Reuters
May 26, 2004, 9:55 PM PT
Electronics salesman Min Shushan can talk for hours about the merits of Sony’s PlayStation 2 versus Microsoft’s Xbox, having taken apart hundreds of consoles over the years to rig them for pirated games.
Customers at his glass-and-chrome specialty store in the heart of old Beijing can buy consoles made at Sony or Microsoft’s factories in southern China and prep them to play hundreds of copied games from “Tomb Raider” to “Final Fantasy.”
“Any title you want, we can get you,” Min said, riffling through a box of pirated game CDs wrapped in plastic. “We have everything they’ve ever made,” he said, offering to sell any title for the equivalent of 85 cents.
“Don’t worry, the consoles are the real thing, ‘factory direct’ so to speak,” he added with a smile.
Min said the consoles were obtained through “illegal means” but were not stolen.
Resourceful pirates have taken a big bite out of business for Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, whose official games retail at between 200 yuan and 500 yuan ($24-$50) in China. Players say they wouldn’t even consider paying those prices.
Sony’s PS2 strategy in the country has got off to a rocky start. It delayed the launch to Jan. 1 from mid-December and when it did go on sale in Shanghai and Guangzhou, Sony had only one software title to accompany the console.
The number of official PS2 game titles for the Chinese market has grown to six and Sony is looking to foster relationships with local game developers, but this has done little to boost sales.
An official at Sony Online Entertainment, a business that focuses on online computer games and is separate from the company’s PlayStation arm, Sony Computer Entertainment, said the PS2 was not doing well in China.
“It’s going to be a very tough road for the PlayStation guys to enter China and actually build a business,” John Needham, SOE’s chief financial officer, told a forum at E3, the game industry’s annual trade show held this month in Los Angeles.
Sony Online knows all too well about the perils of the Chinese market after its popular online role playing game, EverQuest, failed to catch on with China’s gamers, because it did not cater to local tastes.
SCE has not disclosed shipment figures for the Chinese market, except to say it sent 4.28 million units to Japan and the rest of Asia in the business year ended March 31.
Another factor holding back Sony’s success in China, Western industry watchers say, is the PS2’s 1,988 yuan ($240) price tag, which is about a quarter of the average annual wage of an urban worker.
…more at the souce.
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