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Nintendo brings Wii games to China on the Nvidia Shield

To do that, the companies struck a China-exclusive deal with Chinese content provider, iQiyi.

Zoey Chong Reporter
Zoey is CNET's Asia News Reporter based in Singapore. She prefers variety to monotony and owns an Android mobile device, a Windows PC and Apple's MacBook Pro all at the same time. Outside of the office, she can be found binging on Korean variety shows, if not chilling out with a book at a café recommended by a friend.
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Zoey Chong
2 min read
nvidia-shield-china

Nvidia is bringing the Shield to China, along with Wii games.

 Screenshot by Zoey Chong/CNET

China is one of the world's biggest markets for gaming , boasting nearly 600 million gamers -- and companies want a piece of that.

Through a China-exclusive deal with Nintendo and Chinese content provider iQiyi, Nvidia is bringing its Shield device to China, GameSpot reported Tuesday. With it, GameCube and Wii games, including The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and New Super Mario Bros Wii, will be supported in the country for the first time.

The move was announced by industry analyst, Daniel Ahmad, who uploaded videos of the two games in a tweet. Gameplay will run at 1080p.

China is big on games, as proven by Chinese tech titan, Tencent, who said last month that it earned a remarkable 18 billion yuan ($2.7 billion), contributed largely by the country's love for its game called Honour of Kings. The game held the top spot on Apple's Chinese App Store for almost a year and prompted the company to enforce a limit on playtime on children under 12 over concern about addiction. About one-third of China's almost 600 million strong gaming population is hooked on the game, leaving Nvidia another two-thirds to try and draw in.

The Nvidia Shield sells on Chinese e-commerce site, JD.com for 1,499 yuan ($226), with the games retailing at 68 yuan ($10) each. As the device runs on Android, there's a chance that games could be extracted for other devices; CNET has reached out to Nvidia to understand more.

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