The Beijing News has reported that an unnamed man has dropped dead after a three-day Internet gaming session. It happened on Saturday in the cityof Guangzhou, in the south of China. The man, said to be around 30 years old, collapsed in an Internet café and was rushed to hospital. According to the newspaper, exhaustion was deemed thelikely cause and "police have ruled out the possibility of suicide.” There’s no mention of what game had obsessed him for 72 hours.The report said that about 100 other Websurfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man’s death." Internet addiction has become a major problem in China, which, with 140 million Internet users, is second only tothe US. Several cities have clinics to treat the disease, and the government has banned the opening on new Internet cafes and issued orders limiting the time Internet users can spend gaming online.
Tag Archive: Guangzhou
Man Dies From Gaming?
Sony takes PS2 to China despite pirates
The machine, which debuted in Japan in early 2000 and the United States in late 2001, will hit Chinese shelves on December 20 with a price tag of 1,988 yuan ($240). That compares to $179 in the United States.
“We have to realize the reality, that piracy cannot be controlled 100 percent, not only in China but also in other parts of the world,” Sony China Chairman Hiroshi Shoda told reporters Friday in an upscale Beijing cinema. “We have to be courageous, to face the reality.” He declined to give sales projections.
Nintendo to launch new console in China
The new platform, called the iQue Player (and dubbed the “Nintendo Compact” elsewhere, although we’re not sure where that title came from), will come with a memory card which gamers can use to download games from terminals in specific shops for a fee.
The memory card will be tied to a single console, and games cannot be copied between cards, while the terminals themselves are expected to be closed systems provided by Nintendo. The console, supplied with a memory card, will cost 498 Yuan (about
