After nearly a year and a half in the wilds of North America, Europe, Latin America, and Australia (among other regions), Sony’s PlayStation 4 will be launching in China on March 20th. Perhaps even more defining of the Chinese technological landscape is that the now-three year old PlayStation Vita will be making its first appearance in China alongside it.
The consoles were originally supposed to come to the region in early January, but regulatory negotiations pushed them back to mid-March. Now, PlayStation-enthusiasts in the People’s Republic will only have to wait another ten days to play the latest DualShock-enabled games.
The console will launch with a 2,899 Yuan price (roughly $465 USD), which is not as much of a price premium as we would expect for a foreign market with such stringent regulations. For reference, a PlayStation 4 will run a Swede the equivalent of about $600 USD and a Brazilian can expect to pay north of $1,800. Yes, that’s nearly two thousand US dollars for a PlayStation.
The PlayStation Vita will launch in China for 1,299 Yuan, or about $206 USD by today’s conversion. That price is a lot closer to the Vita’s US $200 price point.
Microsoft also faced a delay launching Xbox One into China, which it managed to do about six months ago. Redmond’s console featured a steeper price difference between its North American and Chinese counterpart, with launch pricing upwards of $700 with a Kinect sensor.
Sony has the price advantage as well as the catalog advantage, it would seem, as Microsoft launched only ten games with its console in September, while Sony plans to have about 30 when the console goes on sale in two weeks. The exact number of titles available at launch is still unknown.