With most people we know focusing on Nintendo this week we really shouldn't forget about Sony and its hugely successful PlayStation series. Sony have this week announced that the PlayStation 3 will not have any region locking on its games. This is a bold - but not unexpected - move by Sony, claiming its reasons to battle against piracy.

Often "mod-chips" used for playing pirated games come out of development from people claiming they're just trying to "unlock" the region codes on systems. It's well known that this only a legitimate front for an illegitimate reason.

However, gamers, including myself, have imported games over the years, because they simply don't want to wait 6 months for the 50hz PAL version of a particular game. The global market is more united today, publishers have realised this and some even see the marketing benefit of a global game launch. To be honest, we'll be looking very closely at Nintendo to see if they follow suit.

Also announced this week is a pricing point for the PS3, lots of rumours have hyped up a very expensive PS3, seems everyone was right. Sony have stated that the new console will cost "no less than 50,000 YEN". That's around $425 USD and 350 EUR in real conversions, but of course even with shipment and import costs accounted for, we estimate the MINIMUM price for a PS3 to be around the $499 mark, with lots of analysts predicting higher.

Obviously Sony have released previous consoles at around this price and got away with it, will consumers be happy to fork out $500 all over again? Who knows, but we can expect a very interesting battle between Revolution and PS3.

[source lik-sang.com]