The Chinese console market will need a few more years to finally come out of the rut it fell into after a ban that was in place for a few generations.

In 2000, the Chinese Communist Party introduced a ban on console games, meaning consoles were not officially and legally sold in China until July 2015, which thus impacted the PlayStation 2, the Nintendo GameCube, the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii’s sales in the country, which has several hundred millions of potential players, meaning there’s a lot of revenue on the table for the console manufacturers.

Niko Partners‘ analysis says in 2018, the revenue generated by the console and their software sales was 767.1 million dollars, and the prediction for 2019 will be an 11% increase to 851.1 million. This growth trend is predicted to stay in action until 2023 – by that year, the console market will generate 1.5 billion dollars in China, with 1/4 of it coming from hardware, and 3/4 is from software sales. Niko thinks that by that year, the next-gen PlayStation (PlayStation 5?) and Xbox (Project Scarlett) will already be officially sold in the country, along with the Nintendo Switch.

However, the grey market plays a role here. In 2018, 280 thousand more consoles were sold this way than legal sales, and Niko thinks this won’t change much in 2019 (670K for the grey market with a 30K decrease; 510K for the legal market with a 60K growth), and by 2023, a major boost will be seen in the legal sales (1.13 million versus 360K).

The Nintendo Switch might be the kickstarter for the Chinese market. Where could it be if there was no console ban in 2000? How would it have impacted the world’s market?

Source: Gamesindustry