MOSCOW, July 31 (RIA Novosti) – Microsoft Corp. is launching its Xbox One gaming console in China on September 23 following a 14-year ban, Reuters reports.
China prohibited game consoles in 2000 on the grounds that the devices were causing mental harm to children. The machines, though, were smuggled into the country to be sold by online vendors.
Last year the Chinese government established the country’s first Free-Trade Zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, which allowed foreign companies like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to enter the local market with their consoles, but after passing a number of inspections by the so-called “culture department”.
The console will cost 3,699 yuan ($600) without the Kinect motion detection system and 4,299 yuan ($700) with Kinect.
Microsoft has referred to the launch of its cutting-edge gaming device as a historic moment, in hopes to finally make it to a market of over half a billion gamers.
Meanwhile, the US software giant faces an anti-monopoly investigation in China over its business practices and suspicions that it has breached China’s anti-monopoly law.
