The PS4 is coming to China on January 11, but its launch lineup looks awful

We’ve long suspected that the PS4 would be hitting China sometime just after the New Year, but now Sony has confirmed it. The PS4 will be released in China on January 11, for a base price of RMB 2899 (US$468). Its handheld cousin, the PS Vita, will also launch on 1/11, with a base price of RMB 1299 (US$209).

In terms of price, Sony has certainly managed to beat Microsoft, whose Xbox retails for nearly US$150 more in the Middle Kingdom. But the two consoles, which share the same China operating partner, apparently do have something in common. The Xbox One’s launch lineup of games were particularly weak – not good for a game console – and though we don’t have the full lineup yet, Sony’s offerings aren’t looking much better.

According to Sina Games, the PS4’s lineup of imported games may be limited to:

• Knack
• Driveclub
• LittleBigPlanet 3
• Trials Fusion (also available on China’s Xbox One)
• Rayman Legends (also available on China’s Xbox One)
• Final Fantasy X/X2 HD Remake
• Warframe

The launch lineup will also include a number of Chinese games, but none of them are particularly high-profile. The best-known among them is probably Snail Games’s King of Wushu, a MOBA game that likely doesn’t even rank among China’s top 5 favorite games in that genre.

That’s not to say there aren’t fun games among the PS4’s launch lineup, of course, but just as was the case with the Xbox One, something is obviously missing: the best-sellers. There’s no sign of any of Playstation’s signature action-adventure titles like The Last of Us, Infamous, or Uncharted, and the cross-platform next-gen blockbusters like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and Far Cry 4 are missing too.

Chinese PS4 launch title LittleBigPlanet3: cute and fun, but not the kind of immersive next-gen experience that inspires gamers to buy new consoles.

This has nothing to do with Sony’s strategy, of course – any game launched in China must be approved by China’s Ministry of Culture, a lengthy process that can get quite expensive if games require censorship before they can be released. And some games’ basic premise rules them out right off the bat: the revolutionary themes of Unity mean the game is likely never to surface in China, and there’s no way a Grand Theft Auto game will ever meet the Ministry of Culture’s approval.

The problem for Sony (and Microsoft) is that these next-gen blockbuster games are a big part of the reason people buy video game consoles, especially during their first few years on sale, when their game catalog is still quite limited. In the US, for example, the PS4 launched with a number of immersive, big-action blockbuster titles so that fans could get the full “next-gen” experience from their new consoles. But with the exception of Driveclub – which will only appeal to fans of driving games – Sony’s China launch lineup lacks that “next-gen” pizazz and blockbuster action.

Chinese gamers have definitely noticed, too. One of the top comments on a Netease story about the launch reads: “The more I read, the more seems wrong. [It’s just] cutesy games and Chinese games.”

There may be an out for Sony, though. If the console isn’t region-locked like the Xbox One is, then China’s gamers could simply buy imported gray-market copies of those popular-but-unapproved games. Whether the console will be region-locked is not yet clear, although it seems likely.

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