Microsoft Corp has delayed the launch of its Xbox One game console in China, which had been set for release tomorrow, but the world’s biggest software company said it would be released by the end of the year.
The delay is the latest in a series of setbacks for Microsoft in China, where it is under investigation for suspected anti-trust violations related to the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office.
The Chinese government lifted a 2000 ban on gaming consoles earlier this year.
Microsoft had reached a deal with Chinese internet TV set-top box maker BesTV New Media Co Ltd (博達克諮詢) to form a joint venture to manufacture the consoles in Shanghai’s Free-trade Zone a year ago.
The Xbox One console will cost 3,699 yuan (US$602) without the Kinect motion detection system and 4,299 yuan with Kinect, Microsoft said in July.
China is the world’s third-biggest gaming market, where revenues grew by more than a third from 2012 to nearly US$14 billion last year.
However, piracy and the dominance of PC and mobile gaming may leave little room for legitimate console and game sales.
In May, Sony Corp said it would set up a joint venture with Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group Co (東方明珠) to bring the PlayStation games console to China.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day