Playasia is an online retailer of entertainment products from

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

. The website sells

import game Import gamers are a subset of the video game player community that take part in the practice of playing video games from another region, usually from Japan where the majority of games for certain systems originate. Reasons for importing There ...

s, DVDs, music, CDs, gadgets, groceries, books, gaming console accessories, cables and toys. Playasia is based in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

and caters to the

Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pacific Isla ...

region, but also offers most of the products to international buyers.

History

Launch

Playasia was established in 2002 in

, with the launch of its website selling games and accessories for all major current game consoles and computer operating systems. In addition to video games, the site also offers electronic goods, such as products from the

Tamagotchi The is a handheld digital pet that was created in Japan by Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ and Aki Maita of Bandai. It was released by Bandai on November 23, 1996 in Japan and in the USA on May 1, 1997, quickly becoming one of the biggest toy fads o ...

series.

Funding of game development

Playasia had funded the development of

side-scrolling shooter Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...

'' Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer''.

Import suspension

After the lawsuit against

Lik-Sang Lik Sang () was a popular distributor of Asian electronics. The company sold import games, toys, figures, anime-related items, and obscure adapters and controllers for various video game platforms. Lik Sang closed as of October 24, 2006, as a res ...

for importing

NTSC-J NTSC-J is the informal designation for the analogue television standard used in Japan. The system is based on the US NTSC (NTSC-M) standard with minor differences. While NTSC-M is an official CCIR and FCCNational Television System Committee (1 ...

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

hardware and software to Europe, Play-Asia announced that it would no longer be shipping PlayStation products to the EU. However, there have been big changes in the video games industry, such as console manufacturers and publishers abandoning regional lockouts and the evolution of consumer buying behaviour driven by the acceptance and growth of global cross-border ecommerce, encouraged by major branded ecommerce platforms like Amazon, Ebay and Alibaba. Therefore, Playasia still ships PlayStation products and games Globally as of late 2010, as well as into Europe.

Play Exclusives - Premium Physical Releases

In January 2017 Playasia launched Soldner X-2: Final Prototype to begin the PLAY Exclusives program, a line of still ongoing physical console releases manufactured in partnership with publishing company Eastasiasoft. The goal of the publishing venture is to support and promote indie developers and their games, as well as physical game collecting. Originally launching with only PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita releases, Playasia eventually expanded into Nintendo Switch releases in 2018 with titles such as Dimension Drive, RXN -Raijin-, and Death Road to Canada. Due to the niche nature of game collecting PLAY Exclusive releases are produced as a single batch ranging from 1,000 - 6,000 copies per console release and are determined by demand. As a result many of the popular releases and titles sell out shortly after opening sale.

References

External links

Official website
Entertainment companies of Hong Kong Online retailers of Hong Hong Internet properties established in 2002 2002 establishments in Hong Kong {{commerce-website-stub