Australia Asks About High Game Prices

[Jack O'Shea]

i really have no idea why games are so expensive here in australia. it has nothing to do with the exchange rate as US and AU are about equal ($1AU - $0.98US) and it wouldn't be from taxes because if the government was getting money from the tax then they would make an inquiry.

 

[Ocelano]

I've been fighting against this for ages and in fact, I've done some sneaky things with steam to avoid the "better beaches tax". I've had people make the same argument before about our higher pay rates but I've always wondered why it's such a big issue when I can import for significantly cheaper for consoles without a region lock. That's including shipping.

When Disgaea 4 came out I found it was cheaper to buy it from a US Store and have it shipped to australia than to actually buy It from my local game shop That and there was like a 3-4 month delay in release dates between us and the USA so not only did I end up paying less for the game buy ordering it from the other side of the god damned world I got it a quarter of a year early to. oh and I think if I recall correctly I payed almost as much for the shipping as I did for the game. This JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

The hardest part of the entire transaction was finding A US online store that would sell an Australian US PSN Codes, as you need to have a Us addressed credit card to buy from US PSN, and that only ended up taking 10 - 20 minutes.

 

[rapidoud]

So much stupid in this thread. Let me start by saying if you know nothing about Australia then please, leave.

Shipping: It is cheaper for us to buy a product from a US brick and morter store and have them ship it to us, at least $10 cheaper including GST (no way you guys don't know aussie taxes? I'm surprised!) as opposed to local who can buy in bulk yet still charge more than $40 more.

DD: Steam are just as bad as the rest of them where they give us a nice 'Australia tax' to be extra kind, and the primary reason I loathe valve and I am too tired to explain why here.

Censorship: Christ, more American freedom of speech crap. FO3 was because of morpheine addiction (although they changed it to the canon Med-X for everyone anyway), Witcher 2 because we are yet to receive R18+ for games (I'm not going to go around blaming American citizens for wars their politicians start either especially considering chances are you didn't vote for them to be kicked out), just like we had exactly 1 politican opposed to it.

Higher Minimum Wage: Our Median wage is $55k, US is $36k IIRC, minimum has nothing to do with it (I know it is at least $14, if not smaller). You're not even counting the fact we pay more than double on nearly all living expenses (our major cities are quite high on the most expensive cities to live in the world list).

Russia: They have an enormous rate of piracy over there, and we don't; are you suggesting we should increase ours to compensate for cost of living?

We also get games later than other countries by far, for no other reason than 'meh' AKA to stop YOU GUYS pirating it from us. The worst case I saw was Rock Band 2 coming out in the US before Rock band 1 was even out here, not to forget SSBB came out months there before here.

They wonder why we pirate TV shows too when we receive them months and months later.

In the midst of all this are the truly despisable bunch who block Australian IPs and refuse to release it here anyway.

This isn't exclusive to the games industry either, it's just the games industry has no excuse to be doing it with digital distribution, other than the fact you're greedy bastards.

So many rehash and stupid posts here, sigh.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

This has been an issue even since I first started playing video games when I was 7.

That was when my parents bought me my Game Boy.

I am 28. That's over 20 years we've been over a barrel like this.

About FUCKING time!

 

[WashingtonGallows]

I'm kinda shocked by reading this article. Not at the high prices in Australia, but by how people are surprised.

Digital Downloads compete with physical copies. If physical copies are extraordinarily high, then Digital Downloads will rise pretty damn high too. Its not a question of right or wrong, or even of higher than average greed. Its how any market works.

 

[Starik20X6]

Ninja'd!

I'm a bit sick of hearing "but you make more money in Australia!" I can see the argument, but just because I make more doesn't mean I should pay more. Does Richard Branson get charged $100 for a loaf of bread because he makes a lot of money and can "afford to pay it"?

 

[ResonanceSD]

I figured anyone with any sense would just use Steam or Oz Game Shop. I stopped going to those parasitic brick and mortar stores a year ago, and I haven't looked back.

Steam isn't actually any better. Ozgameshop however, is THE SHIT =D

 

[grigjd3]

Barring Australia, games are NOT expensive.

That actually sidesteps the issue at hand - a retail game, printed on a disc, shipped around in boxes made of plastic on trucks made of metal on roads made of asphalt, should not cost the SAME as a digital game, printed on thin air, shipped around in thin air in nothing made of nothing, on trucks made of ISPs on roads made of electricity.

We in Australia pay $110 for the physical goods? Whatever. You can justify it every which way until you're red in the face. I mean sure, I can import games from the UK for more than half that price with free shipping, but that's a product I can hold in my hand.

But we also pay the same price for digital goods, and you can't justify that quite as easily. This doesn't just exist in Australia, obviously; all over the world, usually, a AAA title will launch digitally at the same price as retail. Which makes you wonder - why? Where's the extra money going exactly, if not for the cost associated with shifting real world copies from store to store? If not the cost of printing a disc? Of mass-producing box insets? That's the issue at hand, that's what this inquiry is ACTUALLY asking, and that's what we should be concentrating on, as far as I'm concerned.

...though don't get me started on hours = dollars. I've never believed it to be true as long as you can watch a DVD movie over and over again, you can play a game over and over again, and what have you. You do not pay for an hour count. You pay for the assets that happen to make up an initial hour count. But that's a personal nitpick there.

Thanks for taking exactly one statement out of several, removing all the context, and creating a conflict that wouldn't actually be there if you bothered to read the post you mook! Stop dragging the conversation down the drain and at least make an attempt to expand the discussion and understand broader issues. Otherwise you're just wasting your breath.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

Barring Australia, games are NOT expensive.

That actually sidesteps the issue at hand - a retail game, printed on a disc, shipped around in boxes made of plastic on trucks made of metal on roads made of asphalt, should not cost the SAME as a digital game, printed on thin air, shipped around in thin air in nothing made of nothing, on trucks made of ISPs on roads made of electricity.

We in Australia pay $110 for the physical goods? Whatever. You can justify it every which way until you're red in the face. I mean sure, I can import games from the UK for more than half that price with free shipping, but that's a product I can hold in my hand.

But we also pay the same price for digital goods, and you can't justify that quite as easily. This doesn't just exist in Australia, obviously; all over the world, usually, a AAA title will launch digitally at the same price as retail. Which makes you wonder - why? Where's the extra money going exactly, if not for the cost associated with shifting real world copies from store to store? If not the cost of printing a disc? Of mass-producing box insets? That's the issue at hand, that's what this inquiry is ACTUALLY asking, and that's what we should be concentrating on, as far as I'm concerned.

...though don't get me started on hours = dollars. I've never believed it to be true as long as you can watch a DVD movie over and over again, you can play a game over and over again, and what have you. You do not pay for an hour count. You pay for the assets that happen to make up an initial hour count. But that's a personal nitpick there.

Thanks for taking exactly one statement out of several, removing all the context, and creating a conflict that wouldn't actually be there if you bothered to read the post you mook! Stop dragging the conversation down the drain and at least make an attempt to expand the discussion and understand broader issues. Otherwise you're just wasting your breath.

I read the post... I wasn't disagreeing with you even, I was just saying that this isn't about game prices. This is about digital prices. It's a universal thing, that happens everywhere, and it's confounding. And that's where the argument is. I perhaps was wrong to directly quote you on it, since everyone is talking about game prices themselves in here - but my point was, explicitly talking about videogame prices themselves is not what the article we're responding to is ACTUALLY about.

I didn't need to say it in four paragraphs, sure. But that was the point I was making. I apologize for making it seem as though I was aiming it directly at you, your post just happened to be the one that opened with something I could spring off of.

 

[goodforyou3000]

Could it be because they actually have a "Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy" Tzar. Stupid Big Government. 18 dollars an hour, wow, of course retail profit margins should be small regardless of the wages. It probably your governments involvement or maybe a retail monopoly on games. In any case I minimum wage worker from Australia will spend less working hours paying for a AAA video game than someone in the US with minimum wage.

 

[throwmeawaykid]

Australian salaries are much higher and the conversion rates, they are actually paying less than any place in the world. $1AU is not equal to $1US. Even their minimum wage is like $18AU/hr

Whoa buddy, slow down a bit. The minimum wage here is nowhere near that much!

 

[Von Strimmer]

Retail and Steam don't hold a candle to the Xbox Live digital distribution. Fallout 3 is still around $70-80AUD. Pretty sure even games like lego star wars are $60AUD

 

[TheLizardKing]

We may make more money, but we pay more for everything so it kinda balances out.

 

[likalaruku]

There's 2 things I believe with gaming; 1)Digital downloads should be $10-$20 cheaper due to lack of swag, packaging, & cuts going to stores carrying it, & 2)If Canada's & Australia's currency ere close to USA, then they should be paying prices similar to USA.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Oh. Hey. I wonder if the bombard of letters to Australia after the Extra Credits episode had any affect on this. They addressed this problem a couple of months back, and I wonder if as a result people started asking questions about why, since there weren't any apparent answers. Nice to see it actually being searched out, though.

 

[Ps4NeRd]

Although games are very expensive in Australia we can fight back buy purchasing games online and overseas. We can already see that it's already starting to have an effect. For example stores like DungeonCrawl and VideoEzy are already starting to sell games for far less than EBGames or JBHifi. A good website to check on where to get the cheapest and best prices is http://www.comparegames.com.au

Pretty soon i'm confident that we will see prices dropin Australia, with the PS4 and XBox One consoles being released this year I would imagine if retailers don't decrease their prices, customers will be purchasing else where especially with the consoles being region free...