Games: What do they actually cost you?

[Something Amyss]

The $60 US doesn't include sales tax, which is $.06 so we do pay more than the marked price.

Sales tax is determined by state.

Wow that is way too expensive. It must be expensive to ship stuff to Australia?

The Aussie Dollar used to be comparably quite weak. Now it's not. However, they discovered Aussies would still pay the same price, even though it reflected a higher comparable cost. So games stayed that price. Simple case of supply and demand, really. If people will pay the same price with a stronger currency, companies will charge it.

When talking about cost, however, I often wonder if the industrial nations who pay more for games would really like to trade our economic issues for cheap video games. It actually sounds like something gamers would do.

 

[doomed89]

Isn't the minimum wage in Australia like twice that of NA? So it's not so much it costs more as it costs the same per average wage potentially even less.

 

[kyuzo3567]

Canada Ontario has a $60 price point with 13% tax, I usually get the Gameplay Guarantee from EB Games which is an extra $2-3 so I usually pay $70-$75 max for a single game purchase

 

[hermes]

If I try to buy a new game on a gamestop, it would cost me about 180 US$
I have friends that own stores that sell games, new games can go anywhere between 120 and 150 US$
If I import them, they cost me about 100 US$

The minimum wage is about 400 US$ per month.

 

[DanielBrown]

In Sweden new games are 600SEK, which is $90 if we round it up a little bit.
Bought all my games from the UK for the past three years since their prices are waaay lower.