dritan

ok guys..i've been thinking about this issue long before this article came out. first of all, I'm from a country called Albania(its ok if you don't know it), but i've spent almost 80% of my life living in Beijing, Chinese is my first language and i'm fairly confident to say that i know the Chinese people and market well enough(i'm currently studying economics at Monash Uni). and im also a semi-hardcore gamer, so here are my 2 cents about this issue.

i think that in the long run, the PS3 will out-sell the X360 in a worldwide scale, and the reason for that will be its success in the Chinese market. I dont have to mention the demographics of China as someone already did, but i just wanna show you guys some other facts about chinese people that you probably wouldn't know unless you grew up here. First, Beijing, the city where i grew up, has about 20m people, one of the smallest among china's most developed cities(Chong Qing has over 60m), most of the families here has only 1 child due to the national policy, therefore these kids are like emperors in the house, they can ask for anything they want and all the other members will save up to fulfill their wishes, no matter how expensive, so if the kid asks for a 400$ over game console, the chances are that they will be granted the wish. so price is not an issue for all 3 consoles, the real problem comes in the online thing, it is true that Chinese like MMORPGs, but they only play that on PCs, the only console MMORPG so far that i know is FFXI which is a miserable failure in China. Why? because Chinese people don't like to pay!! most of the people do not have credit cards, online payment is still something too far for this land, and i really don't see it coming in the lifecycle of these consoles, so X360's greatest weapon doesn't work on chinese market. Considering that, i think in online terms Revolution will be the winner as first party games will be free.

Secondly, its the games. as mentioned by many others, Chinese(or Asian in general) do not enjoy american type of games like FPS or racing as much as the went does(altho i'd like to point out that the world's Nr.2 team of C.S is from China, but thats PC games). If you go and check(on Wiki), the best selling game series of ALL time is not Halo(all three) or GTA, it is the Final Fantasy series, and Chinese in general are HUGE fans of every FF game(except FFXI), if anyone knows chinese and is interested you can go check out this site http://www.ffsky.com/ff/main.asp, we all know that FF and RPGs alike are mostly PS exclusive, and those games have great single player storyline that composes of 100+ hrs of gameplay, this is far more appealing to thinking-orientated Chinese gamers than any x360 exclusives. as for MMORPGs, i think in the foreseeable future, it is still going to be majorly on PC in China. if it will move to consoles, it will not be anything that the west knows, but its gonna be a Chinese console called EZstation which offers lifetime free MMORPG accounts for games developed by Chinese(more on this later).

Third point: as you guys already know, piracy is HUGE in china, and as soon as games hit the market, pirated versions follows up(i have to say Chinese are good at doing this), maybe it will take them awhile until they crack blu-ray, but its just a matter of time, unlike x360 or revolution where MS or Nintendo can prevent you from playing pirated games by using their online services, the PS3 will be perfect for most gamers as the price eventually drops, and companies start making money out of hardwares,(thats why i said 'in the long run' at the begining). No matter how cheap the pirated games are, the hardware still costs the same as the west(maybe abit cheaper),so all those gammers will still need to buy a console which will amount to the sales of the manufacturer.

lastly i wanna counter those who said China is not important and does not contribute to the industry. China is extreamly important, considering that these new consoles are expected to last 5-7 yrs, according to UNDP, by 2008 Chinese people will have sufficient disposable income and consuming power to match that of the big three of europe(Germany, France, and Britain).that is huge in economic terms, whether Chinese people like the product can affect its success on a worldwide scale, so maybe you can ignore the chinese market today, but you cant afford to do that in a few years time. i didn't know that moore said that they are targeting chinese market, but to me it doesn't seem so. or put it this way, no matter what they do they probably will still fail, Chinese people hate japanese, and altho they say they don't, but in fact they still buy huge amount of Jap import(China is Jap's 2nd trading partner).But the steriotyping in China is that MS is a software company and they are only good at cheating and ripping people off, NONE of the chinese i know has a original Windows copy, so i think its a mistake to market Xbox under MS at all. About Chinese developers, as a matter of fact, they do develop MANY games, just that they are all in Chinese so you might not know them, in fact they most successfull PC games in China are all made by locals(incl some of the best MMORPGs), and Sony knows the Chinese taste better than the MS, and many Chinese dev are constanly working on translating nice foreign games(unfortunately still too few).

alright, if you have read all those that i rote, i'm very thankful and appreciate any commentsfeedbacks.
regards,
dritan