Apple Blames China Censoring Video Games For Its Revenue Loss

Apple blamed its revenue decline on the temporary ban of China on new video games approval last year. iOS mobile games censorship was one in many reasons leading to Apple’s $4.8 billion revenue loss during the holiday quarter of 2018 for the Greater China market. The company also implied that China’s economic slowdown also contributed to this decline.

Luca Maestri, the financial chief of Apple, said in an earnings call:

The ban for video game seems to be more relaxed; however, the title approving process is still slow and the criteria to get approval is still being hidden. This is a costly ban as last year, the video game industry made more than $30 billion.

The ban seemed to emerge from nowhere and since then has strictly been enforced. In March, China decided to halt new video game releases approval, which means titles under development could not arrive on the market. In August, when President Xi Jinping delivered a speech on myopia, Beijing officially strengthened the ban reasoning controlling video games would be one of the answers. The ban lasted until the end of December, when the country approved 80 more new video games, with more coming in this month. However, none of the approved game titles comes from the country's biggest gaming company, Tencent, which owns part of PUBG and Fortnite.

The ban undoubtedly has an immediate and visible impact on China’s domestic companies. Some analysts estimated that, because of the sudden ban, Tencent, the video game giant, lost more than $1.5 billion. However, it comes as a surprise as to how this ban could affect even Apple, the Cupertino giant.