China's Gamers Aren't Buying Many Consoles

Sales of Xbox One and PS4 are finally legal, but that hasn't changed the habits of Chinese gamers

Gamers in Shanghai try the Xbox One during the China Joy event last year.
Photographer: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

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By Joshua Brustein

July 1, 2015 at 7:48 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Now that China's ban on retail sales of video-game consoles has been lifted, Sony and Microsoft have made some progress against the flood of illegal consoles in one of the world’s biggest markets. Just don’t expect foreign consoles to have the same impact for their corporate parents as foreign smartphones.

Xbox One and Playstation 4 will combine to sell about 550,000 consoles in China this year, according a report released Wednesday by Niko Partners, a market research firm that studies gaming in Asia. A separate report by IHS projects worldwide sales of 34 million PS4s by the end of this year alongside 20 million Xbox Ones—and that means China isn’t yet shaping up to be a major market for either Sony or Microsoft.