China's top 20 favorite console games (sort of)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that China is getting game consoles. (You may also know that I think that won’t matter and that all the games will be censored, but that’s neither here nor there). Since console games haven’t been officially available in China for more than a decade, there’s no real way to know what console games China might be into, but one enterprising editor over at Tencent Games had an interesting idea: look at China’s most-downloaded foreign PC games and make a list of the ones that are console games, too.

Of course, this is a highly unscientific approach, since it doesn’t include any console-exclusive games and download statistics aren’t entirely precise. Still, it’s an interesting exercise and although it’s probably not completely accurate, it’ll give us a general idea of the kinds of console games that might do well in China once Sony and Microsoft get their products onto store shelves officially.

So what console games does China like best? Check out the interactive graph below:

As you can see, there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference in the games Chinese gamers prefer compared to overseas console consumers. Most of these games are triple-A titles that sold well around the world, with the only real exceptions being Sniper: Ghost Warrior, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dynasty Warriors 6. (It’s worth noting that the latter two games are loosely based on Chinese history, which probably explains why they seem to hold more appeal for Chinese gamers than the world at large).

Continuing in the vein of wholly-unscientific-but-still-interesting inquiries into China’s taste in games, I thought I’d take things a step farther by looking up each game’s highest Metacritic score on either console (excepting Torchlight 2 and Romance of the Three Kingdoms XII, which don’t seem to have scores) to see how closely China’s tastes align with the Western critical opinion. Are China’s most downloaded games also well-rated abroad? The results are below, and as you can see, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Reading this graph can be a little confusing at first. The vertical axis indicates the Metacritic score, the horizontal axis indicates downloads in China (further to the right means more downloads), and the size of the bubbles themselves indicates the overseas sales (bigger means more sales).

So what does this all mean? Probably not much. But it’s interesting to note that some of the biggest selling games in the West (Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, etc.) didn’t make this list despite having available PC versions. It’s also interesting to note that Chinese gamers apparently have a soft spot for games about China: Sleeping Dogs and Dynasty Warriors 6 both made the list, despite the fact that the latter is apparently not a very good game.

(download and sales data via Tencent Games)