[News] Lo sapevate? 360, PS3 e Wii sono ILLEGALI in Cina!

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While Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is made in China, it still isn’t available for legal purchase there, nor is Sony’s PlayStation 3 or Nintendo’s Wii, but the Redmond, Washington-based company isn’t giving up hope.

Microsoft executive Zhang Yaqin told the Shanghai Daily (subscription only) that the company still hopes to receive approval to sell the 360 in China, but that “… it all depends on the government.”
There’s still no set timetable for launch and the issue involves “several government bureaus,” which, of course, only adds multiple layers of bureaucracy.

Last month, Kotaku investigated why game consoles are banned in China. A Niko Partners researcher told the publication, “The government thought that was the best way to protect Chinese youth from wasting their minds on video games, after a parental outcry.”

Of course the very next year, Kotaku notes, “online gaming exploded, and the market size hit $US100 million,” so the console ban did not have its intended effect.

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“Consoles have been banned in China since the year 2000,” Lisa Hanson from market researcher Niko Partners tells Kotaku. “The government thought that was the best way to protect Chinese youth from wasting their minds on video games, after a parental outcry.”

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players go to their local game retailer, where they can download more games onto a 64MB flash memory card. The cartridge is slotted directly into the controller, which houses the console.

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Sony released the PlayStation 2 in China in January 2004. The launch was a disaster with rampant game piracy and of the hardware itself.

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Microsoft sta cercando di convincere le autorità di regolamentazione cinese per ottenere il permesso di vendere la sua Xbox 360 nell'immenso paese di oltre 1 miliardo di persone. La notizia è riportata dal quotidiano Shangai Daily che rivela come Ya-Quin Zhang, corporate VP della divisione cinese Microsoft, spera di poter lanciare la console legamente nel Paese, anche se non è certo al momento di quando questo avverrà. L'unico sistema dedicato all'intrattenimento elettronico commercializzato finora in Cina è l'iQue, basato sull'hardware di Nintendo 64 e reso disponibile nel 2003.

Nintendo Wii e PlayStation 3 non sono infatti disponibili ufficialmente nello stato Cinese, Xbox 360 sarebbe la prima, dopo tanti anni, ad ottenere questo speciale "via libera".

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