Poll: UK Buyers Screwed by Next-Gen Prices

[The Lugz]

For the petrol, the UK has public transportation while in America it's not as common so gas has to be affordable for everyone. There are usually reasons to be found like that in huge price differences. If nnecessities are cheaper, you have more money to spend on accessories so that could be why they cost more. That's also why I keep mentioning cost of living, even in America the cost of living in the city and country are completely different.

the 'gas' issue is an interesting one, it's a fair point that the USA is an enormous country and you simply need to get around.
actually, i don't drive at all and i get the feeling that's because everything is so close it's an overnight post, or i can simply order it to my door at x time, I don't know how good the post there is, but you can drive a supercar up britain and the postman will beat you because the bastards cheat with jets ( topgear proved this! )
I can pick an hour and get my shopping delivered for example, usually for free or a nominal fee, £3 or so.

There's a lot of points that you are missing. Taxes such as VAT have already been pointed out. There's presumably other costs that differ between UK and USA. Import taxes, business taxes etc. may well be higher here in the UK than the US. Then again, I'm no expert, so this may be wrong. Maybe I'm too trusting of these guys, but I don't think they're deliberately shafting us Brits.

I don't think anyone's saying there's a contrived malicious intent to try and rip anyone off, ( or maby they are, but i disagree! ) I think personally it's just that it happens to be expensive for us to get certain items.. and as they say two things in life are certain: death and taxes!

 

[Brotha Desmond]

It's probably a place holder price.

Which one? Because MS announced the price for their games ($60) and console ($500), while Sony said the price for the PS4 ($400), so only their games don't have an official price yet.

Back before the E3 Press conferences amazon had games like Theif, AC IV, and BF 4 on the PS4 listed at $99.99

I know that, I'm wondering why you brought that point up in this topic since we're talking about actual prices.

I brought it up because the OP said those are the prices on a website. If no official announcement for that countries game prices were made and he is just going off what he saw online, it is quite possible that those prices are just a place holder.

 

[ThreeName]

I live in Australia; I have very little sympathy for anyone anywhere, except those places that don't even get half of the games in there.

Oh wait that's us too now

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

It's probably a place holder price.

Which one? Because MS announced the price for their games ($60) and console ($500), while Sony said the price for the PS4 ($400), so only their games don't have an official price yet.

Back before the E3 Press conferences amazon had games like Theif, AC IV, and BF 4 on the PS4 listed at $99.99

I know that, I'm wondering why you brought that point up in this topic since we're talking about actual prices.

I brought it up because the OP said those are the prices on a website. If no official announcement for that countries game prices were made and he is just going off what he saw online, it is quite possible that those prices are just a place holder.

Those prices are official, though. When they announced the price at E3 they mentioned what it'd be for the US, UK and EU, so those prices are accurate.

 

[PunkRex]

I seriously don't think I can support this shizz, I didn't grow up on Nintendo like my brother did but I think im gonna just stick with my 3DS for the next year or so, see how things pan out.

 

[DanielBrown]

Yeah, got the same shit in Sweden.
$667 for the Xbone, $578 for the PS4 and $96 for new games.

Actually just learned now that they have dropped the PS4 price. Was listed as the same as the Xbone before, so there's always that.

Any game sites in the US that does free international shipping?

 

[Brotha Desmond]

It's probably a place holder price.

Which one? Because MS announced the price for their games ($60) and console ($500), while Sony said the price for the PS4 ($400), so only their games don't have an official price yet.

Back before the E3 Press conferences amazon had games like Theif, AC IV, and BF 4 on the PS4 listed at $99.99

I know that, I'm wondering why you brought that point up in this topic since we're talking about actual prices.

I brought it up because the OP said those are the prices on a website. If no official announcement for that countries game prices were made and he is just going off what he saw online, it is quite possible that those prices are just a place holder.

Those prices are official, though. When they announced the price at E3 they mentioned what it'd be for the US, UK and EU, so those prices are accurate.

Unless I'm mistaken they only announced the internation console prices at E3, not the games.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

When I buy games from the UK I buy them for $60 AUS and similarly the PS4 is going for 549 AUS. You freaky countries and your added tax, our's is just standard GST. What you see is what you pay, it's what I loathed about my American trip. So much useless change.

 

[Miss G.]

In The Bahamas, video-game related things have a 45% tax on top of what the retailer needs to sell it at for profit, and that can be anywhere from 2x to 4x the retail price in the US.
e.g PS4; US $399, Bahamas $578.55 x 2 at least and for Xbone; US $499, Bahamas $723.55 x 2 at least. We'd be royally screwed if the US wasn't a mere 50 miles away and we could just hop over and buy it there instead of at home. Even though if you can't manage to hide it from Customs thus still have to pay the 45%, you still won't be paying through the nose at a retailer.

45%? Holy shit ! That's insane! I'm surprised people even buy videogame related things at that price .

We don't really have taxes except for Real Property Tax and gasoline tax and we import most everything. Our government has to make revenue somewhere, and people mostly shop in the States for all their stuff instead of buying it from home, so they have to charge us hard for non-essentials. Only the people who really are that lazy/impatient/don't know anybody who's heading to the States for shopping will buy games related stuff at retail at those horrible prices. Also, we don't have a trade-in system for games, so unless you've got friends with games you like you don't have many options save ordering them or buying a ticket to somewhere in Florida (we treat it like another island) and bringing them over yourself.

 

[The White Hunter]

I said it before in the price complaining threads, but doesn't the UK have a better economy?

Simply: No.

More complex: Yes and no.

We have some things better, we have a more stable financial sector and a lot of pharmaceutical stuff going on, but almost no other industry beyond that. We also share the problems of a terrible infrastructure, and a government that doesn't know what the hell it's doing.

We have large and growing gaps between the poor and the wealthy, tax rates are high and VAT is high and charged on most things. Your money doesn't tend to go as far here and people, or at least the average person, is likely worse off than the average american. Though just like america we have a huge variety of people from insanely empoverised people to the obscenely wealthy.

It's not just the UK, Europe also gets charged a lot more, roughly the same amount more. So does Australia but their number is higher so they whine more (and they do make more money).

One of my biases is since I live in Flint (Detroit's little sister), the local economy is shit and the UK looks better than my town. However the US is huge and there is a huge difference between areas, so as a country it's not doing as bad as it seems from my view.

Ah.

Yeah you have to account for fluctuations like that, I live in the northwest and there's very little work and most of it doesn't pay well. Then there are towns and cities like Workington or Dundee, that are like they're out of the 1950's.

It's kinda shitty though, for me I'm getting ripped off, I make £240 a week if I get the hours for it, £55 is a bit much.

 

[Griffolion]

I don't think it's so much the companies shafting us, as it is our own governmental policies for import, etc. Sony and Microsoft have to cover their costs somehow, and if it's more expensive getting their product into a country, then the price in that country is going to be higher. It's a crap situation, but fingers are being pointed in the wrong direction.

 

[Subscriptism]

Remember the current generation originally had prices of £50 before they dropped it to an average of £40 because £50 was too fucking much. This gen is no different, I think once everything calms down prices will be £45 tops.

Also obligatory "PC master race".

 

[NinjazInside]

The British Economy is majority Service based which is a stagnant economy, luckily we do have some industry, and are still one of those countries pushing technology forward, inventors of Graphene for instance, just not getting as many patents on it. And the economy does fluctuate at the moment between growing and shrinking but i think we will pull through back into growth. And coming from a family that is part of the Working Class, we are not doing terrible. But equally it is a bit of an insult to Britain a country which is pretty large market for games including Europe, that they don't just add on the tax difference they go and lump us with more, Amazon are not that stupid it is not them, hopefully its just Amazon putting place holder prices down. If it isn't well to be honest they will have to lower prices if not enough people buy the games which most don't even look worth the cost at the moment. Then again they can survive off of cheaper Xbox 360/PS3 games but well we can only hope. I wont be upgrading for awhile yet as is.

 

[Raikazu]

From what I've seen since my original post it seems that the consensus around retailers and the internet is the same as Substriptism said, that the launch prices will be £54.99 for a while before lowering. I do remember Gears of War being £49.99 on release, I believe it was the same for a couple of other launch/near-launch titles.

I also want to clarify that I wasn't accusing any particular group of doing the shafting, just that there appeared to be some shafting taking place. It's also clear that there are far more factors the deeper you look into a situation like this. It's been good to see people think in a similar and also to get those inputs I'd not even thought of.

The wonders of the Internet...