| Gamerace said: Bigger news, in my opinion, is they are also going into South Korea. South Korea is a HUGE market, comparible to Japan, but no console has ever sold well there because they are all PC/MMO crazy. However, they are already buying imported Wii's in SK and Wii will be the first console to actually caught on in Korea. |
As others have said, while China is on average very poor it has one of the most skewed income districutions in the world. Half the population is comparable to Africa (incomes under $500), around 40% is closer to Southeast Asia (under $3,000) and the remaining 10% averages more like Latin America (under $10,000). There is a small percentage, 1-2%, who do live like Western Europeans. The stat that something like 10-20% do comes from using PPP which is a deeply flawed method of comparing incomes between developing and developed countries.
Nevertheless, that means close to 10% of Chinese are potential video game buyers which would equate to 132 million people and about $840 billion (check the CIA World Factbook if you want to verify that figure). That would put China's gaming population roughly equal to Japan, Russia, or France&Britain while their income is in the realm of Brazil, Spain, S Korea's. Nothing huge but nothing small either and it should grow to the size of Italy or so by the end of the Wii's life.
This does bring up though something I mentioned in one of my first posts on VGChartz (I may have made a thread about it, I don't remember) about the Wii's potential global sales. The PS3 or 360 is out of reach for anyone below Western European incomes and even those at American/Japanese incomes don't buy either in great quantities. The number of people in Russia, China, India, and Brazil who are at W Euro income levels much less American/Japanese is very tiny. $250 is much more accessible and so Nintendo could reach up to 400 million potential consumers in the BRIC countries that Sony and MS can't touch. The only question was whether Nintendo would take advantage of the opportunity. It looks like they will.
As a side note Bod, those Chinese playing WoW are not necessarily people who can afford a gaming console. They primarily play at internet cafes since few Chinese own PC's much less gaming PC's so they just need to pay the sunscription fees.
