Sony opens 50 million PlayStations to China to cultivate Chinese game developers

As we all know, a ban in 2000 caused a break in console games in China for more than ten years, and also put China's game industry on a unique path.

But with the opening of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation have entered the mainland market one after another, and the Chinese console industry has fallen into a carnival.

Compared with the Xbox One, which made mistakes in its early stages and has always been lukewarm, the PlayStation is a completely different story.

From the normalization of game localization, to the ever-accelerating speed of game approval, to the global synchronization of major works, to the simultaneous release of heavyweight hardware such as PS VR, and finally to China becoming the second largest market in Asia for "Final Fantasy 15", Sony's strategic layout in China has begun to become clear. At the same time, Sony Interactive Entertainment, led by Taketo Soeda, nicknamed "Uncle Wu Ren", has been recognized and loved by more and more game players.

However, Sony Interactive Entertainment's future plans are not limited to selling PlayStation's software and hardware products in the Chinese market.

PlayStation enters China for two years, "China Star" is progressing steadily

In March 2015, Sony Interactive Entertainment (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. officially announced the launch of PlayStation 4 (PS4), PlayStation Vita (PSV) products and related accessories in the Chinese mainland market.

Two years later, on March 22, the second anniversary of PlayStation entering China, Sony Interactive Entertainment (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. held a press conference in Beijing to announce the interim results of the China Hero Project. Taketo Soeda, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment's China business, and Fernandez Hector, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment's third-party software relations in Asia, introduced the overall situation of the project at the press conference.

The China Star Project is a special project of Sony Interactive Entertainment, which relies on its global resources to support local development teams in China and create high-quality console games for the world. Compared with the simple consumption of game content, Sony Interactive Entertainment is more interested in deepening the Chinese console game market, exploring the spark of local game development in China, and promoting console games with the "Made in China" label to more than 53.4 million PS4s around the world.

Since the project was launched in 2016, PlayStation China has received more than 400 project applications. After rigorous selection and screening, it finally focused on 10 game projects that were independently developed by Chinese game developers.

These 10 projects include the already well-known "Codename: Hardcore", the large-scale war online game "Tiger and Leopard Cavalry", and the cold weapon war online game "War of Will", all three of which are nearing completion.

There are also 4 games developed with Unreal Engine 4, namely "Border Project", "The Pervasion", "The Evil Dead" and "Lost Souls", which attracted global attention with just a demo video earlier. These four games will be launched on the PlayStation 4 platform for the first time.

The last three games are made around the popular PlayStation VR peripheral. They are the family game "Humanity Rescue Plan", the very Chinese-style "Walker", and the popular game "New Year's Eve" whose trial version was a big hit in the national service store. They have novel gameplay and are already highly completed.

Content is king PlayStation's high-quality project incubation plan

For game consoles, software is the soul of the hardware. Game consoles are not a necessity. Without high-quality games, the consoles are useless. This has long been the consensus of game hardware manufacturers. Often, the war between hardware occurs in the competition for high-quality exclusive content.

Microsoft's ability to carve out a place in the already stable console market in the early years was closely related to its large-scale purchase of exclusive game rights at the behest of Bill Gates.

As Xbox One declines and exclusive masterpieces wither, Sony's PS4 has a huge advantage in game lineup. In this case, Sony still does not relax its cultivation of potential game projects in the future, and undoubtedly does not intend to leave any room for competitors.

But on the other hand, the 10 game products in Sony's China Star Plan are indeed outstanding.

"Codename: Hardcore" produced by Mu Fei, who has a special liking for mecha, has a distinctive style, tough painting style, and refreshing combat. It almost monopolized all independent game awards at last year's Tokyo Game Show and won many awards.

"War of Immortal", which has been tested several times on the PC side, is praised for its unique sense of history and the texture of character movements. The main creator Wang Xi worked for the well-known game developer Bungie for many years and participated in the production of first-line masterpieces such as "Halo" and "Destiny". Although he resolutely returned to China to join the game torrent and start from scratch, he is actually not a newcomer in the game circle.

In an interview after the press conference, Taketo Soeda also said that the 10 game projects of the China Star Project have repeatedly amazed foreign game producers and have reached international standards. Of course, there is also the reason behind this, that China has not had a strong presence in the console game circle for many years.

Starting from the same starting line, the world will explore the VR field together

In terms of console games, there is indeed still a certain gap between Chinese game development and the international level, but in the field of VR, Chinese game developers can stand on the same starting line with their global counterparts.

Despite insufficient production capacity, Sony's PS VR has sold 915,000 units worldwide, with supply exceeding demand, making it the leader among the three major VR headsets.

However, this cannot change the fact that the gaming industry is still in the VR exploration stage. How to effectively avoid dizziness and how to present a panoramic story when traditional narrative methods fail are all problems that need to be solved urgently.

Therefore, Sony Interactive Entertainment's support for VR projects is unprecedented. Among the 10 games in the China Star Project, three are PS VR-specific games and five support PS VR. On the one hand, this is to expand the game lineup of PS VR, and on the other hand, Sony obviously hopes to work with Chinese game developers to find new ways to play VR.

In fact, before "Human Rescue Plan", "Walker" and "New Year's Eve", domestic PS VR games such as "Crying Baby", "Ace Banana" and "Pixel Wars" have been launched on PS Store, and have achieved good reputation and sales. Compared with the PC ecosystem where piracy is rampant, the good payment habits of PlayStation players are actually a good way to realize the domestic VR market where bubbles are prominent.

In the past, our console game industry missed out on more than a decade, which is really regrettable. Now that the ban on game consoles has been lifted, Chinese game developers are starting to catch up. China's excellent game projects can get technical and channel help from giants like Sony, which undoubtedly greatly shortens the exploration period of Chinese game developers; on the other hand, Sony has also won game resources from China's top game production team for the PlayStation platform at a very low cost, achieving a win-win situation.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.