If you follow the game business news, you might have known of a few lawsuits Sony had filed against Lik-Sang, the Hong Kong game exporter, over selling Asian PSPs to Europe. Now comes the news that, after losing the suits, Lik-Sang is closing. You can see their official announcement here.
This is different from Lik-Sang's 2003 suit from Nintendo over the sale of GBA flash cards, in that was retailing perfectly legitimate product (rather than something that is legal with major infringing uses). The purchaser happened to be in a different economical zone where Sony Europe had the franchise. This is the extreme argument of region encoding: that I shouldn't be allowed to buy a particular arrangement of materials because I, living where I do, shouldn't want it, or should be able to afford to pay more, or shouldn't have that choice because of some byzantine agreement among tentacles of the company that produced it.
This is exactly why I'm so delighted that the DS doesn't have regional lockout, and so disappointed that Nintendo backtracked from its initial hints that the Wii is similarly unencumbered.
I had great experiences purchasing from Lik-Sang, and will miss them. More business for Play-Asia in the short term, I guess—until someone sues them too.
