14 DAY TRIAL // The London riots have created quite a few poignant moments, including images of local residents defensing businesses and reports of kitchen staff defending their property and clients with frying pans, but the most important for gamers was probably the image of Ashraf Haziq, a young man who was injured and then mugged by the roving violent gangs.
Now Sony has announced that it planned to find the youngster and replace his console and his stolen games.
Alan Duncan, who is the marketing director working for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, has accessed a site that has been set up in order to help the youngster deal with the situation, saying that he would like to contribute a new PlayStation Portable and some games to his recovery.
Another representative from the United Kingdom division of Sony added, “If we can find out how to get it to him we’ll replace the PSP.”
Namco Bandai has also announced that it plans to give a number of video games to Ashraf Haziq.
It's clearly a good opportunity for the two companies to do a little public relations and build some goodwill inside the gaming community in the United Kingdom.
Sony itself was a victim of the riots as one of its biggest warehouses in the United Kindom has been set on fire by protesters.
The company has already said that it has lost quite a few shipments of PlayStation 3 home gaming consoles and PlayStation Portable handhelds, which could lead to some distribution problems in the near future.
A number of publications have moved to say that one of the reasons for the London riots was the presence of violent video games, with usual culprit Grand Theft Auto being cited by name.
Of course, the real reasons for the violence lie more with the lack of community coherence and the cutbacks made in government social spending.