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."

Comments

Sony has officially gone bananas.

[Willeh]

Or some other type of fruit. First we have the whole dead pixel on psp debate, then the whole misunderstood OSX / linux debacle, then we get the crackdown of the grey import circuit in the UK, and now this? What gives, Sony? Don't you like money? Surely you don't give a flying fuck as to where people buy your overpriced, undermanufactured console and it's games? Also the price gouging you seem to do as evident in the summary i'm sure won't fly in the face of information and outcry on the internet and hopefully popular media will pick this up as well.

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.

Re:Sony has officially gone bananas.

[mac666er]

Amen to that MR Willeh.

I put a lot of value on design for the gadgets that I consume, hence I am a mac geek. However, a time came when I needed to run a Windows App and had to choose a laptop from the Wintel world.

From all the available options, the VAIOs were by far the most appealing ones, so I bought a GRX. The only problem? How awfully they are manufactured and supported, as I later unfortunately found out.

One day the thing just wouldn't recognize half of the RAM installed and sometimes it would freeze without any warning sign of any kind. When trying to find out what was wrong with it, I contacted SONY, and it showed me the finger. The official support site didn't mention anything and the help line guys told me that I needed to send in the laptop and pay a service fee at my expense just to see what was going on.

I later found out in here that the problem was indeed common (pins one to ten in the first memory socket were not soldered properly), that SONY knew about it for a long time, and still didn't EVEN put it in a website as a potential problem that could arise in a VAIO.

To this day (three and a half years after its release) SONY still hasn't aknowledged the faulty motherboard problem. Now, I really am not that picky as not to buy a product from a company that has had this kind of problem, because in the end, every company has had their fair share. But SONY has this strange corporate attitude.

Nice ideas, but... beats me. No wonder their shares have been tanking. I can tell you I will NOT buy a VAIO again and I wished there were some sort of AMAZON store for laptops with a similar "rating and comments" system where I could put this experience up.

If you are thinking of buying a VAIO... DON'T.

Re:Region codes

[MyDixieWrecked]

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.

Region Codes

[0olong]

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?

Adjusting for typo...

[Guppy06]

"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.

No Sympathy

[Renraku]

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.