Soundwave said:
It isn't really that big of an assumption. If you were Chinese would you buy a Chinese Playstation or Switch knowing the government frequently halts new game releases? At one point just recently they didn't allow any new non-Chinese games to release in the country for like a whole year in part because they felt young people were playing too much. Think about that, think about having a PS5 and for an entire year no new games from Japan, US, Europe, developers, etc. Not to mention some games are just outright banned like GTA, Animal Crossing, Fortnite etc. Even Chinese publishers like Tencent had a 18 month period where the government would not approve a single game for release. You can easily get a Japanese version instead and not take that risk at all. So I don't think this is just a one time surge. This is going to be a permanent thing, even if the government of China has a period where they allow everything and anything to release, you can't have any trust that they won't just wake up one day and decide now they have a grudge or problem with the US or Japan or even their own publishers like Tencent and if you own a Chinese model PS5 or Switch or XBox ... you're totally screwed. |
Notable degree is the key part. I'm sure people will keep importing Japanese PS5's but I doubt it'll be to this level for the whole generation. By like 2025 or so I'll be very surprised if demand for Japanese PS5's hasn't dropped off.
