Pixel Cowboy

As much as I'd love to jump on the Bash-SOny bandwagon, I don't see this as a sign of desperation on the retailers part.
From their point of view, that second hand PS2 is worth $150 to $200 (Not sure what the going rate is in the states, but it's about £80 here in the UK) so they're really selling the PS3s for $650 and $750. This is a much more attractive proposition for them as it allows them to make a real profit on just the hardware.
You'll remember that one of the chains (can't remember which) seemed to run a test program in Hawaii where they required a trade in to buy (preorder?) a PS3 at launch.

@ 007craft

Right. So to put it another way, the only people not complaining about the price are the 15-21 year old single males. For a next-gen console looking to shift 100 million units, thats a VERY small target market.

Can't speak for everywhere, but GAME in the UK were taking as many pre-orders as they could. However, they did make it clear that this did not guarantee you a console a launch. If you were they hundredth pre-order then you would get the hundredth Wii, whether that was on launch day or three months later.

Hailing from the UK, I take objection to comments that Europe should not have a system that differs from USA. These standards were drawn up in the mid 20th century when countries and continents were much more insulated. Sharing media probably wasn't a large concern then. Also, given the fact that NTSC is, in many ways, a poorer format than PAL, maybe it should be the colonials who change systems! :o)
If you want details on why there are two different systems, I suggest you check the Wikipedia entries for PAL and NTSC.
Essentially, the reason for the frequency difference was down to the prevailing power supply in the respective regions. America had a 60Hz power supply, which made it simple to run the TV signal at 60Hz. Europe had a 50Hz supply.
However, PAL is not confined to Europe, and is more widely used than NTSC which is found only in USA, Canada and Japan. Secondly, PAL is generally accepted to give a better picture than NTSC due to the encoding method and greater vertical resolution.

Getting back on topic, without Joystiq pointing this out, I'd probably have been quite happy with my 50Hz VC games. However, now that I know better - Damn you Nintendo!!!

"The request is written in only English, Spanish and French, implying that the disk is region-specific."

This request is generated by the console prior to the disc being inserted, so it's the console which is region specific, not the disc.
Most likely, it's the console's firmware which dertermines locality.

Ok, the Wii is not 1.5 times more powerful than the Gamecube. That little piece of mis-information came from a poorly transalted interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. Later translations clarified that he was talking about the development suite (makes more sense as he's a software designer) and the fact that it was an incremental change from the Gamecube dev studio. This also makes sense as the new Broadway CPU is supposed to be very similar to the Gamecube's. In the same way that the development software for a PC would be similar if you were writing for a Pentium or a Pentium 4.
The 2-3 times more powerful figure has been passed around a lot. I haven't seen anything concrete to back this up, Nintendo are being very tight-lipped over the exact contents of the Wii, so I would take it with a pinch of salt.

As for the disdain expressed for Nintendo trying to make a profit, I really do not understand this attitude. Of course they want to make money. No company makes products out of the goodness of their heart. If they do not turn a profit, there will be no company left. Sony's current financial state shows the inherent problems with selling hardware at a loss.

I'm not up on my international trade law, so I'm reluctant to comment on a lot of this case at the moment.
However, I do not believe that Lik Sang were illegally importing anything. As I understand it, any transaction you make with Lik Sang is considered to be within Hong Kong jurisdiction, you are buying from them in Hong Kong. You are then responsible for any duties or taxes due when it's brought into your country of residence.
Although I have never dealt with Lik Sang, I have bought from Amazon.com (I'm based in the UK) and from Play.com (who are based in Jersey which avoids certain taxes). While I should pay VAT on all these purchase, in reality it rarely happens.