents a pop.

I am excited at the possibility of more Chinese language option games though.

@littlejehova: I understand but the added convenience and widespread adoption will certainly be a big boost, I would imagine the semi-casual gaming market in China is quite untapped (aside from phone games)

personally I can't see this making any change what so ever. Nintendo have already been down this area with officially releasing it's products in China under a Chinese brand and with games in Chinese but nothing much came of it.

the underground game world of China so so big that it's not possible for Sony to even make a dent in it from what I can see. Their PS4 will be out of the price reach of most Chinese and software will cost about ten times more than the average boot leg copy.

Asking Chinese customers to pay full price for games and hardware is like asking internet users to pay subscriptions for websites. Most wont because they're used to getting it for free.

If Sony is now legally selling in China, it might have a bit more clout in terms of representing its intellectual property and get the problem with piracy there more exposed and discussed with recent corruption crackdown with Xi Jin Ping in charge. I don't know about the income level of the Chinese, but their middle class is probably a lot more than 200 million. That is why they consume a lot more products ranging from beef, dairy products, and etc. raising their prices on a global scale, and if Sony wants to start to tap this tremendously albeit potentially lucrative market (China's most popular game industry is in the online arena, and one Chinese online company dwarfs the likes of Blizzard/Activision with products that Western audiences never heard about), what else to do with other than perhaps their most popular product to come in a generation.

Even with the black market this is a boon to the consoles. Not for regular retail games per say (which they would get at black markets regardless), but as they start going more online those areas are where they could potentially find a foot hold. It's why mobile is so big out there- you can't buy mobile games at a traditional black market source.

That is assuming the regular people who play mobile games and don't traditionally care about videos games are even persuaded in the first place. They might be, but it's hard to say sometimes what drives a market.