Playstation 2 component incites African war

[moidock]

Playstation 2 component incites African war - Video Game Feature - Yahoo! Video Games

Quote:

Console war reaches past the couch and into the Congo, claims report.

By Ben Silverman

Has the video game industry dug up its very own blood diamond?

According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the center of the conflict is the unrefined metallic ore, coltan. After processing, coltan turns into a powder called tantalum, which is used extensively in a wealth of western electronic devices including cell phones, computers and, of course, game consoles.

Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.

So where's the connection to Sony? According to Toward Freedom, during the 2000 launch of the PS2, the electronics giant was having trouble meeting consumer demand. To pump out more units, Sony required a significant increase in the production of electric capacitors, which are primarily made with tantalum. This helped drive the world price of the powder from $49/pound to a whopping $275/pound, resulting in the frenzied scouring of the Congolese hills known for being ripe with coltan.

Sony has since sworn off using tantalum acquired from the Congo, claiming that current builds of the PS2, PSP and PS3 consoles are sourced from a variety of mines in several different countries.

But according to researcher David Barouski, they're hardly off the hook.

"SONY's PlayStation 2 launch...was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan that began in early 1999," he explained. "SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability, because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don't care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan."

Currently, the Playstation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all-time, having sold through over 140 million units.

So who's to blame here?

Sony, not likely if they haven't been directly involved.

Greed? Yes.

Government that doesn't give a rat's ass about its citizens and greed? Completely.

[chode_messiah]

It's the people of Africa who are responsible. Sony isn't putting a gun to anyone's head to get tantalum. Oonga King is an idiot.

[DWall]

this is about the f00king ps2 launch anyway, can you say

THIS IS OLD

[akabaloo]

If this is about the PS2, why is there a picture of the PS3? I mean the title clearly states 'Playstation 2 component incites African war' If there are over 140 million PS2s out there, I'm sure someone has a picture of at least one...

[panic!]

PS2 just hit the shelves in Africa, jezzus guyz.

[Craig]

the PS2 is still a good seller in 3rd world countries. Africa is such a mess in so many ways, sad to see something aimed at leisure becoming a source of disagreement and violence

[DennyCrane]

The Congo region has been in a state of civil war for decades. This is the area where the blue-helmeted UN troops are accused of not only looking the other way at the atrocities commited by warlords, but actually participating. This is a really bad area of the world and I honestly have no idea what the solution could be. But blaming Sony or the people who buy their games is really off base.

[VincentVega]

yeah that's ridiculous, everyone already said what I was going to. That is an issue that needs to be taken up with the nation, not Sony. they don't have a thing to do with it

[DennyCrane]

Most of Africa is a mess. Darfur has had a genocide going on for years and literally nothing is being done. Ironically, Libya of all places is inching towards peace and international relations lately.

[DominiKing]

it's all a scam for money and attention. Africa is messed up and if poeple really cared then they'd bitch to the right people. We can go to war with Iraq and have thousands die from both sides but we can't go to Africa and clear some of this sh!t up?