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Lik-Sang To Take On The Big 3?
kableh writes "According to a press release on Lik-Sang's website, the gaming accessory company has new management, and is prepared to mount a strong defense in their upcoming lawsuit against Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. "Just a few days after having received High Court Orders not allowing us to sell Mod Chip products for the Playstation 2 and Flash Linker products for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance, Lik Sang realized that the powers of those three multi-billion dollar corporations are simply infinite compared to the budgets and resources businesses like Lik Sang have available. Their legal actions have been hurting our customers and our business a lot in the last couple of weeks, so that we have finally decided to let somebody else take over Lik-Sang.com and solely concentrate on the lawsuit", says Alex Kampl, Director of Lik Sang International Limited."
Just for the record, Lik Sang isn't doing the suing, it's doing the defending.
Splinter Cell Hitman 2 Madden NFL 2002 Madden NFL 2003 (along with most of the EA Sports franchise) Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 (for that fact, most of the entire Activision franchise)
Now, the Xbox has been out for how long now? Just barely a year, and they have quite an impressive stable of games:
Xbox Games Catalog
Give Microsoft and the Xbox the ammount of time it took Sony to gather their collection of PS2 games (I won't even acknowledge the PSOne catalog, since the Xbox is *significantly* superior to the original PS/PSOne), and you'll see them being on-par with where the PS2 Catalog is now.
Game Development houses have repeatedly stated that developing products on the Xbox is also *significantly* easier than for PS/2 products.
It just goes to show you that people will take any opportunity to poke the most sucessfull Software company in history in the eye, even if it is just for spite!
ScottKin
I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!
Hrrrm yes they want to put customers first. I don't think so. I bought a flash linker a number of days before the lawsuit hit. A month later I get a form email telling me I will recieve a refund the first day of november. Well it's november 22, and i still havn't recieved a refund for an item i should have recieved in september.
Lucky for me my credit card company issued me a refund (credit card policy, not lik sang) and as far as i know they have not had any luck with lik sang either.
I'm not alone in this situation, just search google groups for a large list of people who made off a whole lot worse that I did, especially the ones who sent them money orders and paypal orders.
If lik sang really wanted to put the customers first they would answer our emails and/or issue refunds that are months overdue. Lik sang is in it for the cash, nuff said.
Have you stepped out of your house? You are completely full of **** not to mention extreamly biased. Go to best buy, funco land, gamestop, ANY PLACE THAT SELLS GAMES.
They have almost as many games and space dedicated to Xbox as PS2. What about Game Cube? About half the space. I am tired of the fact no body cares about facts on Slashdot. Xbox may not be on the top of the charts, or even close in Japan, but its clearly #2 in the United States and analists are predicting XBox will jump even further ahead of the Game Cube this holiday season.
Let me ask you this. Did you know 150,000 people bought XBox Live in the first week? Did you know there are over 200,000 XBox Live users as we speak (With friends/family logging in as guest, plus the 30,000 beta testers).
XBox is definately selling well in the US right now, and its picking up steam. PS/2 is still selling strong. Game Cube.....I don't know all of the facts, but I only know one person who owns one, and the games just aren't in the stores.....atleast the Game Stop and Best Buy near me have very few Game Cube games.
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What's worse about the free bundled games is that they're packed OEM-style both on to one disc with a heap of trailler vids, and you don't even get a proper game case for that disc, just a paper+plastic sleeve!
"The only games I see advertized for Xbox are only for Xbox (which suggests poor third-party support),"
Do you know how exclusive titles work? It sure doesn't sound like you have half a clue.
To drive up sales of the Xbox is why the release them! If a game is just for the Xbox, I know that the development team will have had more time to make it work brilliantly on the Xbox.
Also, if the exclusive game is something I really, really want (like Shenmue 2x, Jet Set Radio Future, etc), I am more likely to buy the Xbox to get the access to those exclusive games. I bought an Xbox for JSRF, for example. Platform exclusive games boost sales a lot (the N64 lived and died only for Mario Party, the Zeldas, and Mario 64 for me).
As for multiplatform games, if I have the choice between a game which runs on the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, I know that the Xbox one will look better than the PS2 or GameCube version, but that it won't have any of the features of the Xbox taken advantage of. It's a bit of a mixed bag that way, but you'd still be foolish to buy the PS2 or GameCube version over the Xbox version (unless you like jaggy-ass graphics, or prefer to limit yourself in terms on online play).
"and they've now resorted to the marketing gimmick of giving away free games with the console."
Maybe you live in a cave, and have no impression of time. But this is the Giftmas shopping season. Sony's not making any deals, but Microsoft has put out its value added package, and Nintendo has cut the price on its GameCube again in order to drive lucrative sales. The largest percentage of console sales happen in the next 4 weeks, and they're looking to load up their consumer base. It's not a gimmick, it's plain sense!
"They just don't have the first- and second-party support to keep their heads above water."
Do you even know what that means? First-party would be Microsoft itself. How is the (potential) failure of the Xbox going to harm them, when they make the licence fee + 3rd-party fee on each Microsof game they sell? Second-party would be someone like Rare, who has a deal which lets them get a little lower licence cost for making Xbox games, because they will only produce Xbox games ever (which is helped since Microsoft owns the majority of the company). Maybe you are thinking of third-party (unaffiliated developer) titles. Third-parties like Sega are sure as hell keeping the Xbox going, with many great sequels to Dreamcast titles that sold millions of copies being kept Xbox exclusive (they get a better licence negotiation this way).
You seem like you have no idea how the console indurstry works. Hopefully this clears things up for you. If you don't like Microsoft, just say it. Don't make up stuff about how the industry works inside your mind, when it's way out of tough with reality.
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I ordered a flash linker kit around the same time you did and received my refund on the 15th this month.
Hope it gets cleared up. These guys really do give me the best experience as far as customer support and satisfaction goes.
If it's a criminal court, you have to answer the summons. Otherwise, you'd be in contempt of court. The judge would issue a bench warrant, and you'd be arrested. Stand-ins wouldn't work.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
The condition is called an oligopoly (when deliberate and purposeful, a http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cartel">c artel), and it is just one more fairly commonly used method to avoid having to deal with "free-market forces" (i.e, to unfairly eliminate healthy competition). If two large companies (who would normally be in competition) wield considerable control over a market, then they will often just "agree not to compete". In other words, the CEOs realise that they can BOTH make tonnes of money this way, which makes it, in some cases, a much more logical and easy choice than entering into aggressive/risky competition.
There are some well-known of these, such as the RIAA, as well as Visa/Mastercard. Or here in South Africa, there was until recently the Vodacom/MTN cartel that entirely controlled the cellphone market.
Does the Sherman act say anything about oligopolies? Are there are equivalent laws?
One of the tricky things is usually trying to prove that companies have "agreed not to compete".. when a company obviously has a monopoly, thats pretty clear. But if the CEOs and CFOs etc of two large companies have made deals with one another not to compete, its usually fairly easy to hide any evidence of this.
The public often don't seem to be bothered either, because the illusion of competition is usually enough to fool them, and they may not realise that they're being price-gouged because 'for all they know, thats what product XYZ should cost'. (In fact, some companies actually CREATE additional "brands" in order to deliberately *manufacture* the illusion of competition in the market by having two separate brands next to one another on the shelf in the store, and will even do things like have "price wars" with themselves between the brands, to drive up sales. IIRC, the Liqui Fruit and Ceres boxed fruit juice companies ("company") are an example of this. This is a separate issue though)
Incidentally, just like monopolies, the mere existence of a competitor does NOT magically NULLify the condition, since the mono/oligopolies still have "unnatural" powers to control prices or block market entry points (e.g. the existence of BeOS did not imply that MS did not have a monopoly, since MS could still control the major market entry points (the OEMs). In the same way, the existence of small record labels or credit card companies does not "negate" the cartel (and power that comes with it) that the RIAA or that Visa/Mastercard have. With monopolies, the "monopoly condition" may be defined in terms of the percentage of a market that a company controls. I think over here it is 75%, but I may be remembering wrong.
There are many many "sneaky" ways to establish and retain success in a market that have absolutely nothing to do with quality of product, which is why I find the pure-capitalism (unregulated) approach rather naive. People think its all about "building a better mousetrap". I think anyone who thinks this has probably never actually tried to produce and sell a new product. Rhere are many ways to be successful with only a mediocre, overpriced mousetrap, especially if you can block the market entry points of others who might actually have a better mousetrap. "Buying shelf space" is another commonly established practice, in fact, with many retailers, the only way to get onto their shelves is to buy the shelf space. I remember years ago Microsoft used to do "buy shelf space" of software retailers (essentially pay them off) in exchange for keeping Mac and other competing software off the shelves. Microsoft Press made various "exclusionary deals" with a major local bookseller.