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Lik-Sang.com Taken to Court By Sony
Joe writes "As published on Lik-Sang's Website Sony has taken legal actions against Hong Kong's largest exporter of videogames and videogaming gear. One month before the official european launch and 9 months after the initial release of the PSP, this action looks very late at first sight. Since it's highly doubtful that Sony can permit the resale of the japanese PSP consoles in Hong Kong no matter if on the local market or for export, it looks like this is planned to be one of the not the bright marketing ideas of the Sony HQ. The japanese PSP has the same Region Code for UMDs as the ones which will be sold in europe in september. Since the shipping at Lik-Sang is free, the console is even cheaper to import than to buy it locally."
Keep doing this, sony and you will be publicly humiliated (again) and fewer people will buy your stuff. Hell, even Microsoft isn't that evil. Try to control the market in such an evil way, and it will always come back and bite you in the ass.
In summary: If Sony was an icecream flavor, they'd be pralines and dick.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Already done, and from Lik-Sang a few months ago.
And its Firmware version 1.50.
Will probably get another one from them when the white ones come out - then I can still do my SNES/Genesis emulation, as well as coding my own stuff as well as having all the cool new features.
Its a pity really, as Sony would earn so much respect by allowing programmers to sign their own code - why cant they come up with a way of doing it that only works on files of say 200MB or less, thus allowinf homebrew, surely they could make it as a loader library, and have it flash up a "This Software is not made or checked by Sony, Use is at your own risk".
yeah, it sucks.
You can imagine my surprise when after reading all the crap about PSP games not being region encoded, then when UMD movies are finally available I can't play them.
I got my PSP the first week of January. Imported from japan. It's nice that the Japanese PSPs can play US games and vice versa, and not that I would buy them if I could, but it sucks that I can't watch US UMD movies on my japanese PSP.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Nonsense lawsuits are only shown to be nonsense lawsuits after lots and lots of money is spent.
I have no idea how big Lik-Sang is, I just bought a GBA transfer cable from them awhile back once. For legitimate purposes, honest!
IANAL but to me it seems like region codes are an obstruction of free trade. Why wouldn't any judicial or legislative body speak out against this?
"Since it's highly doubtful that Sony can prohibit the resale of the japanese PSP consoles in Hong Kong no matter if on the local market or for export,"
It is true, the sales themselves cannot be stopped. However, as UK importers have learned recently to their chagrin, you selling them can be stopped. All Sony has to do is claim that you are using their trademark on the term "PSP" without their permission, and you'll be forced to sell "popular black handheld video game unit from a major manufacturer of electronic devices," something that just doesn't get many hits in a search engine.
For the same reasons they don't speak out against all the other obstructions of free trade?
If you're going to get upset about the lack of free trade, I suggest you concentrate your efforts in areas like agriculture, raw materials and the draconian so called free trade agreements the West is making with Africa, South America and parts of Asia, rather than whine about how you have to spend more of your allowence to play games or movies.
Although you can remove a specific table in a page with an extention called Remove It Perementaly http://rip.mozdev.org/
cat
Its a pity really, as Sony would earn so much respect by allowing programmers to sign their own code
Given the choice between earning respect and earning revenue, I'm pretty sure I know which one Sony would rather have.
Having both the PSP and a DS I agree completely. In particular I've got a Play Yan (imported via Lik-Sang), an I actually prefer to use use the DS for video playback, particularly w/ the firmware upgrade. While the screen is smaller, the DS is compact, much more rugged, and has a fantastic battery life. The Play Yan takes dirt cheap SD cards , and uses a very efficent MP4 compression (with the new firmware) which allows me to store 5+ hours of video on a single 1 GB card. On the other hand the PSP is more expensive (while the play yan jacks up the price of the total package, you make out on the cost of the SD cards) far more fragile, and 1 GB of MS Duo costs more than a DS! Finally, even if I did break down and buy a 1GB Memory Stick I wouldn't have the battery life to watch the contents.
The PSP is a Jaguar overpriced, flashy, and not too practical, the DS is a VW, a little cramped but cheap, reliable and has great gas mileage.
I feel no sympathy for any company that creates artifical scarcity using anything similar to region-codes.
Leave it to them to decide not to bring a game to the US and then complain whenever people from the US import it from Japan or Europe, saying that we're making them lose money.
We're buying their product. At a higher price than normal. And WE get bitched at?! Why should I have to wait a year or more for a game if I can read Japanese and want to play it when it comes out in Japan?
Why should I have to import a DVD player if I move to Japan or Europe? Oh, I know. So that they can make more money by locking out entire continents.
In retrospect, I still have no sympathy. And I'm actually surprised that the US doesn't have 5 region codes.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?