So yeah, consoles were just banned in China until recently. Totally banned. The only chance people living in the People's Republic had of playing AAA titles lied in them being released on PC with significant cuts, a pirated version winding up in their local amusement arcade, or by getting their hands on their own bootleg copy. Even then, though, it would have to have been ported to the PC, because there was no way of getting your hands on an Xbox or Playstation. Or, well, there probably were ways of getting your hands on one, but it probably wasn't worth risking the jail time just to play Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, no matter how much you'd heard about it. It's good, but not that good. All of this was pretty ironic given that it's Chinese factories where the majority of consoles are actually made, but never played. Consoles were banned in China since 2000, with the government deciding that was the best way of protecting their youth from wasting their minds on video games, after a parental outcry. Of course the rise of online gaming and arcades after that proved that banning consoles didn't actually help the matter at all, which is probably why they lifted it in 2013.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
