Nail in the Coffin: Sony's a bunch of dicks.

[Tagrineth]

Sony stopped something that can lead to piracy. If we for example had a Japanese console, the only thing we can do is order games over seas, or just chip the system to be able to play burned games.

-Selling a console made for American consumers, to European Consumers, obviously would result in the european holder not to be able to run any games sold in Europe.

-Like all gaming consoles, the company does lose money upon the sale of the console alone, and they rely on the sales of games to repay that debt and then the profits come in.

Alot of people are unaware of these 2 points. One point can lead to Sony getting a bad reputation for making consols that fail at running games, and the other point can cause Sony to lose some serious coin. On a very wide scale, it would be multi millions, depending on the amount of console sold in the incorrect region.

It's become a trend to kick and scream at Sony, Personally i think they did the right thing. Making the consols exclusive to region helps keep some content not intended to that area out of popularity, which paves a stable path to the next generation consols.

You'd have a point, except for one problem, the issue over this was Japanese PSPs being sold to Europe, and PSP is region free.

 

[Anttaru]

Well Tagrineth I only used Japan to US as an example. Also if more Japanese PSPs are in Europe, it would mean the games would be put up for Japan in less numbers

Also PSP is not Region Free. Other words there would be no use for an underground hack called "UMD Emulator" which allows the PSP to understand all UMD world wide.

I do have a point don't you think ?

 

[Pupusa]

Well Tagrineth I only used Japan to US as an example. Also if more Japanese PSPs are in Europe, it would mean the games would be put up for Japan in less numbers

Also PSP is not Region Free. Other words there would be no use for an underground hack called "UMD Emulator" which allows the PSP to understand all UMD world wide.

I do have a point don't you think ?

PSP is region free on games, I know someone who owns the Bleach import fighting game for it, needs no mods. It's not region free when it comes to UMD movies though I believe.

 

[Tagrineth]

Yup, and UMD movie sales are absolute ass in all regions anyway no matter how you try to sugar coat it... doesn't matter if your PSP can't run your region's UMD movies.

 

[Bajaratt]

Topics kinda dead, but I still found this funny.

 

[Anttaru]

Well regardless the capabilities.

If a company makes a console for an area, the console is meant to remain there. Sure it's fine if thousands of systems leave the area. But keep in mind poor marketing can kill the whole operation, which would lead to the end of Playstation.

Imagine the same thing that is happening to the Asian PSP's going to Europe happned here on a wide scale. It would effect Sony's marketing of games due to the fact that less people own a PSP, simply because the PSP's haven't hit our shelves in the first place. Less game copies would have to hit the shelves, which is another reason why it's important for a company like Sony or Nintendo to know how many consoles estimate are in the area. If the company is unaware of the absance of the consoles in the area, more money will be wasted on prouducing copies of various games that will never be sold, and when they release the european version, there would be absolute overkill.

I'm sure there is no serious threat of the PSP in the wrong region. But it's still negative towards the upcoming Playstation prouducts, and it's best that the roots of terrible marketing be pulled before it grows larger, and damages the stability of the company.

 

[Ranpha]

Europe and Japan usually share the same DVD region code: 2. Not sure about game coding but they probably share the same code as well. Besides wanting the latest products earlier, there really is no point for Europe to buy a Japanese console.

The US is another story. We live in region 1 which means we would either have to mod the console or buy an import to play japanese games. Sony would probably like these users to buy the actual console from a retailer than buy the moding chips (nobody in customer service likes to deal with they guy who broke his PS2 from modding incorrectly). They can track the numbers of who buys and where.

Marketing is a problem though as mentioned. Research is not always cheap to do but can help Sony understand why this incident happened. Hire a research company to conduct surveys, intervies, focus groups, or whatever method they think is best to understand why people purchased they way they do. Remember, people are not always logical buyers.

I have never stepped my foot into how the Japanese companies do market reserach. They may have cultural ideas different from the US (which is very market research influenced).

With the PSP, maybe the Japanese PSP model is percieved as supeior quailty (they may be the same but people develop attitudes based on many factors). In what ways can Sony demonstrate the EU PSP being of high quailty and the advantages of purchasing one within the EU?

Again we all have bias and here is mine: I do not own a PSP nor have any plans to buy a PS3 on the new release period. Why? No releases have looked interesting so far. I have been bored with the products in the US. Older female audiences are not accurately measured here and even I have thought about buying an import console for games that will never reach market here. Sony does not make the games themselves so are the gaming companies accurately measuring other segmentations of the market?

 

[Anttaru]

Don't know how the 3rd party game developers measure out. I think most of them would test the waters by watching the success of other developers in a region. Which ofcoarse cannot be possible without the presance of the consols. That is only 1 element to the success of sales.

Launch time really is critical business. If the consols get scatterd out of region, the launch titles (which seem to be at high risk) won't sell too well, which leaves an impression to the company, the 3rd parties, and everyone involved in the making/prouduction of the system.