In 2014, taking advantage of the ban on the ban on marketing game consoles in China, Sony and Microsoft had each found a solution to officially distribute their platforms on this territory offering necessarily interesting growth prospects. In the case of Sony, the Chinese subsidiary of the group had founded a joint venture (two in fact, but do not complicate unnecessarily) with Shanghai Oriental Pearl to distribute the PS4 in the Middle Empire, taking advantage of the Shanghai free trade area. At the time of the creation of this joint venture, Sony China and Shanghai Oriental Pearl had 49% and 51% of the shares respectively.
However, according to information from China, Sony bought all of the shanghai Pearl Shanghai shares and therefore now has control over the equipment distribution platform and PlayStation games in China. According to administrative documents (Sony has not yet communicated anything on the subject), the company chaired by Tatsuo Eguchi has been renamed Wanzhan Piwu Cultural Entertainmentwhich apparently constitutes a phonetic wink to “PlayStation 5” in the language of Jackie Chan.
« Total acquisition by Sony suggests several things: the company sees long -term potential on the Chinese market and wants greater agility and better control in local decisions. In addition, this could indicate an evolution of the Chinese regulatory framework in terms of video games – allowing 100% foreign property would be a positive signal », Observes Mingzhen Li, founder of the Digital Playful agency and herself a former employee of Shanghai Oriental Pearl.
« I still remember this period very clearly when I had the chance to work closely with the Xbox China and PlayStation China teams, contributing to the introduction of Chinese and international titles on console platforms in China. 2014 had a perfume of history, but this news could be just as striking. I can’t wait to see how things will evolve. Could this be the sign of a regulatory relaxation and increased cross-border collaboration to come? The future will tell us She adds.
For his part, Nintendo had fraternized with Tencent to officially distribute the Switch and its games in China from December 2019, but this partnership is led to end in 2026 and the Japanese manufacturer has not yet communicated its plans concerning the deployment of the Switch 2 in this territory. Note that even without an official distribution channel, Chinese players can always go through the gray market to import the console and the games of their choice. It is even the often privileged solution since the cultural armed arm of the Chinese government always controls closely (and slowly) what are the games that have the right to go out in China.
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