China’s PS4 is going to be just as bad as its Xbox One

China’s Xbox One launch has been kind of a disaster. The device is overpriced, games are region-locked, used game sales are banned, the launch itself was weirdly delayed, and online services promised still haven’t been delivered.

All of that would seem to suggest that consumers should be looking out for the PS4’s launch in China (likely early next year), right? Wrong.

While Sony and Microsoft are rivals, their China partners Shanghai Oriental Pearl and BesTV (respectively) have always been subsidiaries of the same state-owned media company. Last week, the two companies were formally merged. The result is that the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 are now being launched and operated by the same company in China: Shanghai Media Group.

Sony and Microsoft have good reason to be concerned about conflicts of interest. And there’s plenty of reason to think that the new company may not have either of their best interests at heart. Shanghai Media Group chairman Li Ruigang, the man in charge of both the Xbox One and the PS4 in China, told reporters at a recent press conference (via Kotaku):

Bringing foreign games into the country doesn’t make BesTV money, doing development and operating the sales platforms ourselves provides the biggest profits. The people who make money selling game discs are companies like Sony and Microsoft, so relying on selling discs is definitely not what we want.

Just in case you missed it: that’s the guy in charge of operating both major game consoles in China saying that he’s not interested in selling games, or earning money for partner companies Sony and Microsoft. It’s difficult to imagine either company is feeling particularly happy about their choice of partners right now.

SMG chair Li Ruigang

But this isn’t just a problem for Sony and Microsoft. Consumers also have good reason to be upset by the news. To begin with, the merger likely means that the PS4 will share all of the same restrictions, including the intense region locking and the ban on used games, that the Xbox One has. None of that is good for Chinese consumers – they’re getting a console with less functionality at a higher price point than their friends overseas.

It also means that the PS4 will be operated in China with the same mentality we’ve seen with the Xbox One, which means a focus on domestic games and services. The PS4 launch lineup is likely to be just as limited and unimpressive and the Xbox One’s was. Chinese console gamers who want to play the consoles’ most popular hits will likely still be forced to pick up gray-market imports and pirated games rather than purchasing the legal versions of the consoles Shanghai Media Group will be distributing.

It seems clear that Shanghai Media Group has no real interest in bringing the console experience to China’s gamers at all, it merely wants to use their brand as a platform to promote its own platforms and services. From a business perspective, it’s understandable. But don’t expect gamers to get excited about it. Especially when the services they’ve been promised aren’t even being delivered.