america's importance in the gaming industry

[ARC Ronon]

edit: and on that subject, why is it that the europeans have to pay 60 euros and bithish have to pay 50 pounds while that means they are paying more than americans pay?
it's 87 dollars and 82 dollars respectivly... what the f?

The US does not have VAT (Value Added Tax). Americans pay State sales tax to the State they live in, which is not included in the price of products sold in the US. When calculating cost with the US, remember to Subtract VAT before comparing price. You also have to take into account import Tariffs (Taxes), you have to look that up for your specific Country as their may be both Country Tariffs and EU Tariffs.

Typical American sales tax is 7-10% (with a low of 0% and a high of 13%). So a $60 game cost $64-$66 (High $68). So for a game costing 50 pounds, if UK VAT is included at 20% the cost of the game is 40 pounds, which is around $66. Then you have to calculate if there are any import Tariffs. After subtracting for any Tariffs, you will then have the actual cost of games sold at 50 pounds. If there is an import Tariff on video games I would estimate that it is probably no more than 10%; making games in the US and UK the same price. If there are no import Tariffs or the percentage is lower than 7%, companies are only making a few dollars off you and not 20+ dollars.

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

Spoiler: I'm in ur thread, postin' charts.

That's why. It declined a bit in 2010(The other two years before were rising as well, tried to find a better chart, but I'm on work internet and tons of stuff gets blocked), but hardly enough to be worried.

It's simply that America has a far larger population of people with access to internet and the consoles than others. I can't say why other countries have to pay an arm and a leg though.

 

[Rex Fallout]

I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting your post, but it seems you seem to be claiming that because you spent a week or so in London, that you know that everyone in Europe is poorer than Americans because you only saw one poster for a video-game (which is bullsh*t)? And that you think European countries have bad censorship laws because America doesn't?

PS: The dollar will always be weaker than the Euro, the same way the Euro will be weaker than the pound, it's was even stronger in the boom, not that it really means anything.

I never said that everyone in Europe is poorer than everyone in America. I'm positive there are successful people in Europe who are better off than the average American financially. And I won't sit here and debate about the european economic system with you, because to be quite frank, I don't understand it that well. But with that said, the average American is still richer than the average of any other citizen of any country on Earth. I am from Kansas, the lower southwestern part, yeah, the POORER part. Do you care to know how many people are living very well off here? Pretty much everyone. People own their own houses, and every single person i knew growing up, (I concede it was a smaller school, so maybe 100 or so were in my class) owned a Tv. Somewhere around 9/10 people owned a video game console. Care to hear a story? No? Well I'll tell it anyways and you can just skip over it. When I was 15 I did not have a job. I had no source of income. But guess what? I wanted a Tv, I was able to get the money to get one. And a Ps3. And dozens of games. Yes, me a child who did nothing but mow lawns was able to get enough money for just about any luxury I wanted. It is a fact that the United States of America is the richest nation in human history as of right now. Will that change? Maybe. But for now, this is fact. It's like if you tried to argue that the US didn't have the most poweful military in the world. It's simply not true. Now would you kindly excuse me, I'm going to go play Bioshock. Have fun!

oh btw forgot to say this. I'm a college student. With very little money. And almost no financial support from my rents. And somehow I still find money for games! Go figure! Don't you just love capitalism?

 

[Gladiateher]

I think it might help you to look at this from a corporate standpoint. Usually a corporation wants to make as much money as possible, one good way to do this is to try to sell to a specific demographic. Once you have identified your demographic you need to figure out where they are. Corporations are extremely efficient at these types of tasks and that's why they succeed.

Simply put, where gaming companies make the most money is where they're going to market to. Which in this case is the U.S.

It might also help to examine the ideas behind "Operation Rainfall". They clearly show that the U.S. buys more copies of certain game types than even Japan.

 

[Farther than stars]

OK, first of all, 1 billion people in Africa and 2.5 billion people in China and India combined. I haven't even covered all of the countries below the poverty line yet and I'm already on half. So there's your answer, America's wellfair gives it the opportunity to support a large entertainment industry, something I'll state that no other country can manage. And that's just the bold truth of it.
Moving on, sure Europeans pay more than people in the US do, but you've got to keep shipping costs and distribution in mind. Just take a look at Australia and be glad you don't have to pay what they do for games. And if you are ever hard up on money, you don't have to buy games on release date. You can always buy a few good old ones. Heck, if you're a PC gamer, games get really cheap, really fast.

 

[Dark marauder]

Its because almost all major developers are in the US and game developers usually focus on what they know and what surrounds them and because they live in the US they are obviously surrounded by the american culture and with Tv shows also being 99 percent american other countries are surrounded with the american culture.Also if you take a country say the UK (I know its not one country but 4 but just roll with it)I can think of 8 games 3 of which are sequels developed there in the past 5 years 1 of which is set in the US we have Crackdown which is probably in the US but i cant be certain,Fable 2 & 3 which is set in england pretty much,Operation flashpoint which was set in two foreign countries,Garry's mod which is set nowhere and GTA 4 which was set in america.Notice how the only major success is set in the US as was its prequels its because the majority of people who buy the game deep down want to be surrounded by something they know

 

[Explicted]

Im sorry normally i hold back from posting, but when i see Americans and their insane patriotism it always ticks me off, its like looking at terrorists and their insane religious practices, anyway most games are made in US so its only logical they get released there first, if most games were made on Borneo thats where they would get released first, i guess its also since, Americans can take these insane amounts of credit cards and use money they don't even have to buy stuff which led them to like 4 economic crisis already, and they use that money to buy unnecessary amounts of new consoles, and games of course, that will probably change when whole country goes bankrupt or dollar will be worth less then yen, but i hope not since every now and then industry manages to produce something good, and without that money they would be poor sad pandas.

 

[Joseph Alexander]

take WoW for example. 10-12 million players. biggest MMO ever right ?
not even close.
Westward Journey Online II had 83 million players way back in 2006.

I'd like to point out, players != subscribers.
blizzard counts subscribers, not players, which is defined as "an active,paying account".
if they did show the number of players, like WJO 2 did, it would include anyone who ever made an account(not trial accounts mind you)and payed for gametime.

and back on topic:
cause frankly the bulk of the modern infrastructure for both the creation and distribution of games is based here.
the US is in the position of being in between both Europe and Japan, we have the entire span of global distributed games passing through the US.
what online service do you use to buy games?
what store do you buy your discs from?
what publisher are you buying(or licensing to be accurate) the games from?
I'm not trying to be egotistical of jingoistic, but the bulk of games do come from the US(not saying the best variety mind you).

 

[dudebro]

Im sorry normally i hold back from posting, but when i see Americans and their insane patriotism it always ticks me off, its like looking at terrorists and their insane religious practices, anyway most games are made in US so its only logical they get released there first, if most games were made on Borneo thats where they would get released first, i guess its also since, Americans can take these insane amounts of credit cards and use money they don't even have to buy stuff which led them to like 4 economic crisis already, and they use that money to buy unnecessary amounts of new consoles, and games of course, that will probably change when whole country goes bankrupt or dollar will be worth less then yen, but i hope not since every now and then industry manages to produce something good, and without that money they would be poor sad pandas.

You seem mad, bro. You also have no idea what you're talking about.

The reason is that the US has the third highest population of any country in the world and certainly the most people that play games.

 

[Joseph Alexander]

take WoW for example. 10-12 million players. biggest MMO ever right ?
not even close.
Westward Journey Online II had 83 million players way back in 2006.

I'd like to point out, players != subscribers.
blizzard counts subscribers, not players, which is defined as "an active,paying account".
if they did show the number of players, like WJO 2 did, it would include anyone who ever made an account(not trial accounts mind you)and payed for gametime.

this is OT, so i apologize in advance, but the majority of WoWs numbers are in China where it doesn't have subscribers either (they use pay for play time cards which are not the prepayment cards you might be familiar with but instead allow you to play for a set amount of time as most play takes place through internet cafes) and its at least 4th in the market to indigenous games and there's a massive, massive drop off after 1st and 2nd.

WoWs numbers are marketing slight of hand manipulated to make western gamers (and investors) think the game is far bigger than it is. at the very most it has 2-3 million subs in the US (and roughly the same in the EU) and that's being exceedingly generous given the recent 1 million sub loses in 9 months they have admitted to we know for a fact have occurred in the US and EU numbers because they've stated as much to shareholders.

now if you wanted to pull something noteworthy out the bag you could have stated WoW only makes 6% of its revenue from the Chinese numbers (which you can learn from the company reports if you are interested) and Chinese MMOs don't make nearly as much money comparatively buuuut you didn't and as i pointed out above the game is losing its most economically valuable customers at a high rate of knots. a trend unlikely to be reversed by the release of the SW:TOR, GW2 and WoWs "quick, announce something new!" desperation pandas expansion.

I'd like to point out a few holes in your... um lets say theory.
1. blizzards rules to what account counts as a subscriber in china: if it has been less then 30 days since it last played(which equals to paying in china since they charge by the hour of playtime) it it countable as an active subscriber.
2. yes they are a market slight of hand, they can keep posting the WotLK "peak" amt for about 3 months longer then they have to advertise with the new numbers.
3.blizzard has stated nothing about a "mists of pandaria" their last press statement was about the final content patch of cataclysm, so your idea that its a knee-jerk reaction to losing what doesn't even amount to 10% of the games players is laughable.