China is releasing a new console called the Ebox.
- Thread starter ForensicYOYO
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Hey ... it's at least being made by a company we'll have heard of, that ended up buying IBM's laptop division off them. It's got half a chance of not sucking. (Only half, because 50/50 is about as good as anyone can hope for - Sega went down after all, and other large companies such as NEC that had a go at the gaming market on previous occasions)
Though there's every likelihood that it'll be a NES clone with some kind of upgraded Power Glove to wave at it, it won't necessarily be so just because everything else coming out of China with a ripoff name and concept also is.
>> I don't think it's a good idea for 3 companies to monopolise...
Well, we're down from 4, not counting all the truly pitiful also rans and vapourwear-purveyors. Or from 7+ to 6+ if you count Apple, SNK (Wonderswan et al) and all the PC hardware manufacturers (plus MS?) as the additional "1+". Market economy, get used to it. Anyone can try and fail. If Sega - and earlier, Atari and Panasonic (and SNK again) - had tried a bit harder or simply been luckier, we may currently have a 1980s formatclash going on, with 5th-gen descendants of the Jaguar, 3DO and Neo Geo also battling it out alongside, or instead of, the present day/active reality contenders.
It's gotta be better than the PRC where it's basically one manufacturer - the state - looking after things in a lot of industries? Where a lot of people's idea of a decent computer is a NES with a keyboard (for god's sake someone make a cheap Amiga clone or embedded Pentium-MMX PC with TV-out and start selling it to those poor bastards, you'll rake it in and do good work for quality-of-life), or that strange handheld sorta-PSX-level thing that Ashens reviewed last year. This could well be a revolution, particularly if it brings a little extra money-backed competition to the west, and opens an avenue for more affordable good quality gaming and computing machinery "back there".
Though there's every likelihood that it'll be a NES clone with some kind of upgraded Power Glove to wave at it, it won't necessarily be so just because everything else coming out of China with a ripoff name and concept also is.
>> I don't think it's a good idea for 3 companies to monopolise...
Well, we're down from 4, not counting all the truly pitiful also rans and vapourwear-purveyors. Or from 7+ to 6+ if you count Apple, SNK (Wonderswan et al) and all the PC hardware manufacturers (plus MS?) as the additional "1+". Market economy, get used to it. Anyone can try and fail. If Sega - and earlier, Atari and Panasonic (and SNK again) - had tried a bit harder or simply been luckier, we may currently have a 1980s formatclash going on, with 5th-gen descendants of the Jaguar, 3DO and Neo Geo also battling it out alongside, or instead of, the present day/active reality contenders.
It's gotta be better than the PRC where it's basically one manufacturer - the state - looking after things in a lot of industries? Where a lot of people's idea of a decent computer is a NES with a keyboard (for god's sake someone make a cheap Amiga clone or embedded Pentium-MMX PC with TV-out and start selling it to those poor bastards, you'll rake it in and do good work for quality-of-life), or that strange handheld sorta-PSX-level thing that Ashens reviewed last year. This could well be a revolution, particularly if it brings a little extra money-backed competition to the west, and opens an avenue for more affordable good quality gaming and computing machinery "back there".
This would make for an awesome game!similar.squirrel said:
Just think about all the possibilities! The free narrative, the character design, the whirling lines in the background, the thick Russian, the... wait, what?
And the console looks "nice". Like all the other cheap plastic crap they produce to conquer the European market. Gogo Gadget facepalm!
Can someone explain to me why consoles are not allowed to be sold in china? I never knew this till now, sounds very bizarre.CalCD said:
Its due to the chinese government basically caving in under public pressure to stop games "corrupting" young peoples minds or something. Its like an activist group full of middle aged underinformed mothers with no real understanding of the social impact of games has taken over government there, so consoles are banned. Unsurprisingly, piracy in china is immense due to this ban, since people are unable to play games legally. Consoles with integrated games in them are a way around this ban, and PC gaming hasnt been banned, so nothing really has changed except for these imitations being sold to take the same position consoles would in other countries.Beth Zeller said:
This actually wouldn't be a mainland Chinese company's first foray into the console market. \\
By the way guys, the reason why consoles are not big there is not because they are outlawed, it's because console producers all want to stay the hell away from PRC. Rampant copyright infringement pretty much means that anything sold there will probably be cracked, copied and then rebranded onto the market by one of the local Chinese companies in a matter of days. It is no surprise to me that most of the R4 card (the card you use to okay bootleg games on the DS) was originally manufactured in China.
You combine this with the amount of control China wants to have over the content, and you have an environment that nobody wants to go near.
This, however, is a novel move on Lonovo's part. You see, the hands-free controller market is pretty much undeveloped. I mean, sure, they're basically just ripping off the kinect, but as we all know, hardware alone doesn't make the grade. It's the games that that will make or break the competition. So we'll have to see who comes up with the better games.
My bet is still on the US devs, since we still have the more mature financial institutions to fund allow new dev teams to jump into the market, and we also have the more sophisticated game dev industry here in the US. But you never know. China might have their own Nintendo brewing in their pocket.
Here's another thing though, Lenovo has a leg up in that this is their home court. It is pretty much guaranteed that the PRC government will probably give them a ridiculous leg up by footing a huge chunk of the bill, and slapping ridiculous tariffs and taxes on anyone who wants to enter.
Chinese laws pretty much prohibit any foreign company from just entering without getting a Chinese partner anyway, and trust me, that's not a road many western companies are willing to walk down. The business culture there can be extremely frustrating.
This means that Lenovo will pretty much have the market to itself with competition having to work 3 times as hard to get through.
All that Lenovo needs to do is to not screw it up too badly, get some decent titles developed on it, and they might still be able to turn a profit from this product. Though, at the same time, we must realize that this product will still, compared to the kinect, for example, be an absolute piece of garbage.
By the way guys, the reason why consoles are not big there is not because they are outlawed, it's because console producers all want to stay the hell away from PRC. Rampant copyright infringement pretty much means that anything sold there will probably be cracked, copied and then rebranded onto the market by one of the local Chinese companies in a matter of days. It is no surprise to me that most of the R4 card (the card you use to okay bootleg games on the DS) was originally manufactured in China.
You combine this with the amount of control China wants to have over the content, and you have an environment that nobody wants to go near.
This, however, is a novel move on Lonovo's part. You see, the hands-free controller market is pretty much undeveloped. I mean, sure, they're basically just ripping off the kinect, but as we all know, hardware alone doesn't make the grade. It's the games that that will make or break the competition. So we'll have to see who comes up with the better games.
My bet is still on the US devs, since we still have the more mature financial institutions to fund allow new dev teams to jump into the market, and we also have the more sophisticated game dev industry here in the US. But you never know. China might have their own Nintendo brewing in their pocket.
Here's another thing though, Lenovo has a leg up in that this is their home court. It is pretty much guaranteed that the PRC government will probably give them a ridiculous leg up by footing a huge chunk of the bill, and slapping ridiculous tariffs and taxes on anyone who wants to enter.
Chinese laws pretty much prohibit any foreign company from just entering without getting a Chinese partner anyway, and trust me, that's not a road many western companies are willing to walk down. The business culture there can be extremely frustrating.
This means that Lenovo will pretty much have the market to itself with competition having to work 3 times as hard to get through.
All that Lenovo needs to do is to not screw it up too badly, get some decent titles developed on it, and they might still be able to turn a profit from this product. Though, at the same time, we must realize that this product will still, compared to the kinect, for example, be an absolute piece of garbage.
