The Gamer's Quarter

[Cryoburner]

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

Lik-Sang is closing its doors today, after being sued out of business by Sony for selling Asian PSPs to European customers.

Apparently, Sony imagines this won't harm their image among the numerous gamers who used Lik-Sang. Once again, I am reminded why I never buy Sony products.

[dhex]

sony really is one of the most blundertastic game companies on earth.
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[dessgeega]

[Lestrade]

Yeah, no shit. I posted the following on the 1up.com news post:

This is absurdity of the highest order. That Sony would hide behind the false pretense of "protecting the consumer" is especially insulting. Sony sued Lik-Sang because Lik-Sang was selling products in regions other than those for which they were intended, which upset the draconian sensibilities of a media giant.

This lawsuit has nothing to do with you or me; it has everything to do with Sony wanting to control what gets sold where. For a company that's promising world-wide connectivity, global PS3-to-PSP media streaming, and a console where "there is no such thing as Playstation offline," enforcing an increasingly meaningless region-lock policy is ridiculous.

Is Play-Asia next?

[OtakupunkX]

Not to state the obvious, but this is bad. Real bad. Bad being an understatement.

[Nana Komatsu]

I'm thinking it's entirely possible that they'll open back up when a court finds this case holds no water. I realize Sony has deep pockets and all, but once the PS3 is released in Europe next year(?), I'm hoping Lik-Sang will open back up.

[dhex]

no dice. the suit was filed in the uk for obvious reasons.

not that this will deter piracy, of course, but sony is notorious for never, ever ever learning from its mistakes. (betamax --> umd, etc etc)
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[Nana Komatsu]

Again, why you should never listen to me: I don't know anything.

Edit: I should note that I did fail Business Law the first time I took it.

[OtakupunkX]

Not to be a pessimist or anything, but I highly doubt that Lik-Sang will open back up anytime soon, and if it does it's probably not going to be the same Lik-Sang that we all know and love.

[dark steve]

So who's gonna be the first to print up DEFEND PLAY ASIA shirts with a super scope instead of an AK?

[dhex]

it's just that the uk has what one might consider, from an american perspective, a uniquely proportioned sense of liability in certain contexts - which is why if you're going to sue a tabloid for saying you're gay, you sue them in the uk.

couched in terms of "safety issues" (which again, from even our debased american perspective in the age of the safety kid, the uk and eu are absurdly obsessed with, especially with things like these where the safety issue is negligible - but the ability to section off and control trade isn't) sony can say "lik sang was putting people in danger AND violating our right to control our physical IP AND enabling counterfeiting AND are not very nice people at all." this is the same company, of course, which thinks that users hacking the OS on the psp apart to install linux on it and run homebrew software is a bad thing. they do not understand how audience participation will create sales no matter what kind of roadblocks you put up, which is why people bother spending lots of time and money importing consoles in the first place to play games in a language they can't actually understand.

if sony were a more intelligent company - that is to say, more interested in long term health rather than trying to save their asses from what may very well be their last tap dance on this stage as a market leader - they would realize that people spend millions trying to create these kind of "user communities" and for every act of piracy - unpreventable piracy, mind you - there lies a possible entrance for a new customer. who cares if a uk user wants to import an american game and play it on a japanese console? outside of power restrictions may cause damage? motherfuckers buy the shit; if they can't be bothered to figure out how to make it work, too fucking bad. refuse to repair out of region consoles even, or more intelligently, charge a small fee for warranty replacement on out of warranty transactions (like import consoles, modding, etc). the piracy will not be stopped through physical preventive measures; the utter lack of respect for the concept of ownership when it comes to digital media is mitigated, however, by the aging of your audience, the perks of packaging and a hack-free gaming experience.

even in our thoroughly whataboutthechildren age, i have a hard time imagining someone successfully suing due to power damage from mismatched voltages, or even a child's death in a freak importation accident. there's still some room for caveat emptor somewhere.
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[OtakupunkX]

[xvs07]

The only thing Sony-made or Sony-related that I might buy again is a used PS3 years down the road, but that isn't going to stop me from playing anything that looks decent, and I'm encouraging everyone else to do the same. Might as well make their allegations a reality if they're going to persist in ignorance.

[Harveyjames]

[Nana Komatsu]

Minidisc caught on pretty big in Japan and Europe from what I understand.

[Harveyjames]

I can't speak for Japan, but definitely in Europe you only saw commercial minidisc releases in shops for a very short window of time. After that, most people who bought a minidisc player just used it to play their CDs they'd copied onto minidisc, sort of a proto-ipod. So people bought the players, but it never took off as a format, if that makes sense.

I knew a few people with minidisc players when I was at university but it was never Walkman or iPod big.

[dhex]

my sony minidisc lasted five years of fairly regular field recordings and recording sets and stuff. the shuffle feature was kinda cool for getting silly sound fx too.

a bridge format.
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[Shapermc]

[GSL]

Mindisc really made me sad. It had such amazing potential, especially with the NetMD format giving you 3-4 hours of music on a disc. The ATRAC format was superior to MP3 as well, but Sony ruined the whole thing by being total douches and locking the proprietary format down as tight as they could. It didn't help that their OpenMG Jukebox/SonicStage software was absolutely abysmal, either; it was the sort of program that the engineers behind Windows ME look at, shake their heads sadly, and say, "Damn man, that's fucked up."
Sony has a history, though, of technically superior products marred by lousy marketing or by being too proprietary for anyone to bother with. See also: Betamax. Now with these PSP shenanigans, I really wonder how the company has managed to stay afloat for as long as it has. I mean, the Playstation and Walkman can't really account for THAT much, right?

[Shapermc]

[Quick Shot II Turbo]

For the curious, here is the ruling and here is Sony's response to Lik-Sang:

[showka]

Yeah, Lik-Sang's death cry is totally "sour grapes." It would've been much classier to have been legally bullied to death by a corporate giant and then shut down without telling anyone why so everyone was confused. I also thought it was classy how quasi-intellectual sites JoyStiq and Kotaku accused Lik-Sang of being "angry" or theatrically nashing their teeth for writing a pretty measured press release. It gave me a surreal Dean campgan coverage flash back.

[FortNinety]

[Nana Komatsu]

I refuse to believe the PSP would ever have been an iPod Killer. Not with two hours of battery life.

[Pijaibros]

I'm waiting for the day when PSP support is officially dropped by Sony.

Then all the real cool side projects can really get going and be fully enjoyed by late adopters.

[dhex]

SONY
But again, they fucked it up
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[Shapermc]

So, Sony is doing one thing right:

"Kawanishi also commented on region free software. This feature, which has been confirmed by various Sony reps in the past, is indeed a reality. "It's often been the case that past game systems would have a region code system, and would not play overseas games," explained Kawanishi. "However, PlayStation 3 game software does not have this region code. In other words, if you can get your hands on overseas software, you can play as is. There are exceptions, however, so SCE does not make guarantees about operation.""
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Lestrade]

Yeah, the PSP is simply a complete failure, plain and simple. It doesn't do anything right. not one of its functions is easy or intuitive enough to be useful, including playing games.

I agree that it should be killed. The homebrew scene on PSP is the only good thing about it, and it will only flourish once all official support is dropped.

[OtakupunkX]

So the "Defend Play-Asia" shirt is coming along nicely, but instead of a Super Scope I used dual Zappers.

[SuperWes]

[FortNinety]

[showka]

[dark steve]

Sony does this a lot, yeah.