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Bye bye, Lik-Sang...
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 24th October 2006
Nothing to do with Rockstar, but we thought "Bully" is a good term for Sony, which killed Lik-Sang with lawsuits.
A few days ago, we reported on the victory handed to Sony in a London court over importer Lik-Sang. The suit was based on the import/export of the PSP from Japan to the EU, which Sony claimed was directly in violation of its marketing "tactics" of a staggered release.
Many of our readers were rather upset to hear about that, so you'll be further upset by this - Apparently, Lik-Sang was unable to survive the Sony legal onslaught, and has been shut down. Even before any damages were assigned, the legal fees have simply bled the company dry.
Sony has, of course, declined to comment on the closing. However, the company did elucidate its "reasoning" further as to why it pursued the suit with such zeal, stating that it was for "consumer safety" as much as anything since Japan uses different electricity feeds than the EU (100V, 50-60Hz instead of 230V, 50Hz). Of course, Lik-Sang did indeed ship the units with genuine Sony EU power adapters. Maybe that's why they were concerned?
For those of you who have already purchased a PS3 or other unshipped item from Lik-Sang, the company has promised to get refunds back to consumers as quickly as possible. All orders, however, are officially cancelled - even non-PS3 related ones.
Though I normally like to add a little bit of editorial to the end of news like this, I think my views will be best saved for an upcoming look at imports in general. In the meantime, feel free to rant your own heart away in our forums.
Thanks to forumite themax for posting this in our other thread and bringing it to our attention.
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Comments (90)
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I guess Sony's slogan for the PS3 should be "Play Beyond....just not beyond your country's borders or with an import console." GG Sony, GG.
Their service when i bought my psp ahead of the euro launch was really good. A great shame to see them gone, considering how badly the EU usually loses out on big releases :(
Also, for the power adaptors, the $ony (PSP for example) ones are 100-240V 50/60 Hz.
So you can use them ANYWHERE in the world.
PS3 : "play b3yond, but stay in your country."
It's a real shame to see Lik-Sang gone, they were a great company that sold not only import stuff but also some of the more unusual stuff for consoles that was a bit harder to find elsewhere.
I was hoping to order some more do put onto some friends controllers... :(
Damn you, Sony.
Sad shame to see it go.
Indeed. I won't be buying Sony stuff now at all. As I said in the other thread, if anyone can think of anything good to write to their MP, post it up here and many people can send something similar to our own MP's. That's what the suits are for afterall.
I'm normaly quite reserved on this forum but this news has got me so angry, i hated sony before but now i can't put my contempt towards them into words.
(and as much as i now hate sony, i'm still not gonna buy an xbox :P, i'm still a linux fanboy)
Bunch of muppets
EDIT: In two weeks i was going to buy a Sony T9 digicamera, any suggestions for an alternative?
if your looking for the ultra compact that that one has, casio has some decent ones that do quite well for themselves. if your ok with something a little thicker, then i recommend a canon. i would further recommend something like the SD800 from canon. that would be your best option.
ive seen sony's decline over the last 6-7 years and it just hit a lower lever then i thought they were capable of. lik-sang had EVERYTHING there wasn't a device made that they didn't at least have a place holder for and information on. they will be missed.
Sony can blow me....
Ugh thanks Sony. I love lik-sang, and have spent countless $$$'s on tons of wacky/usefull products that you just can't find in North America (easily at least).
Does Sony even have a PR firm anymore? Do they release that it stands for Public Relations, not Public Raping? *sigh*
Aggies
Maybe that's the plan?
They really have become such an evil, money grabbing company.
What rights? The right to only reap the benefits from globalisation but to sue if they dislike the negative aspects of it? Sony are clearly either price gouging, or providing a tardy service in the EU if another company can afford to ship stuff from japan all the way over here and still make money on it. Free markets are what should be respected here, not the rights of monopolistic companies.
F**k Sony - I intend to do my bit to make sure they can't have their cake and eat it here, I'm not gonna buy sony stuff, I'm gonna badmouth sony stuff to everyone who mentions them, and others should do the same. The consumer should not be screwed like this.
We can all hate sony for what they are doing. Personally I have never dealt with lik-sang. But from what I hear they at least made an attempt to give some fairness to prices to consumers. But more or less at the cost of sony. I own a few sony products and am quite impressed with each.
Big buisnesses sometimes have to make big buisness decsions. This just happens to be one of those. :(
If that's what's pissing you off then maybe you should direct your anger at the High Court who ruled that Lik-Sang's sale of PSPs was illegal? Sony are gonna do what they can to protect their profit margins and of course they're gonna take legal action if they see someone eating into those margins, especially when said entity is operating on dodgy legal ground. But at the end of the day it's the court who didn't respect the free market, and it was them who upheld the "rights" of monopolistic companies.
their rights as a production unit are to produce and sell. lik-sang bought and sold. what about their rights as a company? what were they loosing? lik-sang bought from sony... its not like they were making counterfeit PSPs. sony in the end still got the sales for the PSP what is f-in matter who bought it. even if they did wait until the official release of the PSP in the UK... speaking of which, are you serious that the PSP hasn't been released in the UK yet?... there are still plenty of people that would have imported the PSP from japan anyway. they were just getting them a little earlier. and im sure when teh PSP went on sale in the UK there are people that would buy ones sourced form the UK. this is a decission i would have expected in north america not the EU. NAFTA allows any company to sue anyone and anything if it feels that its profits were being harmed. like the company that sold an additive into gas that was a carcinogen and California refused to sell the gas. so they sued california for lost 'projected' sales. not sales they knew they had but ones they suspected they would have. that is pretty much what sony did here.
i think it should be illegal for sony to hold a product back that is clearly ready just to play the marketing game. i mean the PSP has been in the US for far too long for it not to be in the EU when they clearly have a finished product.
Cannon's are the best for digital cameras. They have better picture quality then Sony.
I guess Sony should be filing lawsuits against eBay now too, right?
No, I don't accept this "it's just business" crap. People can claim that but I'll still hate the people who decided to pursue this issue in sony for being crappy people. I'm also pissed off with the high court, very much so, but that doesn't lessen the fact that they were reacting to something sony kicked off. Sony have really done something wrong here, and they deserve to be boycotted. Thankfully that message seems to be spreading throughout the net, and even if it's informal, their profits should be dented by the number of forum readers just not buying their crap anymore.
Seriously, why did they have to close them down? couldn't they have just stopped them supplying sony equipment? They had some good accessories that were damn hard to find elsewhere.
Ah well, here's hoping some company gets all their stock in the liquidation sale and starts another lik sang 'esque site.
I'm sorry but had it been some little company who had successfully sued a big company for selling their product at cheaper prices, and as is now the case illegally, everyone would be congratulating the little company for standing up and taking action. Just because Sony happen to be a big company doesn't make what they've done wrong, maybe it makes the law wrong but Sony are just doing what businesses do i.e. making money.
And yeah I aint buying Sony ever again.
thats better.
Krazeh please take a moment and think of the repercutions of this then return to read the rest.
did you think:
Who is next?
(ebay, every online auction site, almost every store that might import/export products, .... would you like them to close after being sued to death?)
Is their console/products worth closing any company?
(how would you feel if i ruined you economically in court because i sued you for using my air)
was it necessary to drag this into court?
(a simple talk face to face would have had better results.)
and the biggest question of them all:
Will sony lose money because of less sales because of these companies?
(my opinion on this one is: HELL NO!!!! consoles would sell more if people had it before time, (the jealousy sindrome, that is very simple to comprehend, if someone has something cool you will want something equal or better.))
*I rearly want our econmy to return to capitalism as it seems alot more fair than this.
You're right, companies exist for one purpose: to make money. However, that doesnt mean that how they go about making that money will always make the consumer happy. They need to please consumers in order to convince them to hand over their hard earned cash. I'm unsure how large an impact this negative backlash will have, but there is a possibility it will be significant.
The issue here is that Lik-sang hampered Sonys ability to price-gouge European consumers. If a psp cost X in japan and you add Y in shipping and 3rd party profit costs you get Z as the cost to import. That would mean Sony now has to match Z and live with similar profit margins or face a problem in the form of someone undercutting their price. If history indicates anything, pricing for products in Europe that originate from the outside are sold at a considerable markup. This is the whole reason for Region Coding and the like.
With lik-sang in business and selling import ps3's.. if there was a large enough install base in europe, it means some of the would be blu-ray market may shift to import purchases as well.. again effecting Sonys bottom line. This becomes especially true when you take into account the price of the Ps3 and assume that anyone who imports one will be sticking with import-based media for a VERY long time. I dont necessarily think what sony did was wrong or out of line. They were protecting their best interest.. however, in doing so, they have negatively effected MY best interest..
If you think I will put a company (which I am not a part of, not even with a minimal chunk of stock) and its interests above MY interests as a consumer.. then you are out of your mind.
I thought DRM, the MPAA, RIAA etc. had proven example enough.. when a company sees progress is hitting off target in regards to their best interest in relation to their bottom line, action is sure to be taken.. but be especially sure that the action to be taken doesnt negatively impact consumers best interest or you're just asking for a heck of a lot of negative publicity which may possibly injure your brand label. There are always multiple ways to go about doing things.. and sometimes you must bite the bullet. I higly doubt Sony anticipated a negative backlash on a massive scale. I hope they receive it. A company needs to keep their customer first and foremost in their mind at all times. They can make all the money in the world for all I care, as long as they do that.
Sony, obviously, is out of touch in regards to what consumers want and has demonstrated this numerous times over the past several years.
/rant
Krazeh you are completely missing the point here. Sony did profit. Lik-Sang rightfully purchased the PSP's through Sony's distributor and then Sold them to overseas customers. What is the problem with that? Anyone has free right to do that. It just so happens that Lik-sang was making a profit from sales in a region Sony didn't want to have the product yet. This was for the sole purpose of increasing demand, and playing this stupid hype game. What's the point in delaying a region free product? None at all. Besides, Lik-Sang imported MANY other products with which no other company had a problem with. Obviously Nintendo should want to sue right? No they didn't because they know what an import shop is and that even when they release, they will still make profit margin. I imported my Tales of Eternia from Lik-Sang since the developers saw fit to delay the release of a game in North America that was already in English which made no sense. The only reason Sony went after Lik-Sang was because Lik-Sang was selling them cheaper than what Sony wants to charge for the EU PSP, which as usually is much more expensive for some stupid reason.
No bandwagon here man. None at all.
:EDIT: Actually, I want to take back my remark about not buying anything from Sony again. I might just go buy me a single share of their stock just so I can go sit in on an investor's meeting.
I really liked Lik-Sang. You could get all sorts of stuff there that you would never see over here.
I think it's horrendous that Sony managed to sue a company out of business, but yet AFAIK stil haven't settled the fact that they are using patented technology in their Dual Shock controllers illegaly.
The sooner Sony completely dies out the better.
And it's not like this is the first time Sony have taken action against importers, it should have been fairly well known to Lik-Sang that Sony take the illegal import of their consoles seriously.
Btw on a final point I don't necessarily agree with what Sony have done but I do understand why that have done so from a business point of view. Maybe it is the wrong business choice, maybe it's not, only time will tell but I'm not going to boycott Sony products just because they took action to protect their business interests.
you think Sonys screwing europe over time and price wise is legal. Time sony met the rebels!!
I had a GP2X on order too :'(
Out of curiousity why were you planning to buy a Sony DVD player?
Afaik Sony lost that case and were forced to pay Immersion a hell of a lot in royalty payments, but at the end of the day that was alright cos it's only Sony who lost out isn't it?
I just like how alot of people's interpretation of "Free Market" means
- Companies are "free to do whatever they like"
- Consumers are "free to get screwed"
:(
Aggies
F*** Sony!
if company X was HUGE and Y was small and X was just and Y was evil and Y won in court against X i would be pissed.
notice that the parts are reversed, sony is huge and evil even if they are trying to profit.
according to the "superior logic court in my head" the Hight Court in London are computer and tech illiterate and hazardous to your mental health, please stay away from them.
there are n things that are ilegal that you do everyday all day, small things, things that are legal were you live but not in another country.
and if my memory and mind does not fail me there is no such law that prevents anyone exporting anything to anywere unless it is ilegal were it is exporting to, like absint and cuban cigars in the USA, now a PS3 or a PSP is not something ilegal anywere IRC, not even in China or Russia.
Lik-Sang was selling PSP at a lower price than the european PSP, shame on Sony i say ,for raping your pockets.
If the PSP and PS3 are region coded then the japonese PSP and PS3 are kind of..... useless in Europe, then the person that got the PSP or PS3 would have to buy a new one..... the European version to be able to play European locked titles.....
AHHHH and the thing that i almost forgot to say, if Lik-Sang is ilegal then start closing ebay because there are loads of PSPs being sold/exported there sometimes at lower prices.
No one in the world likes you right now.
Hey c'mon now, I disagree with Krazeh as strongly as anyone else here, but he has a right to state his opinion without that sorta thing being thrown at him.
Play nice an' all that, just don't buy sony.
We need a Bit-Tech meet on bonfire night; everyone brings a Sony product of their choice, which is added to the pile and dowsed in petrol. Maybe have a competition - the winner being awarded with the honour of striking the match.
Also, don't forget that Lik-Sang were big supporters of homebrew development, and provided sponsorship to many sites, including DCemu.
TBH i read that as refering to Sony Nae Krazeh?
Goodbye Lik-Sang, hello Communism.
Honestly, anybody that supports this is a communist pig.
www.wikipedia.com/wiki/communism - read
Also, a Chinese company being forced to shut down by a Japanese company doesn't entirely strike me as being a success for communism. :p
The Sony DVD player was meant to be pretty good, but there are plenty others out there so it's not a big deal.
The fact is what Lik-Sang were doing may have been a little shady, but it's not like it would have made any difference to European sales, if people want to import they will, it's hardly a large proportion of people anyway.
However what Sony did was steal someone elses technology, pass it off as their own and then refuse to pay up when taken to court. Did they ever pay up in the end? Microsoft did the same thing by using that technology, but at least they were big enough to admit their mistake.
Apparently Lik-Sang mentioned that some of the PSP's were imported by European SCE employees. Then Sony commented about how Lik-Sang shouldn't have been giving out personal details as it's a breach of data protection. Funny though, that's exactly what Sony wanted. At the beginning of their lawsuit against Lik-Sang they demanaded the names and contact details of everyone in the UK/Europe who imported a PSP.
I've shopped at Lik-Sang many times and love the service they provide. To think that they'd actually shut down completely as a result of these lawsuits just sickens me that Sony would go to this extent to protect their pockets.
I'm glad I bought an Xbox 360.
sony didn't order them closed, Lik-Sang just couldn't afford the legal fees.
Ok, now that I got that out of my system.....
This is just rather stupid.
In a perfect world: When you buy something, it is yours to do whatever you wish.
What law is gonna stop me from buying 10 ps3's and selling them, stupid sony.
Sony r nub's.
no it was ok in the end cause sony was actually stealing something. Lik-Sang payed sony for the products they were selling just like any store did. sony wasn't paying for something that wasn't theirs.
capitalism :-p
Wait, maybe that's the answer to budget problems... :D
capitalism :-p[/QUOTE]
Unfortunatley, for capitolism to work, there has to be a loser.
Also, Lik-Sang have lost a lot of my respect overnight, when I first saw the original press release there were no names mentioned just about "numerous" SCEE executives enjoying imported PSPs from Lik-Sang with free Lik-Sang merchandise.
And now they named the people, that is very bad.
BUSHISM/REPUBLICANISM seems apt. this is facism by the back door & its been creeping along insidiously stealing our rights. the money men rule the world,,
Exactly, AV producers restricting online sales and now this. We are getting close to price control by global companys in a supposedly free market. Remember we are not talking about counterfiet goods here, the grip on rip off Britain just got tighter. :(
They make good TV's, I like their mp3 players and my phone is sony ericsson lol, don't forget about your phones!!
Oh, and their hi-fi stuff aint bad either!
i disagree - Sonys forced their hand - if they hadn't proven their claim then it
would have been always just a claim .
So your happy to be seen as a cash cow -happy to pay over the odds for your electronics and wait longer for them than us & Asian buyers. You don't mind being treated as a 2nd class buyer?
same here, im usually the type to chose sony over others
i have a sony erricson K800 (though it is a fantastic phone), i have a 6Gb sony MP3 player (shure headphones tho ) i have a sony in car stereo which is actually very good (mp3, atrac3, cd, Aux in on the front, 4x50watt)
my dad has a sony laptop too. they really dont make crap products in some areas, id buy another sony head unit, and id definately buy another mp3 player from them (battery life is good and SQ leaves ipods in the dust)
their HDTV's are awesome too. there is a price premium on a lot of things, much like apple, but most of the time it is worth it and you really cant fault the designers....they do produce some stunning looking kit. (on the price thing i do know im paying more btw, but most of my sony items were scored brand new off ebay for just over half price, the K800 was free on orange)
i think those products ive mentioned, sony are actually very good at, and i wouldnt hesitate to buy again or reccommend.
its Sony computer entertainment thats letting the show down with their crazy ideas and desperate marketing. i've already spoken on the PS3, when i heard it was delayed till mar 2007, i bought a 360 the next day and ive been playing solidly ever since, i may eventually get a PS3 in 2008 or whenever GT5 arrives.....i must play the next GT (GTHD doesnt count its a rehashed GT4)
Errr, no, there is a little something called data security.
Would you like it if a company you purchased items from Named you as a customer without your consent?
Wikipedia would seem to suggest that an "Oligarchy" is any form of government where the political power rests with a few because of wealth/power/military strength etc and "Corporatism" is the specific version where it is corporations have have the strangehold.
Disgusting move by sony, wasn't very inclined to buy there products before, certainly not any more inclined to do so now.
Surely there must be enough of a number to rally through the center of London. The EU complains enough at Microsoft so they have to change Vista so it 'complies' with some legislations, why not shift their attention towards Sony for their anti-competitor stance? I wonder if all this came about because the taxman wasn't getting enough of a chunk out of us, what with imported PSP's dodging import tax? Perhaps they forced Sony to act on the matter.
Good on Lik-Sang for naming people that bought import PSP's - after all, it's what Sony was after.
Even though I do own a couple of Sony products, I certainly won't be buying any more. We need rear windscreen stickers or some of those flags with 'Boycott Sony' or simply 'Don't buy a PS3'.
normally i'd agree - but in this case I feel the action is justified. After all wasnae viagra buyers?
;)
It wouldn't surprise me if Lik-Sang attempted to restart as a seperate company. But there is no need for spitefulness.
Has anyone looked at Bretts article? Thats common sense really.
But I am slightly annoyed by the fact that everyone sees Microsoft and Sony as being the big bad bullies, they both are businesses and its not the companies as a whole, its just departments.
Everyone tries to say Microsoft is bad, but I strongly doubt that we would be anywhere near the current computing power without Windows.
And as has been pointed out elsewhere, we wouldn't have half the AV tech in our homes without Sony.
He explained things as they are. I say things as they are are unacceptable and that we should vote with our collective wallet to change them. If SOny feels that they can't make a profit without screwing their customers, then they don't deserve t be in business.
Instead of complaining about the loss of liksang we should be thinking of ways to get them back into business. Maybe a donation by the thousands of customers that liksang ha(s)d. They should be back in business by no time :p
Because by doing this they've screwed over a great many consumers, and are abusing free markets and the courts. They deserve to be screwed over in return, and the only way we as consumers can do that is to not buy their stuff, which is exactly what everyone should do.
EXACTLY! ;)
Nobody I know is going to buy a PS3, they are either getting a Wii, or already have a 360.
I for one am not going to buy a Sony product for a long while.
Just saw an article over at 1Up which might be relevant, if their sources are correct (all emphasis is mine):
It is a sad day when u have a big conpany turn against importers, Most of those games will never see the light of day on the UK shores....SONY WE HATE U!!!
www.lik-sang.com :'(