From the trenches: Goodbye to games?

OPINION: I don’t know about you, but this High Court ruling legalising mod-chips in games consoles puzzles me a bit.

Essentially, as you’ll read in our story on page 6, six judges in a four-year court case involving retailer Eddy Stevens (a mod-chip supplier) and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) found that mod-chips were legal.

Great news for the consumer who loves nothing better than to be able to play cheaper overseas versions of SCE’s games on their modified PlayStations. Yeah sure, it’s a great win for the so-called “little guy”, people like our friend Mr Stevens, but for the rest of the channel, it’s not.

Paul Pritsis of Another World Computer Centre, was particularly angry following the ruling. “I can now kiss goodbye any hope of selling more legitimate software,” he said.

I tend to agree, although you’d be forgiven for thinking that Paul is jumping the gun a bit here.

Copy protection exists to protect developers from software piracy, which is a major global issue. I do agree that this ruling is going to make things worse for genuine retailers and resellers that are trying to make a buck selling games software.

On the flipside, the court and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) argued that regional coding was detrimental to consumer choice.

That’s a fair argument as well and it is certainly a pretty contentious issue following the ruling. On one side you’ve got the “modders”, fighting for their rights to give consumers a wider choice of console games and arguably a better price, and on the other side you have the average retailer or “non-modder” trying to turn a buck selling consoles and games software.

I’m sure the folks at Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will be scratching their heads thinking about how to get around this one. Maybe removing regional coding completely from their product offerings is the answer.

Email me your thoughts. Is the price delta between parallel imported games wide enough for it to make a difference? As a games software and console reseller, do you expect to lose any business as a result of this decision? I’d like to know.