Ban on games consoles may be lifted

Among participants who wish to grab a share of China's massive video gaming market, Beijing Eedoo Technology Ltd, a spin-off company from Lenovo Group, has been a front-runner.

Beijing Eedoo successfully launched a multimedia entertainment console in the mainland market in April last year. But the company has changed the product name several times in order to avoid sensitive issues.

Jack Luo, chief executive officer of Beijing Eedoo, insisted his company is selling a "sports and entertainment machine", rather than a game console, to Chinese families.

The decade-long ban also prompted a prosperous illegal game console market in China.

Situated at the northern end of the central axis of Bejing's inner city, the Gulou (Drum Tower) area is known as a distribution center for smuggled game consoles such as Xbox, PlayStation and Wii, as well as its historical and hutong charms.

Liu Shuo, who runs a 12-year-old video game store on East Gulou Street, is one of the many beneficiaries of the ban.

In 2000, Sony's PlayStation 2 became a worldwide hit soon after its debut owing to the company's groundbreaking technology in improving the gaming interface and playability. Foreseeing the huge market potential on the Chinese mainland, Liu made his first pot of gold by reselling smuggled PlayStation consoles.

"There were wholesale dealers transferring PlayStation consoles from Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. All you had to do was find them and resell their products," said Liu.

The sales of game consoles reached a peak between 2006 and 2010, when Nintendo and Microsoft successively launched their motion sensing consoles, allowing the players to interact with and manipulate images on the screen via gesture recognition.

"I could sell as many as 10 consoles a day back in 2006. The net profit was high because there were fewer competitors," said Liu.

As the "transfer" industry chain matures, video game stores have sprung up in many first- and second-tier cities. East Gulou Street's golden days are now in the past.

"Now buyers can get access to game consoles in every major electronics market near their homes but old customers know we are still selling video games here," Liu said.

Pan Jiayuan and Chen Limin contributed to this story.

shenjingting@chinadaily.com.cn

Previous reports

A review of China's video game industry

Wii rocked by corp's Xbox factor

Eedoo to get in the tech groove eight months late

Game shop owners playing for time

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