So does this mean China should be added to the "... will save Xbox One" chalkboard?

Hooking up with Tencent seems like it was a bit of a coup for MS in the China market.

Can Vgchartz track Chinese sales?

I do believe PC gaming is huge there, which may limit the appeal of consoles, similar to the Korean gaming situation perhaps.

But in a country the size of China, with a pretty rapidly expanding middle class, I can't imagine the console market being smaller then Japan's. 20 million people (~1.5% of the population) buying consoles almost seems like a sure bet. And a 20 million console market is nothing to sneeze at. But by the same token a 20 million console market isn't likely to be a game changer in the global scheme of things.

It will be very interesting to see if either X1 or PS4 can get any traction in China. It is a market heavily flooded with piracy and PC seems to be the main choice for alot of people instead of consoles. Anything can change though.

not?

would be the third biggest after us and europe

im really curious about it. from 5 to 50 million. i can see anything happen

no it doesn't. 

games to release in china have to go through an approval process and be cleansed of anything the chinese boards deem unacceptable.   right there you can assume every indie and probably most of the mid teir games won't release in china at all.  and even of the big publishers if the work to censor their work is too big to justify the amount of sales they won't release everything either.   if there are no games there are no consumers buying the boxes.  if there are no consumers buying the boxes there will be no games.

...this is a very uphill battle for consoles.   someday consoles might do well in china but for these first-try consoles things going to be a real stuggle and ms and sony are probably going to lose money on the attempt.

yeah, that's the other hard part of consoles in china.   as long as piracy isn't discouraged in china why would anyone decides to go from free games to really expensive games in an economy where a vast majority have very little money?

i get that they have to start somewhere.  i get that they will have to invest some into creating the market in china.   ..but things are going to be rough.

@ binary solo

I think China was already added to "the chalkboard." At least judging by the comments in thread where this was first announced. Then, shortly after, we had the announcement that PS4 would also see a release there. At the time, many Xbox fans wrote that news off by saying that the Chinese hate the Japanese, so they would be more inclined to buy the One.

Of course, given the poll we saw not too long ago, interest in the PS4 greatly outstrips that of the One. It's going to be an interesting battle there. If the One does decently there, the One might actually make it to ~60M, where now it looks like it may be closer to ~45M. And if that poll turns into sales for the PS4, we may actually see the new PS2.