Gamers visit Sony’s PlayStation booth at the annual China Joy gaming conference in Shanghai on July 30, 2021.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
GUANGZHOU, China — For 14 years, gaming consoles from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo were banned in China.
The ban was finally lifted in 2014.
While these consoles were available on the so-called “grey market” — places that would sell imported devices for a high price — the prohibition led to the surge in popularity of PC and mobile games.
Chinese developers, like giants Tencent and NetEase, poured their efforts into making hit titles for those platforms during the more than a decade-long ban.
Now things are changing. China’s tech giants, alongside a new breed of gaming developers, are looking to tap the growth of videogame consoles in China and target players overseas who have grown up with those devices.
For the global market, the console is huge — roughly like 30% revenue. But in China, it’s only 1% and so there’s a huge potential opportunity for the console game developer inside China.
Daniel Ahmad
senior analyst, Niko Partners
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have all launched their next-generation gaming consoles in China.
“For the global market, the console is huge — roughly like 30% revenue. But in China, it’s only 1% and so there’s a huge potential opportunity for the console game developer inside China,” Frank Mingbo Li, the founder of Studio Surgical Scalpels, a Tencent-backed game studio, told CNBC.
Studio Surgical Scalpels is making an outer-space based “first-person shooter” game called “Boundary” for PC and Sony’s PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
China’s games console hardware and software market hit $1.84 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $2.46 billion in 2025, according to market intelligence firm Niko Partners. But that’s eclipsed by both mobile and PC game revenue. Mobile game revenue alone stood at $29.2 billion in 2020.
Globally, the console market is expected to rake in revenue of $49.2 billion, accounting for 28% of the worldwide games market, according to market research firm Newzoo.
That’s where the opportunity lies.
“Despite consoles being banned between 2000 and 2014, we are seeing high demand for consoles in China, and there is an even larger market for console outside the country,” Daniel Ahmad, senior analyst at Niko Partners, told CNBC.
Li, who is a gaming industry veteran, said “Boundary” was designed from the “very first day” for the global market, underscoring the Chinese developer’s ambitions.
“Boundary” is just one of several high-profile console games coming out of China. Another upcoming game is “Black Myth: Wu Kong” which is being developed by Chinese studio Game Science.
Gaming giants eye console market
The world’s largest gaming company, Tencent, along with rival Chinese firm NetEase, are also eyeing the console market.
NetEase launched a high-profile game on Thursday called “Naraka: Bladepoint” — a 60-person battle royale style game like popular title “Fortnite.” The Hangzhou, China-based company is also developing the game for consoles but hasn’t revealed a release date yet.
In 2019, NetEase opened a gaming outfit in Montreal, Canada, to help with international expansion and another studio in Japan dedicated to console game production last year.
“Our Sakura Studio in Japan and in Montreal are dedicated to developing games on consoles, as one third of overseas market shares is taken by console games,” Hu said.
Tencent’s growth in gaming over the years has been driven a lot by acquisitions of or investments into game studios. That has been focused heavily on mobile but is now shifting to companies making games for PC and console.
“Nearly half of the 51 investments in 2021 are in companies with experience developing PC and console games. Many of these are domestic,” according to a Niko Partners report published in May.
Until2020, most of Tencent’s domestic investments went into mobile gaming while PC and console investments were done overseas, the report noted.
And Tencent-owned developer TiMi Studio has opened offices in Montreal and Seattle to focus on PC and console games.
“Chinese studios are looking to match their overseas peers in game development by standardizing tools, creating advanced production processes, and investing in large teams to ensure they can create large scale AAA quality titles that provide a competitive edge, meet evolving player demands, and reach a broad audience both in terms of geographies and platforms,” Ahmad from Niko Partners said.
AAA is an unofficial term to denote high-quality and popular games.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer hold a press conference, following a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, on the day of U.S.-China talks on trade, economic and national security issues, in Madrid, Spain, September 15, 2025.
Louiza Vradi | Reuters
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that President Donald Trump was willing to let TikTok go dark, and it was “what turned the tide” in the deal framework with China.
“President Trump made it clear that he would have been willing to let Tiktok go dark, that we were not going to give up national security in favor of the deal,” Bessent told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
TikTok parent company ByteDance is still looking at a Sept. 17 deadline to divest the app’s U.S. operations or potentially be shut down in the country.
The Trump administration hasn’t yet formally extended the deadline, though U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that more time may be needed for the deal to be finalized and signed.
Bessent said Tuesday that the commercial terms of the deal between ByteDance and the new investors had been done “in essence” since March or April.
After Trump’s massive tariff announcement on April 2, the Chinese put the deal on hold, he said.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to speak Friday to finalize the deal.
“We were able to reach a series of agreements, mostly for things we will not be doing in the future that have no effect on our national security,” Bessent said Tuesday.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries on Orion AR glasses at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta spent billions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to make virtual reality catch on with consumers. As it shifts its metaverse bet toward smart glasses, investors will be watching to see how the public responds.
The social media company is set to unveil its most advanced smart glasses yet on Wednesday at its Connect annual event. The glasses, internally codenamed Hypernova, feature a small display that can be controlled via hand gestures through a wristband that utilizes neural technology, CNBC reported in August.
A promotional video of the device reportedly appeared on Meta’s YouTube page on Monday but was later removed.
The device, expected to cost $800, builds upon Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica, which spawned the AI-powered Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses in 2023 and the Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses unveiled in June. Those glasses contain cameras, speakers and microphones, allowing users to command the Meta AI voice assistant to take a photo, shoot video or play music.
Wall Street has been concerned about the spending by Reality Labs, the company’s division in charge of developing consumer hardware products like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and the Quest VR headsets. Meta revealed in July that its Reality Labs division recorded an operating loss of $4.53 billion during the second quarter, and has totaled nearly $70 billion in losses since late 2020.
Investors understand that Meta’s Reality Labs spending won’t significantly pay off for years, but they also “want to see progress” that indicates they will “see potential returns on investment,” said Justin Post, a Bank of America Securities internet research analyst. For now, smart glasses seem like a more sound investment than VR headsets, which are still niche and could take years to blossom, he said.
“I’ve definitely seen the company’s focus shift from VR headsets to glasses,” Post said. “At this point, the glasses are going to be much more impactful and more mass market.”
Meta declined to comment.
In Hypernova, Meta is selling smart glasses with a display to consumers for the first time. Though that display is expected to be small and limited in what it shows to users, the release of Hypernova represents a middle ground between the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and the experimental Orion augmented reality glasses that Meta showed off during last year’s Connect event.
Meta’s Orion AR glasses are displayed during a viewing in Menlo Park, California, U.S., Sept. 26, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
The Orion AR glasses, working in tandem with a wireless computing “puck,” can project 3D visuals onto the physical world that people can interact with using a wristband. But while the Orion AR glasses can produce dazzling visuals, it’s still experimental and costly to make, said Anshel Sag, a principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.
“Delivering something like Orion at scale will take time, which is why they are still a prototype,” Sag said. “I think a single display is a move in the right direction and would help build an ecosystem of apps.”
Connect presents Meta with an opportunity to build off the unexpected success of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, said Leo Gebbie, a CCS Insight analyst and director. EssilorLuxottica said in July, during the company’s most recent earnings report, that Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled year over year.
“It really feels like a chance to break through with a really new product category,” Gebbie said.
Analysts will also be watching for any signs that Meta’s recent artificial intelligence-related strategy shifts, which kicked off in June when the company invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI, can help its hardware efforts. The glasses could be the right hardware form factor for AI features, Post said.
“If they get the integration right with devices, it really could be a better portal for AI than even phones,” he said.
But although Meta has the money and technical talent to build its smart glasses, it needs to cultivate an ecosystem of developers who will build compelling apps and software that captivate consumers, Sag said.
The risk for Meta is that consumers ultimately reject the Hypernova and potentially the broader market of smart glasses with displays, Gebbie said. At $800, the glasses are expected to cost more than twice as much as the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which start at $299. Already, Meta is setting low internal expectations for sales of the Hypernova glasses, CNBC reported in August, but the company will want the unveiling to at least generate some buzz.
Meta’s ambition is for smart glasses to become the next major personal computing platform. For now, Apple and Google remain on top with the iOS and the Android mobile operating systems, respectively.
Apple declined to comment. Google didn’t respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear if Meta’s glasses will ever usurp the smartphone’s standing with consumers, but there’s enough of a threat that both Apple and Google are working on their own competitive products. Apple is reportedly working on its own glasses project, and Google in May announced a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker to build smart glasses
“The fact that everyone is now developing glasses suggests that Meta’s Reality Labs concept was well conceived, and they’re out in front at this point on glasses,” said Post. “The question for the competition is, can they leverage their mobile operating systems to get people to buy their glasses?”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Tesla’s shares have finally turned positive for the year.
After a dismal first quarter, which was the worst for the stock in any period since 2022, and a brutal start to April, following President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping new tariffs, Wall Street has again rallied around the electric vehicle maker.
The stock rose 3.6% on Monday to $410.26, topping its closing price of 2024 by over $6. It’s up 85% since bottoming for the year at $221.86 on April 4. A new filing revealed that CEO Elon Musk purchased about $1 billion worth of shares in the company through his family foundation.
It’s the second straight year Tesla has bounced back after a down first quarter. Last year, the shares fell 29% in the first three months before ending up 63% for 2024.
In recent weeks, analysts have praised the EV maker’s proposed pay plan for Musk, which could amount to a $1 trillion windfall for the world’s richest person over the next decade. The company has also gotten a boost from its new MegaBlocks battery energy storage systems that Tesla ships preassembled to businesses looking to lower their power costs or make greater use of electricity from renewable resources.
Even with the rebound, Tesla is the second-worst performer this year among tech’s megacaps, ahead of only Apple, which is down about 5% in 2025. Tesla is still in the midst of a multi-quarter sales slump due to an aging lineup of EVs and increased competition from lower-cost competitors in China, namely BYD.
Tesla has seen a consumer backlash, in part because of Musk’s political activities, including spending nearly $300 million to propel President Trump back to the White House and his work with the Trump administration to slash the federal workforce.
Tesla leadership has been working to shift investors’ attention to other topics such as robotaxis and humanoid robots.
However, the company has yet to deliver vehicles that are safe to use without a human onboard and ready to take control if needed. And while Musk is touting Tesla’s Optimus robots, which he says will be able to do everything from factory work to babysitting, a product is still a long way from hitting the market.