Sony issue further warning to PS3 importers

[Steven W]

Sony law firm warns importers that they will pay the price for profiting from PS3 sales.

Check out the Headline for more info.

[Stoo]

Not that Sony will profit in any way for making Europe pay through the nose in March..

One of these days someone will realise that all this regional restricting does is annoy everyone involved..

[dave87]

Is it me or are Sony getting uglier and uglier by the day?

Oh the wonders of large corporations...

[Fabula]

One of my students (who works in game) told me about 10min ago that sony will be charging £70 per game.
And the console will not be the £425 I had been expecting, but over £500.

Sony are just trying to maximise their profit. Nothing strange about it, just very annoying for consumers.

[MadduckUK]

Is it me or are Sony getting uglier and uglier by the day?

no its not you. its rather fun in a "watching a car-crash" way to see what they say next.

but remember.. as one sony staffer said, in a choice between a ps3 and nothing - most people will choose the ps3.

[Stoo]

One of my students (who works in game) told me about 10min ago that sony will be charging £70 per game.
And the console will not be the £425 I had been expecting, but over £500.

Sony are just trying to maximise their profit. Nothing strange about it, just very annoying for consumers.

That's a load of rubbish

The games will be no more than the 360 titles, and the console will be around the £425 mark (although it wouldn't surprise me if it dropped to the magical £399.99)

Just for comparison, both the Japanese and US titles are retailing at £25-40 including UK shipping, if they did price games any where near £70 nobody would buy them as they could just import for *far* less.

Just ignore it was more baseless rumour

[Nacrisa]

Just for comparison, both the Japanese and US titles are retailing at £25-40 including UK shipping, if they did price games any where near £70 nobody would buy them as they could just import for *far* less.

I guess that's where region-locking comes in.
Damn, they've thought this one through!

[MadduckUK]

I guess that's where region-locking comes in.
Damn, they've thought this one through!

also killing off the likes of lik-sang helps the punters toe the line.

[Stoo]

What region locking is that then?

[Fabula]

That's a load of rubbish

The games will be no more than the 360 titles, and the console will be around the £425 mark (although it wouldn't surprise me if it dropped to the magical £399.99)

Just for comparison, both the Japanese and US titles are retailing at £25-40 including UK shipping, if they did price games any where near £70 nobody would buy them as they could just import for *far* less.

Just ignore it was more baseless rumour

It may well be just a rumour. But the student is normally a good one. And he was explaining in detail the info he had been told at work, and how stupid he thought it was for the games to be that price, just because they were on blu-ray.

Personally I think the RRP may well be £60-70, but the price they appear in shops would be the £40-50 expected. In the same way that £40 games on PC are always available at £30.

We have to wait and see.


I do wonder what lies Sony may peddle to explain their actions. Like when they said Lik-sang was dangerous to consumers as the electronics were designed for different countries, so could be a hazard in Europe etc. But Lik-sang were suppling official sony adapters for the relevant country.

as one sony staffer said, in a choice between a ps3 and nothing - most people will choose the ps3.

But that isn't the choice. The choice is between 2 approximately equal systems, one costing quite a bit more than the other.

[MadduckUK]

only according to every one else.

[shaithis]

Sony have lost it.

I was so surprised how they came from no-where with the PSX, the PS2 was rather "meh" and the PS3 just doesn't interest me in the slightest.

And at least Microsoft didn't treat UK customers as second-rate citizens!

[Stoo]

Personally I think the RRP may well be £60-70, but the price they appear in shops would be the £40-50 expected. In the same way that £40 games on PC are always available at £30.

I can categorically state that PS3 games will *not* cost £60-70.

I don't know why people keep coming up stuff like this, there's absolutely no basis for it, especially when you see the retail price for the games over in America and Japan.

The American RRP is $60-70, but there will not be a straight conversion into sterling.

The RRP will be £39.99-£49.99, and you'll pick the games up in store for around £35-40.

(BTW, I just bought Motorstorm for £23 including shipping )

[Stoo]

Sony have lost it.

I was so surprised how they came from no-where with the PSX, the PS2 was rather "meh" and the PS3 just doesn't interest me in the slightest.

And at least Microsoft didn't treat UK customers as second-rate citizens!

It might have looked like they came from nowhere, but they were heavily involved in the games industry from a partnership with Nintendo since the mid-late 80's..

The first conceptions of the PlayStation date back to 1986. Nintendo had been attempting to work with disk technology since the Famicom, but the medium had problems. Its rewritable magnetic nature could be easily erased (thus leading to a lack of durability), and the disks were a piracy danger. Consequently, when details of CDROM/XA (an extension of the CD-ROM format that combines compressed audio, visual and computer data, allowing all to be accessed simultaneously) came out, Nintendo was interested. CDROM/XA was being simultaneously developed by Sony and Philips. Nintendo approached Sony to develop a CD-ROM add-on, tentatively titled the "SNES-CD". A contract was struck, and work began. Nintendo's choice of Sony was due to a prior dealing: Ken Kutaragi, the person who would later be dubbed "The Father of PlayStation," was the individual who had sold Nintendo on using the Sony SPC-700 processor for use as the 8 channel ADPCM sound synthesis set in the Super Famicom/SNES console through an impressive demonstration of the processor's capabilities.

Sony also planned to develop another, Nintendo compatible, Sony-branded console, but one which would be more of a home entertainment system playing both Super Nintendo cartridges and a new CD format which Sony would design. This was also to be the format used in SNES-CD discs, giving a large degree of control to Sony despite Nintendo's leading position in the video gaming market.

In 1989, the SNES-CD was to be announced at the June CES . However, when Hiroshi Yamauchi read the original 1988 contract between Sony and Nintendo, he realized that the earlier agreement essentially handed Sony complete control over any and all titles written on the SNESCD-ROM format. Yamauchi was furious; deeming the contract totally unacceptable, he secretly cancelled all plans for the joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. Indeed, instead of announcing their partnership, at 9 am the day of the CES, Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that they were now allied with Philips, and were planning on abandoning all the previous work Nintendo and Sony had accomplished. Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa had (unbeknownst to Sony) flown to Philips headquarters in Europe and formed an alliance of a decidedly different nature—one that would give Nintendo total control over its licenses on Philips machines.

The 9pm CES announcement was a complete shock. Not only was it a hysteric surprise to the show goers (Sony had only just the previous night been optimistically showing off the joint project under the "Play Station" brand), but it was seen by many in the Japanese business community as a fatal betrayal: a Japanese company snubbing another Japan-based company in favor of a European one was considered absolutely unthinkable in Japanese business.

After the collapse of the joint project, Sony considered halting their research, but ultimately the company decided to use what they had developed so far and make it into a complete, stand alone console. This led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attempted, in U.S. federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the Play Station, on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name[citation needed]. The federal judge presiding over the case denied the injunction. Thus, in October 1991, the first incarnation of the new Sony PlayStation was revealed; it is theorized that only 200 or so of these machines were ever even produced.

By the end of 1992, Sony and Nintendo reached a deal whereby the "Sony Play Station" would still have a port for SNES games, but Nintendo would own the rights and receive the bulk of the profits from the games, and the SNES would continue to use the Sony-designed audio chip. However, at this point, Sony realized that the SNES technology was getting long in the tooth, and the next generation of console gaming was around the corner: work began in early 1993 on reworking the "Play Station" concept to target a new generation of hardware and software; as part of this process the SNES cartridge port was dropped, the space between the names was removed, and the PlayStation was born.

[Funkstar]

Good post Stoo.

I knew some of that already (like the existance of a SNES-CD) but the political details i didn't know. I think i've seen pictures of a SNES with a SNES-CD as well