By Nelson Schneider - 05/14/16 at 03:23 PM CT
Between 2000 and 2014, videogame consoles were banned in China, which is ironic considering they are all made in that last bastion of functioning Communism. It seems that psychotic Chinese parents lived up to the ‘Tiger Mom’ stereotype and demanded that their country’s government ban electronic gaming devices due to their potential for corrupting the youth and wasting precious brain power.
Whether the Tiger Moms have a point is neither here nor there. What is interesting is that the Chinese holding firm that owns a huge portion of China’s booming PC gaming market (because, of course, the government couldn’t ban PC use when they temporarily shut down consoles), Tencent, has recently decided to throw their hat into the console arena now that the ban has been lifted. And the way they’re going about their foray into consoles should make Microsoft sit-up and take notice.
Tencent will be producing the TGP, a Windows 10-powered console with the company’s own custom gaming platform slathered on top. Being the pirate-loving nation it is, I doubt a Chinese console would even try to go the controlling route MS has mistakenly veered onto with the UWP, meaning that the TGP Console could be closest thing to my vision for Xbox ever created. Of course, the downside of it being a Chinese device is the fact that it will definitely contain more government backdoors and monitoring capabilities than even the most fanatical tinfoil-hat-wearer’s perception of Microsoft’s and Google’s products.
Unfortunately for singularity gamers in the wider world, it is very likely the TGP will remain exclusive to China.
