A Final Note

China did have a few homegrown consoles with big ambitions — the Little Tyrant Z, Battleaxe, Snail OBOX. I never got to play any myself. From what I’ve read and heard, their problems were similar: they approached console making with the mindset of PCs, mobile games, or online games. The result: almost no game ecosystem, weak hardware, low value. In the end, they missed their target audience. It’s a pity. I hope future builders learn from those lessons. Maybe one day the console market won’t be just three giants, but four, five, even more. Looking back, those “failures” might not seem so worthless after all.

Imagine this: for the first fifteen years of your life, there are almost no legitimate console games within the law of your country. No official channels, no store counters, no advertisements. To play games, your only choices are smuggled goods and pirated copies. So when Steam — a legal, convenient, respectful gateway — finally opened, we rushed in with near-frenzy to buy games, including countless older titles we had missed. Not to “atone.” Not purely out of compensation. But because for the first time, we had the chance to be seen and respected by the game industry as ordinary consumers. “Paying back the ticket” was never a cheap moral performance. It meant: when the legal path finally appears, we embrace it without hesitation.

This is my gaming story. What’s yours?