Home entertainment takes on new form

With dynamic music playing, 32-year-old Wang Mengshi is dancing and waving his phone to follow the moves of the electronic dancer on the TV in his apartment.

In Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China’s Gansu province, the whitecollar Wang is playing a fitness-based video game called Just Dance while being quarantined at home.

Following the novel coronavirus outbreak, people across the country are advised to comply with home quarantine measures and avoid public events and social gatherings. Young people in China, including Wang, have found a way to work out through video games.

Wang says he now prefers to stay home and keep fit rather than go to coffee shops with his friends on weekends as usual. And he has ordered new portable game consoles online.

“I spend the whole weekend just standing in front of the TV and dancing to video games instead of going outside,” he says.

Over the past few weeks, another video game named Ring Fit Adventure for Nintendo’s handheld gaming system Switch, which comes with a controller with gesture-based technology known as a Ring-con, has also become popular in China.

In early February, Nintendo said in a statement that the sales of Switches are still increasing in 2020 and are expected to increase from 18 million to 19.5 million devices before April.

However, the manufacturing and transportation of Switches and Ring-cons have been affected by the outbreak. The unit price of Ringcons has more than doubled to nearly 2,000 yuan ($284) recently as most online merchants are out of stock in China.

“It seems that a century has passed and my Switch and Ring-con are still on the way,” Wang says.

A big television and a video game device are necessities for some. For those without any video game devices, a smartphone is a must-have.

Liu Zhen, a 28-year-old clothing store owner, plays a video game named Gym Simulator on her phone.

In this game, she goes to a gym in a first-person perspective, and can simulate her exercise routine with all kinds of equipment.

“For me, it’s a good way to practice with a smartphone during home quarantine. Video games on my smartphone make fitness no longer boring. I often share fitness videos with my friends these days,” Liu says.

Industry insiders have pointed out that the sales of fitness-based video games and other digital facilities have brought the industry tremendous development.

A report on China’s game industry showed that the marketing revenue of esports games was 94.73 billion yuan last year, up 13.5 percent year-on-year. The scale of video game users has been expanding for five consecutive years to 440 million in 2019.

“Recently, young people staying home can keep fit by pressing the buttons on their controllers. Video games will be a new trend for young people to entertain themselves,” says Ren Shangren, a video game designer with Beijing Kwai Technology Co Ltd.