Hazy Shanghai in China -- which could soon be open to the Xbox.
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Ban on game consoles appears to be overturned in China

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

China appears to have lifted a long-lived ban on selling video game consoles. If upheld in the initial region of Shanghai and carried out through the rest of the country, the move could remake the balance of power between the PC and game consoles in one of the world’s biggest markets.

The Shanghai free trade zone made the announcement, saying, “Once the content of console verified by the competent department of culture, foreign console company could sell its product in China.” That seems clear enough, but China’s various government entities will all have a say in this policy change, and those bureaucracies have not always agreed.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.