"Consumer safety standards"? This reeks of bullshit to me ):

http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3901

I've never purchased from Lik-Sang before, but I have from Play-Asia, which I believe is also Hong Kong-based. I certainly hope they won't go down too.

Thoughts?

This is disgusting. Lik-Sang have been serving importers for years and were a great service. Play-Asia won't go down (yet) because they stopped selling PSP stuff to the EU due to pressure from Sony. It's an absolute disgrace that Sony are doing this and there really should be an outright boycott as a result - there needs to be a consequence.

This is unlikely to stop with Lik-Sang and is very bad news for anyone who buys import games, regardless of whether you ever ordered from Lik-Sang or not.

This is definitely really pathetic. I just saw this on Digg and ran over here to see if the news had been posted yet.

My favorite part of the Lik Sang annoucement:

http://digg.com/gaming_news/What_the_he … y_thinking

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Sony_shuts_ … _held_back

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Lik_Sang_co … Lawsuits_2

Edited to add two more Digg articles.

If Sony could they'd sue eBay out of business so they could keep their systems from being bought up at retailers and exploited on it too.  This is an attempt to keep the maximum number of systems in the specified launch area; it's stupid, but so is promising large number of systems and then keep trimming it down to nilch.  I recall a recent news article saying that Sony doesn't even expect to meet the year-end target number of systems as they originally planned.

Hopefully that wouldn't matter and their systems would collect dust on store shelves, but with the eBay bullshit it would be nice if they were going for a fraction of retail or gathering dust in jackasses' homes.

I know eBay has already pulled all the PS3 auctions from their site. I don't know if Sony had a say in that, but I would bet money that they did.

While trying to find the original article on it, I discovered that eBay apparently has started allowing the PS3 to be listed again.

http://news.punchjump.com/article.php?id=3166

http://ps3ebay.cjb.net/

Perhaps, if it weren't a request/demand from Sony, eBay is aware that they might have a customer satisfaction issue at hand since Sony can't be trusted.

I'd hazard a guess that Sony will try at some stage to stop eBay selling PS3s across regions - but probably only after launch. It serves their purpose to have PS3s listed on eBay at ridiculously high prices to give the impression of demand.

Nice, both PS1 or PS2 software backwards compatibility and Blu-Ray being region-restricted confirmed. Definitely won't be buying a PS3.

I can't stand Sony.  This is just pitiful.  It's a sad day for the collective gaming community.

I haven't been keeping up on this, but Bluray is region-specific?  Screw that.  I highly doubt I will buy a PS3 until they drop to <= $250, because with all the control Sony is forcing over the consumer, I don't believe it's worth any more than that.

Yes, but there's only like, three regions or something. Japan and the US are in the same one, for instance.

-Joshua

Japan and the UK are the same region - there are 6 in total.

Boo sony, facist b'stards taking us UK and Euorpean comrades for a money spinning excerise. Gone is the freedom of choice we used to be able to enjoy.

Hope they screw themselves over with the ps3 - certainly won't be supportive of them in the future. Stinks of hypocracy, double standards and money grabbing beaurocracy.

I think you're thinking of DVD regions.  As TerraEpon said, there are three regions for Blu-ray:

1. North America + South America + East Asia (minus China and Russia)
2. Europe + Africa
3. China + Russia + other countries

So, the big winners here are the US and Japan, and the big losers are the UK and Europe.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/De … wsId=15908

Isn't it always ^_^;;

For DVDs Japan and Europe are actually in one region, so this equals a further downgrade.