Report: Sony troubled by 'reverse-importing,' no more PS3s for South Korea

by Xav de Matos on Mar 23rd 2009 8:16PM

Sony is halting shipments of PlayStation 3 to South Korea due to a "reverse-importing" issue, according to a Chosen Online report, as translated by Kotaku. Apparently (somewhat) creative gamers are taking advantage of the depreciated South Korean Won (?) by purchasing their consoles for a reduced price in South Korea and hauling them back to Japan, where the Yen (¥) remains strong. The 80 GB PS3 launched in South Korea in June 2007 and sells for ?480,000 ($321); versus ¥39,900 ($412) in Japan. A Sony representative said the company was "troubled" by the importing issue.

Sony isn't the only company going this route to save money on dwindling currencies. Nintendo recently increased the margin on Wiis sold to UK retailers, forcing stores to increase the price of the system. Also, Microsoft still charges you the life of your first born for a larger Xbox 360 hard drive. (Well, not outright but ... approximately.)

[Via Game Politics; image credit: Enterprise Ireland]

Source

Tags: business, japan, sony, sony-computer-entertainment, south-korea

Reader Comments (44)

Anyone know what it says in the speech bubble?

"Why Sony? WHY!!!!!"

Don't listen to Yakul... it really says, "By the blood of dawn, the 14 Celestrial Warriors shall ride flying catfish from the Crimson Dawn. Those who fear their wrath only need to prepare for it."

Stick man wants to play high jump, then go over to your house at 4 o'clock. Stick man then asks if he can play high jump there, and show off his new trophy.

I think...

"please naow I can has metal gear?"

This was also happening in Mexico, Pay american price rather than mexican price, since it's more expensive strangely here in Mexico.

says "wae, sony? waeyo?!"

But, Joystiq, I thought you liked lolcats.

(insert Starcraft related joke here)

additional pylons?

It translates to "Why? Sony? Why?" The second character represents a formality.

Except Korean doesn't have characters. It's an alphabet. You meant the second word.

Skye: Except that 'character' is a perfectly proper term to refer to a syllabic block, and Korean does use Chinese characters (Hanja), albeit growing more rare.

Feba: Are you Korean? Or do you take Korean? Because I am Korean and have taken Korean courses throughout my life.

A character is not used to describe syllabic blocks. A character is used to describe writing that contains inherent meaning through symbolism rather than phonetic sound. Since Korean has an alphabet, the group of syllables are called WORDS, because they are phonetic. You wouldn't call "fish" a "character". You'd call it a "word", because the meaning is in the phonetics not what "fish" represents visually.

Also, there was not a single Chinese character in the posted picture. It was written purely in Korean.

It's a little disturbing that you got and the OP got voted up to three stars.

yeah, i'm still upset by the price Microsoft charges for their 120gig HDDs. i'd rather spend half that price for nearly three times the space for good HDD for my PS3. sucks too, because i only have about 10gigs left from my original 16 on my 360.

It's a silly move. PSP has a strong following in South Korea and pulling PS3 supplies is roughly the same as pissing in the eye of your fanbase or potential customers. Of course seeing things from a Japanese company perspective, I could probably equate Sony's thoughts as such...

"South Koreans? Fuck 'em. They ain't Japanese, yo."

Good old days in japanese class... My teacher would spend at least 5 minutes each class dissing Korea.

Sony can do what it wants. If they want to cut off a market, more power to them. Sure, they could just raise the price, but hell, that would make too much sense.

hell just up the price on it.

Sorry, that made too much sense for Joystiq readers. Apparently, embargoing PS3s from an entire industrialized nation is preferable to adjusting the price in that country.

If that doesn't tell them they need to drop the price then nothing ever will. I'm not sure how long of a commute it translate to but wouldn't it make more sense to simply raise the price opposed to cutting off potential consumers in S.Korea?

They might. There's no indication shipments won't resume later with a different price point. This strikes me as more of a "Wait a minute!" move while they sort things out. I can't imagine them just dropping a country forever.

Actually it's more of a Japan pricing economy versus a South Korean pricing economy. Take, for example, music CDs. In Japan, the average new CD costs roughly $35 and occassionally comes with a bonus DVD. This shit, frankly, wouldn't fly outside of Japan. So in South Korean, you can buy the exact same CD except with a tag stating "Not for sale in Japan" for $15.

With high ticket items and even everyday media, a trip to South Korea has the "save money on shit" bonus to the vacation. See for yourself, check Play-Asia's pricing on a Japan release of a CD against an Asia release of the same CD.

Downright dirty of Sony to stop importers from bargain shopping. Pathetic and greedy.

I'm from Canada, and im pissed that prices of video games are now back to pre-2008 levels... yep 69.99 for brand new games. (Greedy bastards).

So now I'm back to buying all my games from American game sites that offer either dirt cheap shipping deals or lowered prices, or just cruising ebay for 30-40 dollar brand new sealed games.

I really hope console prices don't follow suit and jump back up to 50-100 dollars above US MSRP, or im never shopping locally again.

So this has nothing to do with Japan and Korea in the World Baseball Classic finals?

Sony should be thankful for every PS/3 sold, even if people resell them. The PS/3 is in 3rd place worldwide.

Actually the 360 is 3rd place world wide. The only place the 360 really beats Sony is in America.

not so Gentlemen:

actually, Actually the PS3 is in 3rd place worldwide as the 360 is ahead in America and Europe and is only in 3rd place in Japan.

And the 360 maintains a 2nd place position in those two territories in weekly sales, meaning the already in 3rd place PS3 keeps losing ground to the 360.

@ gentlemen.

are you serious. after being on joystiq for i dont know how long, and showing even some interest in the sales of consoles... you are not aware of the 22 mill and the 28 mill console sales marks yet?.... either you're a huge fanboy that wanted to fool some people with that comment.. or ur just a grade A dumass.

mynk

Minor correction for you.

Sony hit 21 million near the end of February. MS hit 28 million last December.

If you are talking about today, Sony is probably around 21.5 to 22 million, and MS is very near, if not past the 30 million mark.

But you are definitely right, MS is ahead world-wide and the only major market where the PS3 outsells the 360 is in Japan.

"Sony is halting shipments of PlayStation 3 to South Korea due to a "reverse-importing" issue, according to a Chosen Online report, as translated by Kotaku."

The website is called Chosun Online. "Chosen" would've only fit if you were trying to make some sort of pun.

Actually the 360 is only slightly ahead in the UK, but the rest of Europe is Sony dominated. UK alone is not Europe and that's the only place Microsoft tends to count if they try to count Europe at all. Also keep in mind that Europe's launch of the PS3 was delayed well into 2007 so the PS3 isn't even two years old in Europe yet.

have you guys checked out the kotaku picture? just click the link for the article. trust me.. the joystiq crowd loves this stuff.

Once again Sony is trying to tell consumers where they can buy stuff from.

Unicorns Have AIDS

The price of a 360 hard drive upgrade is just a slap in the face. It is god damned ridiculous what Microsoft charges for a 120GB hard drive.

"Reverse importing"....?

So like "exporting"?

Exporting frontwards is the correct term.

Poor Korea...

Gentlemen

You're absolutely wrong.

The 360 is outselling the PS3 in the UK by a wide margin. It's not even close. MS is also outselling the PS3 across Europe as a whole, although individual countries may vary.

Most European countries don't amount to enough sales to bother comparing. France, the 2nd largest European market only sold 700k PS3's in all of 2008. That's less than the number of PS3's that sold in the US last December. Italy has less than 200k PS3's sold since launch. Finland hasn't even broken 100k yet, lifetime to date.

Latest tracking by GFK has the 360 ahead of the PS3 across Europe by about 1 million units last year, and since the last price drop, MS has sold 2 million consoles in Europe. Sony's only sold about 5 million systems world-wide in the same time frame, with about 2.5 million going to the US, 1 million going to Japan, and the remaining 1.5 million going to "PAL territories" which includes non-European countries like Australia, the Middle East, much of Africa, and Brazil and Argentina.

this really sucks! since i live in south korea and ps3 blue ray drive just failed.man i have the best luck in the world:(

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days

Vita 'UMD Passport' won't be offered in US 220 comments
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review: A tempting fate 153 comments
David Jaffe leaves Eat Sleep Play, layoffs hit developer [Update] 107 comments
Don't call it a remake: Final Fantasy X is a 'remaster,' to be clear 95 comments
Battleship movie adapted into FPS by Double Helix 93 comments

Report: Sony troubled by 'reverse-importing,' no more PS3s for South Korea

Reader Comments (44)

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:19PM technoKyle said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:24PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:27PM SheppyReturns said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:29PM Premature ejaculation man said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 9:01PM Istari Spartan said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 11:01PM Ridgecity said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 3:17AM sinai said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 4:28AM Istari Spartan said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:19PM DonaldMick said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 9:58PM Shmil said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:23PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 9:44PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 11:19PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 25th 2009 12:21AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:23PM atrimus said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:23PM SheppyReturns said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 10:50AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:25PM LaughingTarget said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:43PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 10:15PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:46PM Johnnynumber5 is powered by cell said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:49PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 9:01PM SheppyReturns said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 8:59PM MyAbsolution said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 9:04PM The1stMJC said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 10:17PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 10:24PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 11:32PM Sly C said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 10:58PM wshwe said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 12:04AM Douche McBaggins said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 12:26AM Ordeith said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 1:07AM mynk said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 12:02PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 11:24PM StrikeMan said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 1:30AM Douche McBaggins said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 1:10AM mynk said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 1:42AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 9:12AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 9:42AM Ravnos said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 9:46AM TRTX said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 10:54AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 9:55AM JoshMilewski said

Posted: Mar 24th 2009 12:13PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 30th 2009 4:31AM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Double Fine Kickstarter passes $1 million in under 24 hours, breaking yet another record

Featured Stories

The Joystiq Show - 024: Kingdoms of Double Fine

Shank 2 review: Refined brutality

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier brings information warfare to the front

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days