Huawei to introduce new gaming console in China

Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co announced Wednesday a plan to introduce its self-developed game console to its home market in the second quarter of this year, just as the government has lifted its ban on the sale of foreign game consoles.

With the open policy, many gamers will likely prefer to play games in the living room on a high-definition and larger screen with a better sound system, though PC games are the mainstream currently, Yao Hongjie, the game console project manager from Huawei, told the Global Times Wednesday via e-mail.

Data released at China's annual games industry conference in December showed that China's video game sales in 2013 rose 38 percent from a year earlier to 83.17 billion yuan ($13.76 billion). with PC games accounting for 64.5 percent.

Yao noted that the game console project was started at the end of 2012 and would not have been subject to China's game console ban, as the device is multi-purpose, enabling users to also watch online videos or listen to music besides playing games.

"But after the ban is lifted, we will put more focus on the gaming aspect," said Yao.

Its new TV-based gaming console, dubbed the "TRON," has already been promoted at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas from January 7 to 10. The can-shaped TRON mostly runs online multiplayer games as well as some single-player games, connecting to a controller through Bluetooth technology.

The TRON targets over 200 million families in China, and is unlikely to be available in foreign markets in the near future, but the company said it is also paying attention to overseas demands.

Lacking competitive edges, technologically speaking, it will be hard for the TRON to win domestic high-end consumers from more mature foreign rivals - such as Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation, Xue Yongfeng, a gaming industry analyst with Analysys International, told the Global Times Wednesday.

Foreign game console makers have already been eyeing China's fairly huge gaming industry for a long time. Now they can make a grand entrance into the market after the State Council, the country's cabinet, said in early January that foreign-invested enterprises within the Shanghai free trade zone can now manufacture gaming consoles in the zone and sell them in China.

Xue held a wait-and-see attitude toward the TRON's prospects, predicting that although the fairly cheaper device will be attractive to China's price-sensitive users, it will also be confronted with potential threats from TV set-top boxes, such as Xiaomi Box, which features similar functions as the game console but at a much lower cost.

The Xiaomi Box is priced at about 299 yuan, while Huawei hopes to sell the TRON for less than 1,000 yuan.

Tian Ying, a Beijing-based independent analyst, said that even though Huawei may find it hard to stand out in the gaming industry, it will gain more understanding of the consumer electronics market during this process.

In order to reduce the over-reliance on its telecom business, Huawei has continued making strong efforts to push its expansion in consumer devices, seeking to create new growth engines, Tian told the Global Times Wednesday.

"The company can hardly anticipate rapid growth in the telecom equipment industry as it has already ranked second in global market shares in 2012," she said.

Almost three-quarters of Huawei's 220.2 billion yuan revenue in 2012 came from selling equipment to telecom carriers around the world.

The company forecast on Wednesday that sales revenue in 2013 will hover between 238 billion yuan and 240 billion yuan, up around 8 percent from 2012, with more than 75 percent of its carrier business revenues coming from global top 50 telecom operators.