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Sony partnership with Shanghai Oriental Pearl (Group) to launch PlayStation in China

ghst

thanks for the laugh
i'm sure china will react with enthusiasm towards a prohibitively expensive box which they have to buy all the games for, none of which are dota or league of legends.
 
Also the few voiced Chinese RPG for it's time.

Yeah. My Chinese sucked badly then, if it weren't because the game was voiced, I would had never finished it.

It helped that the game's rock-paper-scissors battle system broke itself and became easy-as-pie once you drank the snake blood and learned the Eighteen Dragon move.

WHERE IS MY HEAVENLY SWORD AND DRAGON SABRE RPG, GAMING INDUSTRY!?

Won't be long before I'm crying about unlocalized Chinese games alongside the Japanese ones.

You a big fan of MMOs or classic turned-based RPGs?

Because if you aren't, you really aren't missing much.
 
Won't be long before I'm crying about unlocalized Chinese games alongside the Japanese ones.

Oh it'll be long.

The Chinese game development scene has been mediocre since forever. Even the "big titles" by "big publishers" (softstar) are pretty much just B to C tier games by US/JP standards:

Mn7X2ty.png


Not to mention, someone needs to dig them out of the generic "wusha/hiistorial hero plot with a some possible sci-fi twist" garbage already.

Guardian Sword/Heroine Anthem (2004) was the last Chinese game that I can consider to be high quality production. However, WinKing Entertainment has long moved on to online MMO stuff now days:

m67urcM.jpg
 
The Chinese game development scene has been mediocre since forever. Even the "big titles" by "big publishers" are pretty much just B to C tier games by US/JP standards.

Pretty much.

The only thing to be hopeful for in the Chinese gaming scene is the publisher money, and even then, their money goes to funding stuff like Saint Seiya Online or Monster Hunter Online...

We won't see Tencent putting any real money into games that aren't always-online-social-blahbahblah.
 
WHERE IS MY HEAVENLY SWORD AND DRAGON SABRE RPG, GAMING INDUSTRY!?

.

There's like 2 of them, not counting the mmo stuff.

Pretty much.

The only thing to be hopeful for in the Chinese gaming scene is the publisher money, and even then, their money goes to funding stuff like Saint Seiya Online or Monster Hunter Online...

We won't see Tencent putting any real money into games that aren't always-online-social-blahbahblah.

Sort of OT, but I miss Korean single player games.
They're also all in on MMO/F2P now, but at least before then they made some quite decent rpgs (ex: magna carta)
 
I think Sony could do very well given the right marketing. I'm no expert on the Chinese market though, so can't really say what that would entail.
 

ColiBreh1

Banned
The newly established joint-venture company and SCE Shanghai announce they will attend CCG EXPO 2014 (China International Cartoon & Game Expo) in July. More than 30 PS4 and PSV games will be playable there and there will be big announcements on the show (most likely launch date, I'd guess).

Link?
 
There's like 2 of them, not counting the mmo stuff.

I know, but I'd like to see at least one attempt from the AAA-dev scene.

I still remember my bitter regret buying one of the few Smiling Proud Wanderer RPG adaption... and the game keep breaking and bugging out on me because no one did their goddamn QAs on the game.
 
I know, but I'd like to see at least one attempt from the AAA-dev scene.

I still remember my bitter regret buying one of the few Smiling Proud Wanderer RPG adaption... and the game keep breaking and bugging out on me because no one did their goddamn QAs on the game.

You're better off without playing them.
The first full-3D one was a horrible click-your-way-to-victory RPG -_-.
 

dramatis

Member
It's entertaining to read people knowing nothing about China to talk Chinese market with confidence. It's hard to argue though, since it's what western media tell people.
To be honest, it's not like the destruction of Japanese-related property during the height of the disputed islands troubles was fabricated. Mob mentality is scary, and the reports in the 'western media' weren't even 24/7 sirens like mass shootings are now, the reports were just cursory coverage of the unsavory property damage, and so on. I don't think it's that farfetched for someone unfamiliar with the purchasing habits of the Chinese to worry about how international relations could affect Sony's business in China.

However, I agree that the issue of China-Japan relations is significantly less of a factor than people think. My own personal experience (aka my middle-aged relations) is that there's actually a keen sense of quality associated with Japanese brands. When something is labeled "Made in China", my mom knows that it's cheap (that's why she buys it) but she'll automatically assume something branded Sony (even if there could be a "Made in China" tag) is more quality. Chinese people are oddly "American-like" when it comes to brand obsession, I think.

I would say a lot of westerners don't have personal experience with that kind of buying habit, and that research about it is not readily available in English (assuming there's research...).
 

spwolf

Member
This is going to be a hard market for any of them to capture through official channels due to grey market and piracy. I'm interested to see what the marketing campaigns for MS and Sony in the region are going to look like.

Gray market does not matter at all, it is irrelevant.

What is relevant is games tailored to local tastes... Sony already has a lot of F2P on their consoles, so that is perfect for this market.
 

Jintor

Member
Gray market does not matter at all, it is irrelevant.

Yah, as a dominant market force the bigger battle will be against net cafe games, MMOs, F2P, and especially smartphones i reckon.

Grey market is what it is and will definitely cut in but I doubt it'll be like the glory days of the 90s in Malaysia and Indonesia, where even an allegedly real game store in a mall would just be selling home-copied shit with terribly printed fake covers
 

_hekk05

Banned
There's an interesting binary with China's supposed gaming market. Sure, piracy is everywhere, and shops offer pre-modded consoles and pirated discs.

Interestingly, the common shop owner wants to go legit. They make next to nothing from pirated content, and many of them welcome an official market where they might be supported by Sony & co. and might make a bit more money.

As for gamers, while f2p is huge in China, subscription gaming is no slouch too, and games which are multiplayer focused can do well.
 

wapplew

Member
Gray market does not matter at all, it is irrelevant.

What is relevant is games tailored to local tastes... Sony already has a lot of F2P on their consoles, so that is perfect for this market.

F2P or MMO are what PC player want, console player in China mostly play games from Japan like Monster hunter, Gundum, Resident evil.

Making games that they can play on PC wouldn't convince them to buy expensive machine. Console need to provide something different from PC.
 
I think Sony could do very well given the right marketing. I'm no expert on the Chinese market though, so can't really say what that would entail.

The key to the Chinese any East-Asian market is localization.
Only the most hardcore is going to put up playing games in a foreign language.
Unfortunately, MS/Sony can't do much about that besides their own first party titles, and Nintendo doesn't even bother half of the time.

So if you think getting localizations for the US market is hard, imagine what third-party companies think about the smaller or unpredictable markets of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, etc....

Things won't change until someone moneyhat figure out how they can get more localizations.

(Vita being the amazing exception with a decent amount of Chinese language localization for who knows why.)

-----------------------------------
Also on the whole F2P thing:

IMO, F2P's dominance in China is not so much due to people's choice but rather the utter lack of non-F2P Chinese games.

The overall Chinese development scene has never been exceptionally good in quality or graphics, so sales were always an issue. This got especially worse when 3D graphic gaming took off in Japan and the West during the mid-late 90s. For those reasons, once Chinese devs caught on with the subscription/micro-transaction model in the early 2000s, they never looked back. The market was then pretty much devoid of any non-F2P games outside of your occasional monpoly, generic wusha or softstar RPG variation.

So, again - localization is the real key imo. Just making F2P games but no localization won't do any good.
 

spwolf

Member
Yah, as a dominant market force the bigger battle will be against net cafe games, MMOs, F2P, and especially smartphones i reckon.

Grey market is what it is and will definitely cut in but I doubt it'll be like the glory days of the 90s in Malaysia and Indonesia, where even an allegedly real game store in a mall would just be selling home-copied shit with terribly printed fake covers

grey market mattered before only because of chipped consoles and pirated discs... this made them not sell consoles at low prices officially... It was same here in eastern Europe - it was much cheaper to buy chipped PS2 + 10 "free" pirated games than official PS2.

now thats completely different... they can sell console at same prices as in Japan, with warranty, and get money back from F2P transactions. There is no reason for anyone to get gray market console, and official launch and marketing will make it more obvious to local customers.

If I was Sony, I would do cheaper chinese-only retail releases, PS+, and of course, in addition to localizing existing F2P, invest into getting popular chinese market F2P to the PS4.

There is enough people in China that can afford PS4 and games... afterall, best selling cars in China are western cars not cheap chinese knock-offs.

Microsoft can also do a lot of the same stuff, they just have less of existing FP2 games and experience. But that could be overcome with some investment.
 

Bundy

Banned
I'm Chinese and this statement is so wrong. Everytime there is a chinese related topic I read comments like these and I think about how much you people are wrong

I haven't been in China for a long time but I remember that years ago I was in a subway and EVERY DAMN KID had a PSP. In my city, every electronic store had NDS,PSP,PS3,WII. (and actually I've never seen an Xbox)

Even my parents who don't know anything about electronics know the Playstation brand and even though they dislike Japan, every electronic thing in our house and in my grandparents house is japanese.

Even my grandfather who fought in World War II doesn't give a damn
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
I've chatted with several chinese gamers in the past and they all said the same.
This "Sony/japan = hard times in china" talk is crap.
 

4lejandro

Member
Came here to read about shot feet and Chinese culture experts, I am disappoint...

I liked that qqspeed video, the camera is something special IMO.
 

Tsundere

Banned
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
I've chatted with several chinese gamers in the past and they all said the same.
This "Sony/japan = hard times in china" talk is crap.

Yep, its more about brand popularity and quality than it is brand ethnicity/nationality.

In that respect Sony is regarded way higher than Microsoft in the consumer products department in China.
 

jett

D-Member
This is going to be a hard market for any of them to capture through official channels due to grey market and piracy. I'm interested to see what the marketing campaigns for MS and Sony in the region are going to look like.

It's not going to be a problem. Sony's done really well to establish an official presence in another piracy-heavy market, Latin America. Hardware prices are outrageous, but software prices are relatively on par with America's.

p.s. Xbox is a zero here.
 
Anyway, you're all missing the bigger problem here.

Not only is the PS4 a Japanese product, but it also got the number 4 in its name!

The Chinese word for four (四, pinyin: sì, jyutping: sei3), sounds quite similar to the word for death (死, pinyin: sǐ, jyutping: sei2), in many varieties of Chinese. Similarly, the Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Vietnamese words for four, shi (Japanese), sa (사, Korean) and tư (Vietnamese), sound similar or identical to death in each language (see Korean numerals, Japanese numerals, Vietnamese numerals).

Special care may be taken to avoid occurrences or reminders of the number 4 during festive holidays, or when a family member is sick. Similarly, 14, 24, 42, etc. are also to be avoided due to the presence of the digit 4 in these numbers. In these countries, these floor numbers are often skipped in buildings, ranging from hotels to offices to apartments, as well as hospitals. Table number 4, 14, 24, 42, etc. are also often left out in wedding dinners or other social gatherings in these countries. In many residential complexes, building block 4, 14, 24 etc. are either omitted or replaced with block 3A, 13A, and 23A.

/sarcasm
 
I thought this was pretty funny - http://www.marbridgeconsulting.com/...mg_to_merge_bestv_and_shanghai_oriental_pearl

The PS4 carrier and XBONE carrier in China are being merged.

Now the same company will distribute both PS4 and XBONE in China.
Interesting and possibly enlightening:

the next generation Game consoles are also Media Hubs and interactive XTV platforms. It appears that BOTH the XB1 and PS4 have the same issues in China, the XTV and media infrastructure isn't ready and since the XB1 has stressed this side over games it is garnering news...at least that's my take. At $399 in China it better have large value added features and they are not ready for either console.

Update: SMG to Merge BesTV and Shanghai Oriental Pearl


Chinese media conglomerate Shanghai Media Group has announced that the company will merge two of its subsidiary companies, TV service operator BesTV (Xboxone partner) New Media and media company Shanghai Oriental Pearl (PS4 partner)

The new company will reportedly raise nearly RMB 10 bln to purchase a handful of other Shanghai Media Group subsidiaries, including SMG Pictures, Oriental CJ, Wings Media and Shanghai Interactive TV.

Upon completion of the merger, the new company may also seek a strategic investment from Chinese internet giants Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU), Alibaba, or Tencent (0700.HK) totaling more than RMB 1 bln. Negotiations between Shanghai Media Group and the three companies are reportedly still underway.


from Wikipedia said:
Baidu offers many services, including a Chinese language-search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike (an online collaboratively built encyclopedia) and a searchable, keyword-based discussion forum

Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) is a publicly traded Hangzhou-based group of Internet-based e-commerce businesses, including business-to-business online web portals, online retail and payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services.

Tencent Holdings Limited (Chinese: 腾讯控股有限公司; SEHK: 700) is a Chinese investment holding company whose subsidiaries provide mass media, entertainment, Internet and mobile phone value-added services, and operate online advertising services in China.[3] Its headquarters are in Nanshan District, Shenzhen.
Sony posted 191 job listings related to network infrastructure and Web UI features three months ago and I expect the (US) jobs won't bear fruit for a few more months. The same infrastructure would need to be built up LOCALLY in other major markets where the XB1 and PS4 are selling.

Each paragraph from the Sony 6/2014 job listing below is from a different job posting.

The WebKit team at SNEI develops and maintains the platform at the heart of the PlayStation User Experience. We have an open position for a talented Sr. Software Engineer with a passion for contributing to world class open source software for the hugely anticipated PlayStation 4.

Sony seeks a Software Engineer II in San Diego, CA to be responsible for the design, development, implementation, unit testing and automated testing of interactive web-based applications and services.

As a Sr. UX Designer, you will work to define the user model and user interface for new and existing SNEI products and services. You will develop high level and/or detailed storyboards and wireframes, mockups, and prototypes to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas.

We are currently searching for Hadoop Administrator to join Data Analytics and Services (DAS) team in San Diego, CA. We are looking for a highly energetic Administrator with Hadoop Admin Experience to support Data Warehouse solution and administer/ support Cloudera Hadoop Clusters on AWS. {Amazon Web Services}

You will be part of a team responsible for developing the automation of core infrastructure components that are responsible for the operations for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and future flagship Sony devices and services.

The Sr. Software Engineer will design, and develop cloud-based network software services for the PlayStation® and other applications/devices. S/he will provide strong technical leadership in cloud based software development and scalable API designs for the implementation of commerce and social features of PlayStation® Now, Sony's cloud-based gaming initiative.

You will drive development projects from inception through deployment on a worldwide scale across device platforms. Programs will impact how millions of customers will play games on their PS4, TV, Vita, Mobile and other devices. Collaborating with stakeholders of multiple worldwide business units and 3rd parties to clearly identify, explain, and communicate their project involvement, goals, expectations, and tasks
"Collaborating with stakeholders of multiple worldwide business units" is likely referring to markets like Shanghai which requires majority ownership by China companies.

Sony plans to expand the Playstation Games division into a Hub for media Playstation Store Media, Playstation Now game streaming, a Internet TV network and GetTV in 80 OTA TV markets on multiple platforms....
 
Can't imagine how this is even going to work, since China has a set of censorship rules that governs what it allows to be released in its borders. Given that, you could probably count on one hand the number of games you'll be able to play. Or the black market will run roughshod as usual in China.
 

garyBig

Member
What.

Oriental is potentially offensive as a term to people from East Asia. And that game is called 'Whore of the Orient.' Without any context, yeah that sounds like it could be offensive!

The fuck is wrong with you.

Well, orientalism has a long history of Weatern reductionism towards the East (much like colonialism). 'Whore of the Orient' was apparently the Western (?) nickname for a corrupt Shanghai.
After all the controversy and fuss that one individual in the linked story made about specifically the use of the term Orient (not whore), I just bought into his rant a bit and from then on regarded the term as quite offensive.
So I was extremely surprised to see a Chinese company calling itself something with Orient (and it's not even a tourist or international company).
Granted, Orient and its cortesponding Chinese character might have quite different connotations.
But to me it seems now that the artificial anger of that Australian politician was in fact really not much but calling for controversy for controversy's sake. So HE said the Chinese were offended. Not the Chinese themselves. In the end, the whole thing was stupid anyway because why should you censor stuff like orientalism out of a historical game that could serve to educate people on such matters? Especially when your game is called -Whore of the Orient- everyone will be interested to know where the hell that name comes from. So, in the end that whole affair seems to have been typically petty politics as I see it. He used his origin to make the whole thing a politicum when he argued against government funds for the game.

But yes, I obviously didn't term my post well. I just wanted to point out my surprise.
 
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