Nintendo Enters China Gaming Market
Faced with intense competition from Microsoft's X-Box
and Sony's Playstation 2 in international markets, Nintendo
has decided to set aside worries about game piracy in
China, and will launch the new Nintendo iQue in that huge
market. Microsoft and Sony have not yet launched their
products and games in China.
Nintendo is currently third in the global market, and
has suffered from flagging sales of the GameCube, even
though it is the cheapest model. Sony's Playstation 2
is currently the leader, while Microsoft is playing catch-up.
Both companies have made efforts to boost the number of
titles made for their respective platforms, and Microsoft
is betting on catching up with Sony with the next-generation
X-Box 2, which will probably be launched in 2005 or 2006.
In August, Nintendo suspended manufacture of the GameCube
to clear inventory.
Until now, all console game makers have stayed out of
the China market because of game piracy problems. The
Microsoft X-Box has been particularly vulnerable to hacking
because it is based on a PC architecture. In a few instances,
hackers have hacked into it, and loaded it with the open
source Linux operating system, turning it into a low-price
desktop computer. To prevent this from becoming common
practice, Microsoft's legal department has aggressively
fought the practice on the legal front.
As a result, online games, which have become very popular
in China, are played on PCs. The most popular games in
China are online fantasy games. To a large extent, the
demand for broadband in China is driven by online gaming.
Recently, Shanda, one of the online game providers, claimed
to have supported 1 million game players concurrently.
The Nintendo iQue will require a flash memory card for
ID purposes, and each flash card will be "locked"
to its iQue. In other words, each user's card cannot be
used on another iQue.
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