Now is a good time to move into China because there are Chinese gaming companies going after piracy. This is the beginning of the end for the era where the government doesn't count. The reason they have been so lax in the past is because China has never cared if foreigners get screwed. But if they are going to support their own companies in terms of piracy, they are going to support foreign ones in the future as well just because of their own market's growth potential related to those products. Still a long way to go but...
The Wii is the perfect product to sell in China as far as gaming goes. It's cheap to build and very cheap to program for. Chinese companies can find a niche on it, Nintendo will never fail to make profit off of it (even if their traditional 3Ps might), and the whole idea of channels and downloadable content really blows piracy right out of the water.
This is, however, the only chance in hell John Lucas even comes close to being right. China has to be cracked wide open in a very big way within this generation to get any console selling as much as he sees the Wii selling. That'd mean they'd have to accept the product, piracy would have to be contained to some degree (though there's no way it'll be stopped) and their "middle" class needs to expand rapidly so that more than about 1/5-1/6 of the population can afford the thing.
There's big potential here, but I don't think it'll matter enough until the next generation is ready to begin. By then, the Chinese people should be more comfortable with the idea of consoles and may have control over their piracy issues. For this generation, though, I can't see China cracking the top 5 European countries numbers outside of (potentially) hardware. The software sales chart for China is going to look dismal.
You do not have the right to never be offended.
