Letter to the Editor: Is Sony PlayStation alienating the WRC’s US fans? – March 2004  

Dear Editor,

I came across your article about the use of the PlayStation WRC game in marketing the WRC itself [see Case Study: World Rally Championship and gaming - May 2003]. It sounds great and it may be working in Europe, but not in the US.
The US publisher of the first WRC game (BAM Entertainment) only issued the first in the series and has no plans to publish WRC Extreme (2) or the new WRC 3. By the time BAM's game was available in the US I was already reading about WRC 2 in magazines such as Rally XS.
Unhappily European copies of the new games are incompatible with the US video format (PAL versus NTSC) and are blocked by the regional encoding put on DVDs.
There are rally games available in the US but none licensed by the WRC so we don't have access to the current courses, cars, drivers, etc. I like to race each rally around the time of the new year's rally at that location, using the right cars and drivers.
Somehow Sony's 'exclusive' licence from the WRC has become a licence to make it unavailable to the US market. I purchased the PlayStation mainly to play WRC, wildly excited by reading about it in Rally XS, although the DVD function is still useful.
I have learned that some WRC gaming fans have modified their PlayStations with 'mod chips' that defeat the regional encoding restrictions Sony has imposed. That means that the licensed Japanese edition of WRC Extreme can be made to play on a US PlayStation; Japan also shares the US video format (NTSC) making that a little easier. Sony maintains these chips are illegal but a recent court decision in Italy held otherwise. There may be ways to get around the PAL format problem, but the most direct 'solution' seems to be buying the Japanese editions as (and if) they come out and modifying the PlayStation itself; at least, that will work for WRC Extreme. I read that many DVDs and consoles have built-in routines to detect and defeat such chips, so the struggle to play goes back and forth. Road Runner versus Wiley Coyote?
Other people in the US have managed to purchase Japanese PlayStations that can use an adaptor to compensate for the slightly different electrical current format in the US; but then are you sure which controllers work on the Japanese models?
Sony appears to maintain that any alternative to its restrictions is illegal, and you can't count on being able to order from overseas, or even to get your order through customs if it is shipped. Sometimes friends and family 'smuggle' copies of the Japanese edition to the US.
Do you have to become an international criminal to participate in the experience of the 'official' WRC game in the US? Sony won't take "yes, please sell me your product" for an answer.
I am coming to feel that WRC is so uninterested in US fans that I am foolish to be a fan of the whole sport. I am coming to resent constantly reading articles and advertisements (both excellent in themselves) promoting WRC gaming which I am forbidden to participate in by its exclusive licensing arrangements.
How clever of them. How silly of me to care.
Anyway, it is a reverse success story in the US.

Howard Huggins
Hungrytown Hollow
Covesville, VA
USA

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