Live outside the EU and got a PSP? Get a bargain for one week only... f**king Sony...

Live outside the EU and got a PSP? Well this is your oportunity to own Loco Roco for the wonderful price of $14.90 (or £7.60 to UK readers). Get across to Play-Asia (see banners) now to grab a copy for this week only! Want to know why us EU folk can't get a copy for so cheap? Thank Sony...


If you don't know what happened to Lik-Sang then I'll tell you briefly and let you make up your mind about them. Lik-Sang were a small Hong Kong based exporter of video games and merchandise from around the world. That meant us poor folk in the UK, and all over Europe, who have been shat on ever since the first iterations of games consoles had the choice to buy US, Japanese or European releases of games when they came out.

This was important as many games in Japan and the US were released way before their UK counterparts and (up until recently where this no longer matters) were natively 60Hz. Remember Star Wing on the PAL SNES and half the screen being borders? That was because of the 50/60Hz issue and our TV systems being different pixel ratios

The other great thing about importing games is the price difference. In the old days of the SNES, importing games was an expensive experience (a copy of Street Fighter 2 Turbo cost me £70 to import from the US back in the day). Thanks to the internet, and global prices generally being cheaper outside the UK, games since about 1998 were and have been generally cheaper to buy directly from Asia. Sony Europe didn't like this...

They took it upon themselves to try and bring down this "Robin Hood" of the grey import market by suing them from so many angles that Lik-Sang eventually had to buckle. One of Sonys bullshit reasons was that the PSP power supply provided from Asia didn't meet "strict EU guidelines" yet the last time I checked my PSP power supply has the CE mark and all the other stuff required. Since when has a DC adaptor been safe for those Asians to use, but not us safety conscious Europeans?!

It seems strange that they only started to really pressurise online exporters around the time preorders in Japan and the US for the PS3 just started. I can only assume Sony didn't like the fact you could buy a region free games console (both the PSP and PS3) and/or the games for about half the UK retail price when they have so much invested in another intellectual property... like their movie industry ties. The failed UMD movie format was the only part of the PSP that carried any form of region locking, and more notably, the Blu-Ray discs are the only region locked part of the PS3. Having eTailers able to provide movies way before their EU release dates would be disastrous for their PR and advertising campaigns in those regions and thus lose sales when we get the upped price discs here.

I also think someone had a lot of sand in their vaginas over at Sony prior to the PS3 launch, with their escalating prices for the PS3, lack of produced units, problems with the Blue diodes and the constant complaints of overpricing of the PSP in Europe and just needed someone to smash their fist into. Lik-Sang was that bitch!!

So, Lik-Sang is gone because they refused to cave in to Sony and they lost. Other online exports, like Play-Asia, now do not ship to zones in the EU that Sony says they aren't allowed to. Nintendo and Microsoft are still more than happy for you to buy their machines and games from wherever in the World you like (after a genuine product sale is a sale for the bigger picture). But not Sony, oh no.. overall it just seems bad for the consumer, bad for the exporter, and surely.. bad for Sony..


Well, anyway... there we go... if you do live outside the EU, go grab a copy of Loco Roco today. Its cute, its fun and its unique - its just an all round great game!! If not, show your protest for Sony Bullshit and just boycott all their products... you can generally identify them as those that aren't good for you, are shit advertised and repackaged to look like they're something they're not and are only out to make money for some greedy corperate scumbag... much like fast food!

Pimp My Blog, Support Play Asia and Cheap Xbox360 games!

If, like me, you run Firefox web browser and have a great piece of software called ABP (or AdBlocker Pro as its otherwise know) this post and my blog additions will not affect you too much. Together they make the internet a great advert free place, and the only exposure I get to adverts online now is when stupid MSN Messenger gets my email in its own choice of browser (i.e. IE7) rather than my "default Internet Browser" (this pisses me off).

Anyway, I hope you're not too offended by the addition of one of my favorite websites, Play Asia, and their new additions to my blog. Maybe one day this blog will drive enough traffic to make the 1 to 10,000 ratio or whatever it is to generate some money online, but maybe not! I support Play-Asia and buy all my cheap region free Xbox 360 games from them now that Lik-Sang is gone (and there goes the only healthy competition on the international games import market, thanks Sony).

The great thing is that apart from some localisation on the front cover, everything from the manual to the game menus is in FULL ENGLISH. Thats right, NTSC-J games for the Hong Kong region are around half the price and exactly the same as the PAL English counterparts. I'd even argue they were better because they don't have any of those filthy multi-language menus supporting German, Spanish and French. Plus you get them months before their Pal release, for instance, Gears of War I had weeks before I came home and people were still like "what... you have Gears of War... its not even out yet?!?". To add insult to injury I told them it cost me 40000 won (ie £20) and that it was in full English and they go mental!

So stop paying unhealthy UK prices for games and get over to Play-Asia now; they have a big list of games that will definitely work on UK machines so you won't ever get stung again.

Fortunately I own an NTSC-J Xbox360 so I don't ever have to worry about cheaper English language Asian games (ie games released for Hong Kong) but you'll find a lot of games are region free. Avoid anything by EA though... they suck balls by locking all their games to specific regions so they can bleed you of more money in the UK through regionalised advertising sponsorship.... bastards!!!