Sony Destroying the Import Market for PSP Games

[hatebreeder]

ahah this kinda seems like a success hk ad...or at least it would if there were no other viable alternatives...this is a sad day

[groovemaster303]

All this madness that sony have created is going to make things even worse for them.
how many of you if you can't import a game which will never come out over here will go and download the game instead. just to stick one to sony?

by acting like a pack of muppets sony have just given piracy a huge boost.

[mesosade]

All this madness that sony have created is going to make things even worse for them.
how many of you if you can't import a game which will never come out over here will go and download the game instead. just to stick one to sony?

by acting like a pack of muppets sony have just given piracy a huge boost.

absolutely right. nuf said

[bm4n]

how can $ony say they are for importing and tout that they have no region coding but then attack the import market?!? Freakin' hypocrites...

[MikeDX]

Yeah right like I care. show me a psp game worth buying...

[PSPages]

Fair enough, I can understand them wanting to stop the importing of consoles into a territory before its release there. I mean they were just trying to protect their investment and obviously got a bit p*ssed that people were getting their hands on them way before launch.

However, if for once they stopped screwing over gamers in the UK and Europe (and even sometimes in the US) and release the consoles Globally on the same day like they claimed at first with the PS3, people would not need to import the consoles!

As for games, I don't really see much harm in that and do think they might be going too far. I mean some games do not get releases outside of japan which have followings in other territories. However there may not be enough of a market to warrant a release outside of Japan due to costs of localisation etc, so it remains that others (UK, US, EU) will not see the game released.

The only option? Importing the Japanese version!
I see no harm in that as its not a form of piracy and its another copy of the game sold.

If they are talking about games that get released in US and get imported to the UK before its release, well you know my opinion on that. Give it a f*cking global release date and gamers will not need to!

[MikeDX]

Region coding (on any piece of hardware - dvd, psp, etc) is all about price fixing, and don't for a SECOND think that there is ANY OTHER REASON FOR IT WHATSOEVER

[GobboFett]

Region coding (on any piece of hardware - dvd, psp, etc) is all about price fixing, and don't for a SECOND think that there is ANY OTHER REASON FOR IT WHATSOEVER

Very true. The Gamecube had game region protection, but it was software based so buying a region unlocker disc was all that's necessary whereas the PS2's regioning is hardware based meaning a mod-chip is the only option. Like you said MikeDX, it's all about price fixing and ant-importingness. Sure they can feed you some $#@! about "protecting" us from different TV Hertz settings or power voltages but the truth is that the kind of gamers that bother to import ALREADY know this. It's just undermining us gamers as the ignorant mainstream general public

[Baboon]

Region coding (on any piece of hardware - dvd, psp, etc) is all about price fixing, and don't for a SECOND think that there is ANY OTHER REASON FOR IT WHATSOEVER

That is a very true.

I’d say 80% of my DVD collection is on Region 1 (USA) discs. I import my films because: Better packaging, loads cheaper, quite a few are exclusive to Region 1 (all of the Criterion films) with loadsa extras, and they normally tend to get released way before the European R2 films. ...basically the same reason I used to import my games from Lik Sang.

I think this debate will go on and on until something is done to make things equal right around the globe. We aren’t fookin second class consumers over here, but this just seems to fall on deaf ears.

$ony has given me a real bitter taste with all of this crap...They can now shove the PS3 right up their fat cat asses! lol

[geise69]

The only psp games sony would possibly be able to block for importing would be games that are being released for that region. Other than that I don't see a viable reason for sony to block import psp games. Would sony block importing of Euro psp games to the US? Hmmm I wonder, especially with BOF3 for psp not being released here in the US. It's just sad the gaming industry has turned out the way it has. It used to be easy in the 16bit days to import anything you wanted. There were tons of places that imported games. Now it's either EBAY (overpriced and risky) or Play-Asia who I personally like better than Lik-Sang, but sad to see them go. That's pretty much it for importing. NCSX is another place in the States that is very good. I wonder if Sony is going to get on them any time soon? I guess this is just Sony Euro making a fuss.