I essentially asked a relative of mine who is a Chinese Marketer about how successful gaming consoles would be in China. His area of expertise is mainly marketing Western movies, however, not video games. This was a fairly laid back Q&A, and I just wrote it to sound more formal.

Q: Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are all planning to release a gaming system of some kind in China. Do you think there would be much of a market for them?

A: Yes. Online gaming is huge in China.

Q: Would the general population be willing to pay the Chinese equivalent of 400 or 500 dollars specifically for a device to play video games?

A: Yes; it's within an acceptable price range.

Q: Is there any market for local multiplayer games, where people play in the same room?

A: Not really big. Maybe. I think it is getting bigger though.

Q: Do you know about games usually associated with Nintendo such as Mario and Pokemon?

A: No, those are outdated.

Q: Outdated? They've recently made new iterations of both series; Pokemon X/Y in 2013, Mario Kart 8 in May of this year.

A: Really? Okay, maybe these two will get popular in China again soon.

Q: Would these games also pass the censorship laws fairly easily?

A: Yes, games are easy (compared to movies)

Q: Even with censorship laws?

A: Yes, as long as there is not too much blood or sex.

Q: What about religion or acts of terrorism?

A: Anti-Terrorism is okay, but Religion probably does not have too much market potential.

Q: What about games wit lots of guns?

A: *Laughs* Lots of guns are okay.

Q: Is the general population willing to pay the Chinese equivalent of 60 dollars per game?

A: Yes, that's not too expensive.

Q: How is the Chinese economy doing these days?

A: A 3D IMAX Movie ticket costs $26 each in China. The Economy is slowing down, and not growing as fast, which is a good sign. You don't want it to grow to fast. It is still growing at 7.8%, which is the fastest in the world. Not bad for a country that has 1.4 billion people.

Q: Do you know what the average income is for a Chinese citizen?

A: $5000 a year, $30K a year is the average in big cities.

Q: Is that enough to be self-sufficient?

A: Yes, because there are low living costs. Lots of disposable income for games and movies. Lot of young people living with their parents.

Q: What is the living cost?

A: There is no cost for housing, including electricity and water usage. The average meal is $3, and a shirt usually costs $16.

I hope this was insightful for people curious on how well gaming consoles will fair in China.

so a game that still sells over 10 million is outdated ok

Didn't Diablo 3 just take almost two years to censor to prepare for the Chinese market?

Was Pokemon Blue the only Pokremon game released in China or something? XD

Ah, gotcha. Still, China needs to reduce their censorship requirments for videogames, or else smaller companies may be more weary of localizing for them.

The only Nintendo device I'm aware of that was officially marketed by Nintendo in China was an N64 variant, so most Chinese folk probably only think of that when you bring up Mario. They've probably only seen Mario 64 and Pokemon Stadium

Three word, League of Legends.

Nintendo is getting outdated, though, China sees something first for once, don't think Nintendo was ever popular there though.

Wait what?

I been to China 4 times. My wife is Chinese and met her there. When I went I didn't bring any consoles but just played games on my laptop. I wonder if there is region lock for games and movies. You can buy and download movies on itunes but I could download games in Singapore but not download movies. I been to one distict in Kunming City where they had a street with a lot of game stores. This was a long time ago but they had everything but PS3 games in bootleg form.

I mostly wondered about access to content and online play on the PSN and XBL because I was in a financial bind but not so much anymore. I still think there is a lot of interesting topics that can be discussed about video games in various other countries. For example in the Philippines the Wii U was 600 dollars around the time it came out. I was impressed they got western games quickly and they even had Japanese titles mixed with them. Sometimes even the same game of different regions. I could go on and on. As for China, the problem is video games are very frowned upon there worse than most places. Supposedly my wife's cousin had a gaming addiction problem with online gaming.

China is still primarily soclalist, but with a socialist market economy: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_market_economy