my dad got hooked on the wii when he was visiting me from china.  he's back there and just recently bought a wii.

 the wii is not officially released in china.  before i make a comment on that, first on how much he paid for it.  exchange rate is 7.72 yuan per $1.

Wii console, + wiimote, nunchuk, + wii sports (identical to US version): 2200 yuan -->  $285.

wiimote+nunchuk set (don't know individual pricing): 600+ yuan --> $77.7+.

 Sounds fair.  No, the reason for the wii not being officially released in china:

for 300+ yuan (about $39), you can get your wii come with a preinstalled modchip.  i'll let you in on the best part of our conversation:

============ 

 Me: Oh, so, you're paying the 300+ yuan so that you can play the pirated games.

Him: No, no, no.  I'm paying the 300+ yuan so that I can play the games that other people copied on regular CD's.  Those are for sale for only 10 yuan!  ($1.3 US)

Me: ... Uh, I think you call those "pirated games".

 ===========

Piracy is so rampant in China people don't even know the meaning of a pirated game!  Yep, Ninty won't be officially releasing consoles in China for a bit longer.

One more note: those Wii's are probably smuggled in.  you go to a store, pay UP FRONT, and pick up the console a couple days later.  they don't put them up on the shelf.  actually, according to my dad, there's a factory that assembles Wii's nearby, so some Wii's might have leaked out also.

Since he bought the Wii and showed it off in front of relatives and friends, they have bought 7 Wii's.  Well, at least Ninty makes a profit on each hardware distributed, smuggled in or not.

very interesting ...

its a pitty that chinese don't buy original games but you are right:

at least nintendo makes profit with the hardware and it pushes the japan market sales

piracy's apparently a big problem over there.

I have a couple friends getting modchips for their Wiis.  One is getting it just so he can play DVD movies, the other will probably rip games and whatnot.  But the amount of people getting modchips for their Wii over here isn't a huge issue I think. 

well, it depends on the userbase.

when enough people have a wii it doesnt hurt so much if some of them have a modchip.

i also have a modchip but iam still buying games - i use the chip for the

SNES emulator :)

anyway, i read nintendo changed the motherboard layout to make modding more difficult 

It's still doubtfull if Nintendo gets any money for these consoles in China. Nintendo assigns the assembly of Wii consoles to 3rd party factorys and orders a specific amount of consoles for a lump sum. It's quite common for those factorys to produce small amounts of surplus consoles.

They have the material but Nintendo didn't order those consoles, therefore those unofficial Wiis aren't shipped to Nintendo but appear on the black market and the profits go to the factorys (this has also happened to Sony with PS3 factorys. Nearly every PS3 that was brought to Europe via privat importing before March 23 was checked by the customs to find out if it's a leaked one). 

Piracy -the main reason why Nintendo would have wanted to stick into cartriges. This doesn't mean that Nintendo wouldn't release Wii in China. Although, piracy makes game releasing a little less profitable. I don't think that everyone would get modchips to their Wiis and still someone has to buy the original copy. I do believe that Nintendo will release Wii in China, in 1 to 2 years. It will be a local version, like the Asian version of NES.

 Yeah, it's unclear.  However, in my experience (just based on what i hear), most of these kind of products are smuggled in (cosmetics, watches, etc). 

My dad went on to complain there's no table tennis game for the Wii (he was really excited by the game in wiiplay, but i told him just how much it sucks).  I said, if the game go on sale legally for just 100 yuan ($13), there should be a few chinese companies who take it up upon themselves to make such a game. 

cartriges don't do squat.  in asia, back in the NES days, you can buy cartridges where you have 100 games combined into onto 1 single cartridge for like $10 US.  i would know... i bought a grand total of 3 cartridges on the NES.  one 199 games in one (all kinds of classic, like bomberman and 1942), one 32 games in one (all Mario games in existence to that point plus some), and a chinese chess game that's developed in taiwan (this one is a semi-legal version; in the sense that while it's manufactured by the publisher, the publisher doesn't have rights to make NES games).  i think they cost me $300 HK ($40 US) in all.

Most of my systems are modded, admitidly, or I have multiple region versions of the same console(costly) on some of the older ones.

I don't do it for pirated games just import games, I'm highly against stealingfrom anybody even big companies. It's a huge problem in China though, so huge it isn't even regarded as theft by the general populus it seems. That's a damn shame... 

oh, and that brings me back to the GB days... where i also owned a grand total 3 cartridges: tetris (came with it), super mario GB, and a 16 in 1 cartridge.

i'm visiting asia in about a month... and i'm embarassed to admit that i'm inclined to scoop up some dirt cheap DS games... if they are compatible

although i have so many DS games by now i don't think there's anything out there i actually still want.