"China Considers Lifting Ban on Consoles"

Playstation China

Video game consoles have been banned in China for over a decade and reports claim that the country’s government is considering to lift the ban. The speculations arise after Sony’s PlayStation 3 obtained a quality certification from China’s safety standards body late last year.

For China to end its ban on consoles, an approval must be sought from all seven ministries that issued the ban.

“We are reviewing the policy and have conducted some surveys and held discussions with other ministries on the possibility of opening up the game console market,” an unnamed source from the Ministry of Culture was quoted saying to China Daily.

However, an official at the ministry’s cultural market department told Reuters that it is not considering lifting the ban.

In 2000, China banned video game consoles in an effort to protect the physical and mental development of the its children, which is odd considering the prevalence of mobile and online games in the country. China also banned online games that promoted gangs and gang violence in 2009.

Considering the number of new releases expected in the coming months, now would be a good time to lift the console ban. Sony has announced it would unveil PlayStation 4 in May 2013, or sooner. Speculated specs include a custom chip based on AMD’s A8-3850, a quad-core 2.9GHz processor, and a 1GHz graphics card with 1GB memory.

Also to be introduced to the market later this year is the next-generation Xbox console. Specs include a x64-based, octo-core processor running at 1.6GHz, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 32MB of fast-embedded SRAM, a 6x Blu-ray drive, gigabit Ethernet, and WiFi connectivity among others.

Source: Daily Tech

Photo source: Edge Online