Australia Asks About High Game Prices
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
I do. I go to places like K-mart or Big-W where the new release can sometimes be $70 (if the wind is blowing in the right direction). EB can kiss the darkest part of my lily white arse.DVS BSTrD said:
That was my point. That you don't have some unique-snowflake monopoly on high cost-of-living. The only - and I mean *ONLY* - reason games are more expensive in AU than they are in the US is that retailers have a huge captive audience they can take advantage of.ResonanceSD said:
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.grigjd3 said:
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.
troof,BlueMage said:
aussie's a wealthy country, but only a fool pays more for stuff simply because they have more cash to burn,
apparently new york contains the highest proportion of mega-rich americans, yet I imagine they pay the standard american rate for their games.
the aussie minimum wage doesn't have an impact on the cost of making games, as the vast vast majority of games are made overseas at a (apparently) lower craptaular wage rate.
and lastly, New Zealand who has a minimum wage nearly half that of aussie ($13.50NZ = $10.40AU) also get stuck with super happy high prices on pretty much everything
(clothes, books, entertainment - excluding cinemas apparently tho)
I imagine this has to do with proximity and shipping however, cost $55 to get a WoW authenticator shipped over XD
still w'eva, if peeps are paying for them, then can't blame the sellers, personally I do my best to not buy any games on steam that appear to be locally priced.
The remark about the middle of Australia been empty is wrong as it has abundance of wild life and plant life and a place that sole purpose to kill people was uncalled for and also if you look at a map of Australia you might see that one of our most iconic landmarks lives in that big empty place a little thing called Airs Rock so yeah the remark about the middle of Australia uncalled for.
Fox (Citizen of Australia for my whole life)
Fox (Citizen of Australia for my whole life)
Some facts for people
Just off Google: 1 Australian dollar = 0.9742 U.S. dollars
A couple of months ago 1 Australian dollar was greater than one US while some years ago it was 1AUD was about 0.5USD but game prices haven't lowered since then. As for the minimum wage. It is about $15.5 per hour. Less for apprentices and youger workers (<20). This means they get around $30600 a year of which around $3500 goes to tax. This is the income people will get, it does not pay for services.
Just off Google: 1 Australian dollar = 0.9742 U.S. dollars
A couple of months ago 1 Australian dollar was greater than one US while some years ago it was 1AUD was about 0.5USD but game prices haven't lowered since then. As for the minimum wage. It is about $15.5 per hour. Less for apprentices and youger workers (<20). This means they get around $30600 a year of which around $3500 goes to tax. This is the income people will get, it does not pay for services.
That is bullshit because in America 1 game sells for 50$. In Europe that becomes 50 Euro, which is 70-75 Dollars, and might go up the further you go East, suddenly costing 60 Euro or even 80 Euro basically bringing that price to Australia and New Zealand levels, in Australia that again goes up to 80-90 or even 120 dollars Australian, which right now is 120 dollars American.matrix3509 said:
There is no reason why prices jump up the further away you get from America. It doesn't, it used to make sense with shipping fees and actually having to Move the product and deliver it to the country, but now I can go on the internet and just instantly download anything.
No shipping costs, no DVD manufacturing costs, no need for CD keys, because it is authenticated through the site or application, in short they now have a literally Unlimited amount of games produced for no costs, the only thing that might be a problem is bandwidth, but I think the price of that is apparently covered quite well with 50$, otherwise they wouldn't sell for that price in the US.
In short it's just antiquated business practices, that used to have a good excuse, but not any more, however of course the publishers aren't going to adjust. Do you really think they would Willingly without a court mandate, adjust their pricing? They would basically be throwing away money.
what about inflation? maybe the AUS dollar is worth less then the US dollar making the prices sort-of fit
The Australian dollar has been higher than the US dollar up until last month and was consistently so for most of last year. At the moment it is almost equal. 1 US = 0.98 AUSBaldr said:
Less than any place in the world? As the above article states Australia is paying more for everything for no apparent reason. If your new game is 60 US, then we are paying 100 US.
Where are you people coming from?henritje said:
Part of the reason why we kept paying is because the price rise happened about the same time as the switch from the PS1/N64 to Xbox/PS2/Gamecube generation.Vivi22 said:
From my perspective as a kid, going from $70 N64 games to $100 Gamecube games seemed perfectly reasonable. It wasn't until I got a decent internet connection that I realised that N64 games were supposed to be the expensive ones.