Buying A PS3 From Japan
Ever since the halcyon days of the Mega Drive and SNES, any video game console launch has usually met with feverous response, and not just in Japan. Although that country is still predominantly the most fanatical when it comes to videogames, the rise in popularity of import gaming has led to the western territories such as the US and Europe to become as excited as the Japanese market when it comes to new hardware launches. The extent of this popularity became apparent when Sony’s latest machine, the PlayStation 3, became a high profile victim of import difficulties.
With the release of the PS3 actually seeing a change in priority for Sony Japan for the first time since they entered the videogames market almost 15 years ago, with America actually being reserved more units than Japan, the import scene changed almost overnight. Although imports were expensive in the past, Sony Japan sent so few units to Japanese retailers that prices were inhibitive for importers. With the PS3 coming in two models – the standard 20 GB memory system and the more advanced 60 GB version – prices fluctuated wildly. This wasn’t helped by a newer type of importer – professional traders using Chinese people to buy in bulk.
There have been many news stories about the launch day fiasco of the PS3. Hailed as a major media event, it was more a case of embarrassment as the first buyers of the console were invited to be interviewed by the inventor of the PlayStation concept, Ken Kutaragi. As the questions were met with a polite nod, it was apparent that these early customers were Chinese. These normal people were paid by businessmen to buy up any PS3′s they could, so they could be sold at a massive profit on eBay and similar sites.
Because Sony made the decision to keep the PS3 at an open price point, retailers could sell at whatever price they deemed acceptable, and this played straight into the professional buyers’ hands, who could afford the mark up on the already expensive console. When the machines eventually did make it onto eBay, the prices being asked were up to a staggering ten times the normal RRP.
Importers from other countries also suffered. Not only did the lack of units push even the most basic of the two versions past the price of the 60 GB model, insurance and shipping costs were astronomical due to the high value of the machine. And with Sony themselves cracking down on import retailers, resulting in the closure of popular website Lik-Sang, the days of having the choice of an import system for more variety in games may well have seen its day, thanks to the disastrous PS3 debacle.