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China, which banned dedicated video games machines in the year 2000 to protect the brains and minds of its little children, might be about to relent and lets its population play consoles again. The news led shares in Sony and Nintendo to explode upwards like a familiar old video game barrel.
The report of this possible ban lift came via the China Daily, which quoted an anonymous government official as saying: “We are reviewing the policy and have conducted some surveys and held discussions with other ministries on the possibility of opening up the game console market.”
There are loopholes aplenty in China’s current policy, though. Microsoft’s Kinect webcam thing is sold in China, but has to be marketed as a health/educational tool rather than a gaming device to get around the ban. Mobile games are also allowed, so perhaps the country feels the ban on home machines is starting to look a bit silly when console-quality war/murder games are now freely available on everyone’s favourite brand of smartphone. [China Daily via Reuters]
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That sounds like a bad idea; I rue the day I bought my son his first Playstation……11 years later he’s a Runescape addict
Get a keylogger and get his account name and password, then delete his account.
It’s been considered but considering I could then potentially be prosecuted for hacking (or whatever) I really don’t fancy serving time for it
Have you considered that you’re considering?
Have you considered the fact the you’re asking him to consider his consideration?
Taking all considerations into account it is considered to be worthwhile considering although without a consideration in return for all the considering one may decide not to consider it at all.
(sounds like an excerpt from ‘Yes Minister’
Banning? It’s been shown that playing video games occasionally can have some benefits. Including increase multi-tasking abilities.
Cant argue with that
But Multi-Tasking is training yourself to be distracted from one thing.
I love the image – that’s probably the least Chinese-looking person I’ve ever seen
Not good news for Sony or Nintendo :p
China hates Japan…… Good news for MS maybe :p
All MS has to do is advertise its Xbox being played on the Senkaku Islands and they will ship millions while China burns Japanese shops to the ground!
5 years living in china and never realised that consoles were banned there. It’s kind of hard to tell when chipped consoles are on sale everywhere and you can buy full games for less than a quid (I think they even have there own knock-off Xbox live, but I’m not sure about that one).
I didn’t even know they were banned. I just thought the manufacturers just didn’t sell them there.
Didn’t stop there being plenty of shops selling any console from any country everywhere.
Thanks for the nice shot of cameltoe in the above picture.