I was lucky enough to travel to China about 6 years ago, while exploring Beijing with coworkers we found the largest stack of consoles we've ever seen, they were all Wiis, freaking mountains of them; no cheap knock offs by the way, they were the real deal.

The black market is huge in China to say the least, while not legally, pretty much every console known to man is available there, Wii is no excetion, pretty much anyone who gave cared about Wii in China got it that way, its 2015 nobody cares about the console anymore, sames goes for the emerging markets, Wii found its way there somehow and now interest is gone.

Releasing Wii anywhere now would be a waste of resources.

I tried a quick search to find some numbers but found nothing of interest really. But to answer it from my perspective I would say that most people actually have/use HDTV's in level 1, 2 and 3 cities in China. Cities are divided into levels here, level 1 is sort of the big major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guanzhou etc., and level 2 cities are the capitals of each provinces, and level 3 I think is the second most developed cities in those provinces. So in short it is the level of development. Level 1 might be compared to average western level, level 2 somewhat below that but of course developing and level 3 can differ a lot since some level 3 cities can be on the edge of being poor and some are actually even better than level 2, but can not be called level 2 because they are not the capitals.

But my guestimate before was that perhaps 500 million Chinese could be compared to Europe and USA in terms of living standard and salaries. People living in the 3-top levels here. The rest of the people are either poor or just getting by. So I think with people the attach ratio is much lower in terms of percentage of the whole population, but the actual number of people that use HDTV I think should be similar to the west.

A 22-32" HDTV cost around $50-100, so most people can afford them. And I also don't think that CRT is sold anymore, so the people that don't have one are the poor people because they can't afford to buy a new one.

Even though I will not say that you are wrong, you are absolutely right actually about the first part I bolded, it's really easy to find a console that you want if you really want one. At good prices also. And if you want it to be hacked you just ask and pay a little more.

But when it comes to the second part I think you don't relise that Wii, PS3, X360, 3DS and all other consoles are not marketed here. There's no true demand for them because people don't know about them. The most people that buy consoles in China, like myself, are people that are very into gaming and have found out about, bought one and fell in love with console gaming. We have never seen any ads on TV about the Wii, noone has ever talked about it during the lunch break, there's nothing about it.

You can probably buy an imported Chinese phone like Xiaomi in the USA, but how many actually know that this phone exists? There's no marketing for it in the USA so why would people buy it.

I hope you get my point that a product needs to be marketed to be able to find a big audience.

"consumers don't know what they want until they see it"

This is basically what SEGA did. This is pretty much why SEGA was forced to stop making consoles. Piracy and supporting too many systems at once.

Strongly disagree.

Thank you for your thorough answer - I was also trying to dig up some statistics about HDTV adoption rates, but they seem to be very hard to find, though in the process I have learned much about HDTV buying habits and manufacturers in China (I've also learned that when it comes to 4K TV sets adoption, China is number 1 in the world).

The reason I was wondering about HDTV household penetration was that I've found interesting article from early 2013 that states that from estimated 350-360 million TV sets in US, according to some market analysts, up to 55% are still old CRTs...which is quite a lot, so I was guessing that could be the case with China too.

As I said in previous post, not sure that most of Wii audience cares for its low 480p resolution, but while CRTs are pretty forgiving, it can look quite ugly on HDTVs (unless they have some very good upscalers, like some projectors do).

On the side note, I'm really curious if Wii knockoffs, like JungleTac's Sport Vii, had any success in China, and how much marketing there was for them.

That is sorta like asking why Grocery store plug n plays don't have marketing. Those things are a tiny MB hot glued to a super cheap plastic case 5x larger than the MB.

Actually, this one was even released in Japan, so that's why I was wondering of audience awareness from someone who is Chinese...but, please, do chime in.

Yeah I think so, I haven't been able to find anything useful as well. But my guess once again, and I think it's safe to say, that if it's 55% in the USA it should be more in China, perhaps 75%. There are at least 1 billion people in China that I would describe as poor, that could not buy a new TV. And then another billion that I would also describe as poor but could buy a TV if they saved up some money perhaps. And then the last billion could and probably have a new-ish TV in their home.

I don't think that resolution would mean too much, even in 2015 here in China, or in other developing countries. Even when Wii was released the graphics was really outdated, but 100 million "western" people didn't seem to care too much. The Wii sold because of the Wii-mote. And most of China is behind the western countries when it comes to development, so even the Wii would be nice for most people here. People in HK, Beijing, Shanghai would of course want to get their hands on X1, PS4 or Wii U instead if they could and had the money.

Haha, I had actually never heard of the Vii before. But it seems from some quick searches that it was indeed marketed and sold as a true system. Quite different from the rest of the rip-offs that one can see. Not sure how well it have done though, seems to have sold a bit at least since they released a second system later and expanded to Japan, but I don't think I know more than you on this subject. Most sources I find about it is in English actually. Forums, blogs and some tech websites. "Chintendo" and what-not came up as suggestions. :)