Sony's Win a Major Blow for Importers 200
Joan Cross writes "Sony won a battle in the UK Courts over the importing to Europe of Playstation Portables by Lik Sang. They say that 'Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera'. Of course, the PSP comes supplied with a 100-240v adapter which is safe worldwide. Lik Sang has posted their reaction to the court decision. Could be bad news for those wanting PS3 Consoles on import."
Riiiiiight (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:5, Funny)
never mind.
Re:Riiiiiight (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed it (Score:5, Insightful)
'Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that is cheaper than what can be bought locally'
Imports always expensive (Score:3, Interesting)
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Unfortunately thats why the R2 UK anime market is so feeble - it is a lot cheaper to buy R1 DVDs which often are released months (years) earlier.
[*] = Very random depend on the customs - sometimes stuff over the threshold will get through untax
Re:Imports always expensive ... UK prices (Score:3, Informative)
Doesn't matter to me. I can only afford one meal a day anyway.
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Simple solution..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, did you read the news at all?
"Jokes incorporating puns on the trademark 'Wii' were outlawed in EU and USA yesterday, effective immediately. The decision was taken with in a record amount of time, after public outrage and pressure on the US senators and EU deputies from their local electorate. From now, this action will be punishable with jail time from 2 to 5 years, depending on the size and severity of the offence".
Hahah, I'll visit you i
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Re:Sony's Simple solution..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's not a very honest representation of what's happening here. The EU has rules in place whereby electronic consumer goods have to be certified for safety, non-interference etc. Other major jurisdictions have similar rules, but different for each jurisdiction. Sony themselves have to meet the legal standards before they can import their products to the EU. Shouting 'foul' when someone else tries to bypass those requirements is not unreasonable.
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:4, Interesting)
WTF?!
Sony and Lik Sang are both trying to sell exactly the same damn thing -- PSPs. If the ones sold directly (by Sony) meet the requirements, then the ones sold through a middleman (Lik Sang) do too!
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From TFA:
In his ruling yesterday, Judge Michael Fysh found that Lik-Sang - which offered Japanese PSPs to European consumers via its website - was in breach of intellectual property rights.
Are the European and Japanese PSPs "exactly the same damn thing"? Right down to power adaptor, etc? (Honest question, I have zero interest in the PSP so I don't know) If not, then they're not the same thing, and it's possible that they may not meet the s
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So do parallel importers; that argument is a strawman.
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Sony's actions are just another attempt for big business to e
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, people were voting with their wallets, buying a product from Lik-Sang. Now the government says you have to buy the product from Sony.
That plainly falls within the realm of coercive interference in the market.
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I'm not buying Sony anyway, but how would I (as the US is going in the same direction) change things here? I wish I could "vote with my wallet" on politicians and their policies, but the IRS does not take kindly to the most effective way of doing that. The best I can do is support other politicians, most of whom
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Ballot Box
Soap Box
Jury Box
Ammo Box.
Use in that order.
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how it's supposed to work right.
Let me tell you how it really works: you vote with your wallet as an example citizen and don't buy one. For every single one like you, there's 100 guys/girls who are either PSP junkies, just don't care, just don't know, or whatever, so they'll buy one.
End result: Sony will never feel your vote, and you don't have a PSP.
Yea, it's sad like that, but... after all, this is the main principle of capitalism: the market decides. And it comprises of all people, not just Sony haters.
Re:Simple solution..... (Score:5, Insightful)
But marketshare is everything. On what do you think those 1% of potential buyers who are upset with Sony's business practices are going to spend their money? Probably a Wii or Xbox 360.
Furthemore, ask yourself, who is the type of person that is going to care so much as to take a stand like you describe? Knowledgeable people, which others probably look to for buying advice. Sure the beancounters may think they're maximizng profit by screwing over 1% of their custmoers, but what if that 1% are game reviewers, gamestore clerks, vocal bloggers, or just helpful friends of casual gamers?
It's easy to just throw up your hands in despair when it coems to things like this, but the fact is: everything you do matters--even if you never realize just how. If it means that much to you and you think you're right, take a stand. You never know what might happen.
-Grym
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Voting with your wallet is what's being restricted (Score:2)
Globalization (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same issue you already see DVD region encoding, and with digital music services: people complaining about albums being available in some countries and not others when everyone is getting their tunes from a server on the Internet.
In the future corporations are going to need to stop thinking they can easily dictate the geographical spread of their goods and start thinking of their product launches as a worldwide event. The entertainment industries need to stop setting up distribution deals for invidual regions and make their deals for global availablity. If they don't they will only see their products pasisng through black-market channels and piracy rings more readily instead of generating more revenue for them.
Re:Globalization (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the time difference that gets me. It's the difference in price.
I have to compete directly for jobs with people in India, China, Eastern Europe and anywhere else you can outsource IT to. This impacts the amount I can earn, and my chances of getting a job in the first place.
However, I am forced by EU/UK law to pay a higher price for goods, as demonstrated by this court case.
Frankly this pisses me off. I'm getting fucked over both ways.
Re:Globalization (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, except it's a 4-way, not a 3-way. Globalization ultimately works around nation governments too; thus, there is little effective oversight on the international level to force fair play on multi-national interests.
For example, there are no international anti-trust or price fixing laws that I'm aware of. This has a signficant effect on pricing as well as penetration (pun not intended), such as allowing established industries (e.g. RIAA and MPAA) to charge emerging markets far less for their products. Meanwhile, established markets pay full price, or artificially higher than what would normally be decided by the market (due to intellectual propery laws i.e. patents, copyright). This is why we see can see the same exact products being sold in the US, Mexico, and China go for far far less in the last 2 countries. US and EU college students see this with book pricing. MS OS pricing in Asia indicates this as well.
iow, in some ways, you are essentially subsidizing what amounts to a product loss leader to establish a brand in up and coming markets. In other ways, you are denying fair competition on those emerging markets when they should be protected; those poorer nations have little choice but to abide due to pressure from wealthier nations. (And I believe this is somewhat similar to one of the arguments made against the $100 PC.)
Conversely, those same laws can be used to deny products in those poorer countries as well. In doesn't make logical sense until you realize that companies don't want this importing to occur back to wealthier countries they are established in (see certain aspects of the pharmaceutical industry, although I think they have a fairer policy than the copyright industry groups).
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I think you mean "US and UK college students". I'm in the EU and we don't really have a university textbook industry here. Most of the time professors will provide their own comprehensive and inexpensive scripts which are updated every year or they'll just post their material online. Some people recommend books but not
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The pharmaceutical industry can be just a strange. e.g. working hard to protect US Citizens from their Canadian and German products...
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Of course it's cheaper to sell things there. However, when the cheaper labour and operating costs result in a foreign retailer being able to offer me identical goods to a local one at a lower total price (including postage and import duty) then I am still legally prevented from taking advantage of this. I am being forced to pay a higher price or go without.
Since corporate profits come from offshoring their labour costs, let me hurt their profits by offshoring my purchasing. And if that fucks up the economy
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Globalization isn't a business plan, its a concept. A relationship concept. Corporations have always been rah-rah about globalization because they just looked at it as "wider audience for goods = larger customer base = more profit". My point is they can't protray themselves as a "company to the world" and then get pissy when people start trading their products across the world as well. It's just doesn'
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*sigh*
Re:Globalization (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not holding up very well now. Interestingly it's often the same multinational corporations who are pro "globalization" and "free trade" when it means they can pick and choose the cheapest places of the planet to manufacture who kick up the most fuss (typically in the courts) when their customers (both individuals and retail companies) try and do something similar.
In the future corporations are going to need to stop thinking they can easily dictate the geographical spread of their goods and start thinking of their product launches as a worldwide event. The entertainment industries need to stop setting up distribution deals for invidual regions and make their deals for global availablity.
When it comes to movies and TV/radio the regional distribution model has actually been dead for quite some time. Sometimes TV programmes have even been available "by other means" before their broadcast. Even if this dosn't happen they will be available within a short time of their initial broadcast.
People are not going to wait weeks, months (even years) to watch, effectivly any wait longer than 48 hours encourages "piracy". When it comes to speedy global distribution things are in some cases worst than they were a quarter of a century ago, dispite advances in communications technology.
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Not really; it's an artefact of monopoly protection legislation, ultimately derived from intellectual 'property'. The monopoly pricing of protected products is, to maximize revenue, set as a function of disposable income, rather than competetive pricing. The better you can discriminate between various income groups, the more revenue you can generate.
Regional discrimination is a woefully inadequate instrument (compared to, for example, pricing as a function of income),
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Re:Globalization (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow.
Here in the UK, the general attitude has always been that there's no VAT on necessities, so food, books, and children's clothes, among other things, don't have any (but if you eat in a restaurant, you pay VAT, by the way). I was amazes when a Spanish colleague of mine told me the other day that he had to pay VAT on the house he just bought, but food? That's insane.
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If you like taxes Sweden is the place to go. First you the employer pays a tax for having an employee (it's basically hidden income tax). Then the worker gets to pay income tax of about 30-40%. Then you have VAT and the other nice little taxes. All those taxes ammounts to about
Re:Globalization (Score:5, Insightful)
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Argentina & Uruguay (my country - South America) also pay VAT and/or other taxes on food (23% for most stuff, 14% on other). We do follow Spain's lead (unfortunately)
On the other hand, we have some legislation stating that if a company is already importing something (the PSP in this case), you can do paralell imports (or something to the effect) under the "Exhaustion of rights"
As usual, Wikipedia has a neat article on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.or [wikipedia.org]
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Well, at least you get your health care and medications paid for. Here in the US, we get the high blood pressure from our insane politicians and have to pay for everything by ourselves. Any way you look at it, you lose.
Cheer up though, you don't have to live in Cleveland.
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Not inherently. They can be, but if the products and services the tax revenue is spent on are competetively provided, their economic function can be more or less comparable to any other joint financial scheme like insurances or cooperative ventures.
Of course, they're often mixed up with state production of goods and services, which breeds the inefficiency of any protected market.
Compared to the atrocity called intellectual 'property', they're actually le
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bah, (Score:2)
Re:bah, (Score:4, Interesting)
But still, Sony Computer Ent. Europe does lose money, even if Sony Computer Ent Japan doesn't. Mostly because they track their
sales and revunue seperately from each other.
Oh, I agree, it's stupid, but i'm just pointing out the logic of why it's both true and it's stupid.
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If it was all "Sony", importing wouldnt matter.
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Motives (Score:5, Insightful)
If they'd just say, "We brought this action to ensure that us and only us get to squeeze every last penny-worth of value out of our product and we don't have to share with anyone"... perhaps not a flowers-and-rainbows kinda sentiment but sheesh at least it'd be honest!
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If they'd said anything like that, it'd be in the headlines a *lot* more places than it currently is... Stick to the formula, and it's not newsworthy outside Slashdot and other niche sources.
The real news here... (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't know people actually wanted a PS3 to begin with
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Factories can only produce so many per month.
You mean everybody should wait 6 months to a year until there is enough on supply so that you can go into a store and buy one?
So you can build more factories and increase the price per unit because in 6 months there will be less demand, or everyone can wait six months so that everyone gets a fair shot.
If it was up to me I would say sell them one at a time as they come off the end off the assembly line! This applies to the xbox and the wii as well. I want my
What about Japanese exporters? (Score:5, Informative)
So, does this mean that Sony can legally prevent private international re-sale of their product line too? Where is the demark line between what is and what is not permissible?
Re:What about Japanese exporters? (Score:5, Insightful)
But it turns out that the U.S. has a similar policy w/regards to IP.
The reasoning is that the unauthorized sales violates rights held by licensed distributors of the product, regardless of the legalities behind the (grey market) ownership & sale of the items in question.
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2005/05/is-there
The doctrine of first sale only applies to goods made in countries which have such a doctrine. Basically, if Sony has a distributor network set up, you (as a company) cannot circumvent that network. I imagine it isn't a problem if your cousin/friend/other in China or Japan mails you one.
IP law? (Score:2)
But imports? Aha! If you
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It cant cost much to post women can it?
Control.. it's all about control. And stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Why should these companies realistically care anyway? It's not like consumers are buying those crappy knock-offs of consoles you could get during the days of the SNES. And as for safety reasons? What the hell? How would Sony be liable? Most hardware I've bought contains pages and pages of legalese saying where it's intend for use in, what voltage it takes etc. The fact is, this is all about control. Companies are scared of not having 100% control over where customers get their products from. If they really want to regain control, they should try not only equalizing prices, but actually ensuring there's a simultaneous release of their products across the world. Releasing the PS3 in March in the UK certainly doesn't help things.
As for Sony's comments that the PS3 'will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs', I wouldn't buy a PS3 or a X-Box 360 for playing HD DVDs. Certainly, neither's HD facility will be region-free. And there are myriad titles that never get released in a certain region. Unless you only have an interest in watching mainstream blockbusters, a region-free player is a must. And the PS2's DVD performance was laughable. Not because it was poor quality, but because when you tried to watch any film in RGB mode, it green tinted the picture. Apparently this was some kind of copy protection measure. Yes, even though DVDs have macrovision. Who's to say the PS3 won't have some daft similar limitation.
Re:Control.. it's all about control. And stupidity (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Control.. it's all about control. And stupidity (Score:2)
The real concern for me is things like Xenosaga or the first Katamari Damacy, which never were and never will be released in Europe, because the maker just cannot be bothered to sell them here. Xenosaga is the one which finally forced me to modify my PS2 to play import games. Or games like Disgaea, which was released in E
Thinking of legal ways around this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thinking of legal ways around this ADDED BENE (Score:2)
And consumers might get a better product after a month burn-in to eliminate the Infant Mortality problem of all complex electronics.
Of course, Sony would have to deal with an inordinate number of warranty calls from the same address. But that still might be better than the house actually burning down, as might well have happened wit
Since Sony's Losing Money on Them (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Since Sony's Losing Money on Them ------Win 3.0 (Score:2)
Wouldn't that be a: Win-win-win? (Not to be confused with Win 3.0)
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Holy shit, a four story high penguin statue? Dear readers, do NOT fuck with this guy.
Problem will be here to stay... (Score:2, Interesting)
In 'The Good Old Days'(tm) this wasn't a problem. Goods, services and the workforce were not mobile - companies could charge according to the local market and achieve the maximum profit for that region. The workforce itself is kept in place because staying put is comparitively cost effective to moving (in both financial and personal sense).
Not anymore. Cars ca
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Bad example, unless you like driving from the "wrong" side of the car all the time.
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No shit, Sherlock -- of course Europeans make both right-hand and left-hand drive cars! My point was that they send them to different markets -- you can get RHD if you buy from a dealer in England, but (normal) dealers in France only have the LHD version. Therefore, if you buy in France and import to England, it'll be LHD.
Friends dont let friends buy Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
I now wonder if Sony are monitoring me. They certainly are modding these posts flaimbait consistently.
Are they going through my thrash, and obtaining my phone records as well?
Anyway I boldly repeat here again:
Much of the money you spend buying Sony gear goes to support anti consumer efforts from DRM, Infected CD's, Unusable due to DRM Blu-Ray HD-DVD. They may actually help kill the entire HD DVD effort.
Fellow
You are delusional.. or something (Score:4, Funny)
No. *I* mod your posts down.
Are they going through my thrash, and obtaining my phone records as well?
A.) You are delusional. B.) You are not important.
Much of the money you spend buying Sony gear goes to support anti consumer efforts from DRM
Ditto for.. *every* consumer electronics, software, and media giant. Indeed, Microsoft is probably doing more than any other company to stuff DRM down our throats at the moment. Noone needs games and hi-def movies. Many people need to buy new Windows machines now and then. Why don't you go beat up on them in the Xbox 360 stories? Or do you? If not, then you're just a hypocrite with an axe to grind.
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God, we can only hope...
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These are the game forums. You'll get partisan assholes for any console.
Much of the money you spend buying Sony gear goes to support anti consumer efforts from DRM, Infected CD's, Unusable due to DRM Blu-Ray HD-DVD. They may actually help kill the entire HD DVD effort.
Certainly true of many Sony products, but the PS3 appears to be fairly open as far as consoles go - certainly far, far, far more open t
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Even the PS2 version of Linux was supposed to be okay - it was just by the time you forked over for the network adapter, harddrive, VGA adapter, keyboard & mouse, that the thing cost far more than you got back in terms of performance o
So much for open markets (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm dubious of any true safety concerns. Does Sony want it shouted that: Sony sells unsafe PS3's everywhere in the world except the UK, because only UK law won't allow it!
If the PS3 is truly unsafe, are they going to be stopping travelers returning from other markets overseas and siezing their lawfully purchased PS3 consoles on safety concerns? I doubt it.
The only way you'll fix this in the UK is by a vote for people who will reliably overturn laws that screw the consumers at large to artifically protect monopolies. Should we shout, Is anyone in the UK listening?
What am I doing for my part? Not voting for John Kyl who instituted the Internet Gaming Ban in the USA, and had to sneak it through as part of another, more important, bill because no one wanted their vote on record over this issue.
Who else here in Slashdot land is doing their part, no matter how small, this year?
Just like U.S./Canadian Drugs (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny, this is the same thing happens with pharmaceuticals in the U.S. The industry doesn't want people importing Canadian drugs (which are much cheaper) and one thing mentioned is that they have concern the drugs do not meet U.S. quality standards.
I have yet to hear anyone ask if that's true doesn't that mean they are giving Candaians sub-quality prescription drugs. You think there would be a Canadian-consumer uproar with such simple logic.
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As the other replier pointed out, there are price controls as well. Something the government in the U.S. should do more of when they subsidize things. *cough*Haliburton*cough*
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They know its BS, so no reason to get in an uproar. But apparently us Americans are too stupid to realize its BS and have our own uproar.
Of course, we've got better things to be having uproars about should the intellect make a return in the US.
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It's all about artificially segmenting the market to maximise profits. Of course in healthcare, the market is hugely subsidised, both by the government and across drugs, so there may be some limited justification for this. And counterfeit drugs are a truly evil thing.
B
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In this case TFA says grey imports from outside the EU are illegal under UK / EU law so is no surprise that Sony chose to invoke that law. I doubt Nintendo or Microsoft would do any different. In fact all three console makers
Let's break this down (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from ..
- The PSP has a power supply for 100 - 240V, I'm told, and besides let's not pretend that Sony doesn't have to build all its various Playstations to be acceptable worldwide, shall we?
"is not - in PS3's case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software"
- again, similar situation all around the world, what does this have to do with anything?
"will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs"
- because YOU built in restrictions to fuck us over with!
"and will not be covered by warranty."
- strictly by your own decision, there's nothing to prevent you extending the manufacturer's warranty i.e. another way by which to fuck us over.
Perhaps a subtlety on the last point might be an expectation that a faulty unit would have to be returned to the importer - but that's the buyer's choice / risk to take. And it would be interesting if "grey" importers then found it profitable to set up local offices in rip-off parts of the world.
You know, in financial and commodity markets the principle of arbitrage is pretty well accepted. There's just no damn reason why manufacturers like Sony should be allowed to create articifical barriers to otherwise well accepted market mechanisms. As has been pointed out elsewhere, as long as people have to suck it up and bear it with market effects like outsourcing, the corporates shouldn't be able to give themselves exemptions.
Anyone got a link to the actual judgement? (Score:3, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1261829.stm [bbc.co.uk]
has a summary of that (grey imports from the rest of the EEA legal; elsewhere not)
Also see:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899
http://www.patent.gov.uk/policy/policy-issues/pol
has a link to the judgement (those last two links may cause you to lose the will to stay awake, though).
If it IS just a trademark issue, what's to prevent some sort of "Iceweasel" solution to this? For example advertise the consoles as being of certain dimensions and able to play certain titles - but no more.
What about other countries? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, they never released any playstation here in Brazil.
Welcome to rip-off Britain (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, in the UK a Nintendo DS costs £110 with your choice of one crappy game. In Japan, the DS is around 16,000 yen, or about £71. That's £40 cheaper, less than 60% of the UK price. Sure, no free game, but £40 can buy you three new games for the DS.
The free game is either just a way of making price comparison impossible ("Sorry, we can't price match so-and-so because it's a different package") or adding "value" to an overpriced product, without costing the retailer much. In fact, you are helping the retailer to dump unsaleable stock.
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"People will get two jobs to pay for the PS3"
"RIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACER!!!!!"
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They don't care how much it costs, they don't care about rootkits, and they certainly don't care if the CEO makes them i
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