News Sony sue PSP exporter

In a move dumbfounding many, Sony are suing Hong Kong-based Lik-Sang.com for selling PSP handhelds to countries like the UK, where the official launch has been delayed by six months.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/08/09/sony_sue_lik_sang/

 

It's just plain wrong. There is no point to it at all. Nobody is losing out.

It's pretty bloody obvious that there is going to be huge demand for anything from overseas that's popular elsewhere in the world - be it consoles, cars or bananas.

 

I can imagine that Sony is a bit pissed off, but this is a bit over-the-top. Sony should haev released the PSP in Europe almost 6 months ago. Sony never sued over anything else like this.

I'm never buying anything from Sony ever again.

PS: That last line isn't true.

 

things like this where a company pushes back a release date of something so they can re-allocate stock to the US is nothing new, it is often the case with games.
From what this looks like is a simple case of Socy messing things up with thier estimations of sales for America, that is not the fault of the Hong Kong company at all, they are just providing the means for the people who were left out (due to Sony's bad planning) to get a console.
Unless it says something in the licensing from Sony about reselling like this or there is indeed something wrong with the advertising then I can't really see Sony pulling this little coup off.

 

I was 50/50 on getting me a PSP before this. Now it's settled. My PC will be just fine for whatever gamingneeds i have, and i could use the money for other stuff... Mmmm flatscreen
I don't think this will discourage many from buying it when it actually gets here, but there's allways hope.

 

sonys just pissed because they arent making the maximum profit on all their units. The key here I believe is that the price for the UK PSP is at a higher price point as the Japanese one. Just like it was more expensive and still is here in the states in relation to Japan.

Lik-San purchases the PsP's at an eastern price point, which is aruond $180.00 US I believe.. maybe a bit more expensive. They then sell world wide undercutting the majority of Sony's regional prices. While Lik-san could never hope to supply the demand of all of europe, they do undercut Sonys desired price point and will sell a lot more units as their popularity increases and knowledge of their offering spreads. It screws with Sonys whole price model and their regional price points.

Dunno about you.. I've had a PsP since day one here in the US. I use it for MP3's all the damn time.. and I play it on occasion. Still waiting for really good games to come out like Tales of Eternia and such. I never use it to watch movies.. why watch it on that small screen when you can watch it on a big screen.. and having it be a portable device you dont really want to catch a half an hour of a movie while waiting for the bus or what not. So the regional coding of movies you lose by purchasing an import version of the PsP is moot in regards to most users (based on my opinion.. this isnt statistical info here.)

So, when the PsP is released in the UK and Europe.. people will still purchase from Lik-San and be pissed as all hell that sony releases units at a more espensive price. People will wait until they can purchase from Lik-San unless they are impatient or dont mind spending the extra hard earned (or not so hard earned) money. Sony has competition not from a reselling point.. but finds they have competition from the distribution point which will cause sony to loose the extra profits they normally would gain by taking advantage of the world-wide market and being the sole distributor of their hardware world wide.

 

My honest opinion about the PsP.. if you have an MP3 player, dont bother buying it until price drops and more games are released. I dont have an MP3 player so I use it at the gym all the time. I really dont play it much.. I have 5 games.

Ridge Racer
Lumines
Metal Gear Acid
Untold Legends : Brotherhood of the Blade
Wipeout Pure

I never play them. I played Lumines, Ridgerader and Utold Legends for a while when they first came out.. Once the novelty wears off you sit there and are like.. eh.. I personally love it because I get my moneys worth out of the Mp3's on my 1GB memory stick. It'll be nice when X360 comes out and I can stream anime and the like from it onto my HDTV.. but to fork out a lot of money on release.. its not really worth it currently in my opinion. Wait till the holidays and see if the price is lowered.. if you're getting a X360 it might be worth it to stream your media to your TV.

Hrmm.. i wonder if that means you'll be able to play games on the PsP through the X360 sort of like the gameboy player. I doubt it but if it were true, that would ROCK!

 

im a skinflint, i never buy anything close to day of release anyways. wait till its released, wait for the prices to plummet, then buy. i'd *love* to get my hands on a psp right now, but im really not willing to fork over the cash when i could be spending it on a much more worthy cause.... my new mod! lol.

as for sony taking lik-sang to court.... its damaged my faith in sony, i always thought they were a "nice" company. i can understand their point though, they own the product, they want to decide where it gets sold and when, but i can also understand lik-sang, they saw a market and moved into it.

at the end of the day, i'd rather wait, than buy an import, and i think Sony are making a mistake with the court case. lik-sang cant sell *that* many units, definately not enough to asturate the uk market, and if people are really that desperate to get one, just get on a plane, fly over, buy a dozen psp's, come back and sell them to recoup the cost of the air-fare... keeping one for yourself of course.

 

Cutting off your nose to spite your face. Brilliant, Sony.

And just for the record, they don't make more money selling it to Europe. They have to offer their wholesale price to all distributors, based on amounts purchased. They may lose out on a bit of shipping charges, or that there are small shops in Europe that will have to pay more per unit than the major retailers, but it's still not going to be a real big-money change for them.

Which makes me wonder, why on earth are they working on this so hard?

 

Dont they have seperate price points for different regions? Like how in japan the PsP was released ~$175.00USD and in the US it was released at $250.00 USD and they added a value pack that cost them pennies on the dollar to justify the price increase.

That is what I meant by them making more profit in europe. Increased price in different areas based on the market of that region, demand already hyped due to releases in other regions etc etc etc. I'm sure its a lot more involved than that.. things like exchange rates, customs, etc come into play. But how is it then that there was a $75.00 USD price increase between japan's launch and US launch if they are required to sell the same wholesale price?

Unless you think I meant changing the price throughout different stores in europe.. I meant the regional price as in EU price in contrast to US price n contrast to far east price (japan, china, etc.)

 

Yeah, they have different RETAIL pricepoints, but sony doesn't see much if any of that extra money. They price it out there based on shipping, excise, tarriffs, VAT, etc. Sony gets $X per unit, and X goes down the more units a distributor buys.

Sony can then impose a minimum to keep pricing fair. For instance, they can force wal-mart to sell the PSP at $250 (when they bought 10m units from Sony for $179), same as the cheapest the corner store guy can sell it (who bought 100 units at $219). This way, consumers have the option to go where they please. The little guy orders less, so he pays more per unit, but he can still sell it for a meager profit to compete with the big box stores. Wal-mart then ends up making more profit on the units they sell, but at least there's now a choice as to where to buy it. Otherwise, the little guy would have no point in carrying something like that, because he'd never be able to buy the 100 units he carries at the same cost walmart bought their 10m units at.

This is simplified, but it's the basic gist of the economics behind what I'm saying.

 

Ahhhhh ok ok. I get it now.. that makes sense, thanks!.. so it doesnt really effect sony.. it effects the retailers of the world who have higher price points.. hrmmmm.. so that brings it back to what you said.. why on earth is sony making a big deal out of this...

 

Exactly...the only thing they could be losing is that Europe tends to have a lot more small retailers, who would have to buy at an increased price compared to america's big-box retailers (who pay an increased price compared to far east, where shipping is cheap and taxes are negiligible). Even that probably wouldn't amount to a whole lot of money. So I don't see sony releasing the legal dogs to protect such a paltry sum...there's something going on under the surface.

 

Basically... Sony need a kick up the arse.

 

boycott the things! I have no intention of getting one (or any other console/handheld), and I'm sick of all this marketing crap they pull just so they can have that much more control