You all do realize that Sony does this to maintain a profit, because before they are your friend, they are in fact a BUSINESS. Profit is the name of the game, and if you jack holes were running a business, you wouldn't be all peaches and cream about loosing money, it wouldn't be all flowers and big eye'd birds when the fat lady started singing and you were losing money.
Seriously, you guy's have no clue at all do you? You think that importing is just a fad that has no effect on a business, this hurts them a lot, esp stocks and sales margins...freakin n00bs.
Ok first of all don't call me a n00b since I don't think that we are on the same level of education and no, I don't think that you are above me in that matter.
Anyway, so Sony loses money because of grey imports, Sony Europe does indeed, yes. Do I understand the fact that they want to control all markets ?
Of course.
Do they have law on their side ? No they don't. Not at all, so before you start attacking us, get yourself some information. It doesn't brake HK law, neither does it break German ( European ) law. That's why Play-asia and a ton of other shops are still selling their goods and nobody sues them.
Lik-sang is another story. They made a lot of faults in the past, support of piracy is maybe the biggest. Sony doesn't like them and a war between a rather small shop and a multibillion dollar worldwide company is sth Lik Sang can't win.
So I do understand Sony on the one hand, yet I just don't realize why they even talk about the " region code free feature". Ok it is region code free, thank you very much for not allowing us to use this feature.
Hey Sony, just lock the PS3 and that's it.
It hurts them beyond profits, it hurts them in quarterly projections, stocks, and market share for certain regions.
Sure, you're probably saying "well it couldn't have hurt that bad, look at PS2". PS2 sold enough to more than eliminate all the fautls of importing. HOwever, the PSP has not, and does not, and that is very evident, as Sony continued to lose money over imports and items sitting on shelves due to it being region free. Fact is, it's against the law, and it doesn't coincide with the best wishes of Sony.
So it does hurt ? I don't care. I say it again, it is my right to buy what I want where I want unless HK is lead by Stalin and Germany by Castro. please inform me if that is the case, they I take back what I said.
I understand Sony, yet the business effect is minimal. The PSP is not running bad because of imports, but because they fight against the almighty DS in every region, lose in every region. GTA is running well, crap software isn't, so what? Not my fault, not my problem.
I'm talking about the PS3. What do you think ? That the PS3 will ly in the shelves anywhere on this planet within the next 6 months ? Are you kidding me ? Some freaks will pay a lot to import the console which will boost Japanese sales ( a tiny little bit ) and eventually hurt European sales to an even smaller degree...why ? Because I will not only buy a Japanese console but a PAL console someday. Importing consoles and games has never been cheap and it won't be.
I tell you another story. Volkswagen is selling their cars for 20% less in other European countries. Result : German car dealers reimport the cars from there.
That's the way it goes.
Also, I love how everyone ignores that both Microsoft and Nintendo also delt blows that compiled to a nice chunk of change, and also contributed to this ultimate outcome. Lik-Sang was already a rock in a hard place, and this was simply icing on the cake, theyd' broken lots of laws before, and this was just the last straw, but they felt the need to publicly address sony (and break the law once again in the process, violating users digital privacy rights).
HAs been answered by Tornado already, don't mix import hardware/software and modchips. I totally understand every action against piracy and support that.
Let me state that again, I don't hurt Sony... If everybody would support them as I do they would be larger than Microsoft. I paid them for almost 200 original games, 5 consoles and over 20 pieces of hardware.
I seemed to have forgotten where the law said it was illegal for an employee of said company to buy a product from said company from someone else...please, refresh my memory oh legal master of wisdom...
It isn't, just as importing.
Yes I know that Sony won the trial, but ultimately ( European court ) they wouldn't win. But Sony has teh funds to fight, Lik Sang didn't.
), no problems. But when it came to gaming machines excluding gameboy games, I couldn't get any new games for them. So, I did rely on some gray importing to get additional games. And it's not like Nintendo had a program to buy back my Super Famicom and games and replace them with the SNES version. Some games were in Japanese, and I couldn't even understand English back then.
? I can't run German games ? Liksang warns every customer and that's it. 
