Come on, Activision, at least TRY.

[TheRealCJ]

Yay, Steam Sale! How I do love those! Always the cheapest games, which is good, because as an Australian, box games are usually way more expensive.

Ooh, Modern Warfare 3, I never did buy that, after black ops, I kinda gave up on Call of Duty, but at 50% percent off, I might as well give it a t-wait... what? 49.99 on SALE? But... that would make this, a Steam digital download, a full 100 US to buy in Australia. For those of you playing at home, this is a full 40 dollars more expensive than in the US Steam Store.

Well, I suppose since it's a fairly new ga- oh wait, it's nearly a year old at this point. And what is that? I can go out and buy a BOX copy of the game right now, for 54 dollars, not-on-sale? Saving me time, downloads, and giving me a hard copy?

Well, Activision, you've certainly proven to me that you want me to be a loyal Call of Duty customer.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

At least it's always been $100. Dark Souls cost $40 to pre-order for the first couple of days, until Namco noticed they hadn't factored in the nicest beaches tax yet and made it $70 instead. Assassin's Creed: Revelations and Arkham City pulled that dick move too.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Actually the Australian dollar is doing alright. 49.99 US is ROUGHLY like over 50ish for Australia. Still, don't get it.

Most publishers are still used to charging us $100 or more for a new game, and despite that the exchange rates have evened out, we're still paying the same amount so they see no reason to lower their prices. It's annoying.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Actually the Australian dollar is doing alright. 49.99 US is ROUGHLY like over 50ish for Australia. Still, don't get it.

50 dollars US is about 50.25 AUD, so barely any difference. Why then do we pay 45 Dollars more for a Steam download compared to a brick-and-mortar hard copy?

 

[Legion]

I always feel annoyed when I look at Steam prices in the UK, as I feel we are ripped off.

Then I look at Australia and feel lucky. Seriously, it's like they don't want a gaming industry/market out there.

 

[MetalDooley]

For some reason prices for digital copies of CoD games just seem to be a rip-off.Here in Ireland Black Ops is ?70 on Xbox Live.That's around ?20 more than most stores were charging for physical copies when the game launched nearly 2 bloody years ago

 

[GoaThief]

It's COD, people will pay through their teeth for it.

Aside from that the Australian minimum wage is basically three times the US'... having games even twice as expensive (most are +50% or so) works out as a better deal for the Aussies, relatively speaking.

 

[TheRealCJ]

It's COD, people will pay through their teeth for it.

Aside from that the Australian minimum wage is basically three times the US'... having games even twice as expensive (most are +50% or so) works out as a better deal for the Aussies, relatively speaking.

I'll agree that Paying more than the US for games is fair, but most PC games at box retailers BRAND NEW are between 65-90 dollars, not 100.

Even now, EB Games, our "expensive" brick-and-mortar chain (compared to a big box store, etc.) Currently sells MW3 for 58 Dollars. That's more than 40 dollars less than what Activision thinks that you should pay for a year-old game... And that's AFTER you factor in shipping a physical copy, paying for a store/employees, etc.

 

[Bobic]

To be fair, it's not just Activision. Here's the online store for Guild Wars 2.

https://buy.guildwars2.com/en/

The price in Britain is £49.99, and that's just the standard edition with no bonus items or collectibles or whatever. A bit pricey, but fine, whatever. Fine that is, until you visit my local tesco, (a supermarket where I do my food shopping), who are selling the game for £34.99. Now, tesco are obviously earning a cut on part of that, whereas on their official website the guildwars team get 100% of the money. So why, oh why are they pricing themselves out of the market? They could charge £30, and still make more, per sale, on each item. I just do not understand this idiocy.

And there's still plenty of other examples. Jim did an episode of the Jimquisition on it. These companies just seem so daft.

Oh, and if you think you're paying the extra £15(!!!!) for the convenience of doing it from your sofa, here's the amazon price.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guild-Wars-Standard-Edition-DVD/dp/B007YZ5B0I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349024254&sr=8-1

Does not compute.

 

[Daymo]

Ozgameshop.com my friend, steam is only good for their sales and even then they are often over hyped. GOG, Ebay, Ozgameshop and Steam are what I check before buying anything, it only takes a few minutes and can save a lot of money. It saved me like $25 when pre-ordering borderlands2.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Ozgameshop.com my friend, steam is only good for their sales and even then they are often over hyped. GOG, Ebay, Ozgameshop and Steam are what I check before buying anything, it only takes a few minutes and can save a lot of money. It saved me like $25 when pre-ordering borderlands2.

Thank you for sharing that, I'm from the US and a lot of those prices are too damn good to overlook. I know where I'm checking first from now on...

 

[Eggsnham]

Yay, Steam Sale! How I do love those! Always the cheapest games, which is good, because as an Australian, box games are usually way more expensive.

Ooh, Modern Warfare 3, I never did buy that, after black ops, I kinda gave up on Call of Duty, but at 50% percent off, I might as well give it a t-wait... what? 49.99 on SALE? But... that would make this, a Steam digital download, a full 100 US to buy in Australia. For those of you playing at home, this is a full 40 dollars more expensive than in the US Steam Store.

Well, I suppose since it's a fairly new ga- oh wait, it's nearly a year old at this point. And what is that? I can go out and buy a BOX copy of the game right now, for 54 dollars, not-on-sale? Saving me time, downloads, and giving me a hard copy?

Well, Activision, you've certainly proven to me that you want me to be a loyal Call of Duty customer.

Aaaannnnd this is why I hate Call of Duty a littler more every year.

I used to love the shit out of it. Then I actually started thinking. Turns out, CoD and having the ability to think are not a good match.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Snip

Here's a real shocker for ya. Fifa Football for the Vita, a watered down, rushed out port of the console games with crappy touch screen controls and pretty much the exact same options as the iOS versions of the games costs fucking £45 to buy digitally on the Playstation store! You can get the exact same, albeit with no actual buttons, for only a fiver on iOS. Hell, I went into my local used games shop and it was only £10 boxed! The digital prices for the Playstation store are f'ing terrible, especially when they don't need the cost of boxing, the card and shipping and such.

OT: Damn, you Australians really do get shafted when it comes to games. I feel for you, man. What with your constant fight to get age limits, with awesome games getting banned or censored heavily because of it, and this too. As someone above said, it's like publishers don't want an Australian demographic.

 

[Bobic]

Snip

Here's a real shocker for ya. Fifa Football for the Vita, a watered down, rushed out port of the console games with crappy touch screen controls and pretty much the exact same options as the iOS versions of the games costs fucking £45 to buy digitally on the Playstation store! You can get the exact same, albeit with no actual buttons, for only a fiver on iOS. Hell, I went into my local used games shop and it was only £10 boxed! The digital prices for the Playstation store are f'ing terrible, especially when they don't need the cost of boxing, the card and shipping and such.

That really is mad. Has no one explained business to these people? Or are there really enough people so complacent as to just buy from the digital store without checking other prices or hearing how terrible the deal they're getting is? Truly baffling.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Snip

Here's a real shocker for ya. Fifa Football for the Vita, a watered down, rushed out port of the console games with crappy touch screen controls and pretty much the exact same options as the iOS versions of the games costs fucking £45 to buy digitally on the Playstation store! You can get the exact same, albeit with no actual buttons, for only a fiver on iOS. Hell, I went into my local used games shop and it was only £10 boxed! The digital prices for the Playstation store are f'ing terrible, especially when they don't need the cost of boxing, the card and shipping and such.

That really is mad. Has no one explained business to these people? Or are there really enough people so complacent as to just buy from the digital store without checking other prices or hearing how terrible the deal they're getting is? Truly baffling.

I can't really see anything that they can complain about unfortunately. It's not like EA, Sony or whatever are breaking any laws for pricing it that high. Funny thing is, Fifa 13 came out for the Vita a few days ago and that costs £40, whilst that version hasn't even got a price drop. I don't mind £30 for a brand new game digitally, I even got Gravity Daze/Rush and LBP Vita at those prices because it was just the easiest option. But £45 for something you can get very cheap used, or even new, and can get something similar for other consoles for a LOT less is just terrible.

 

[leonhax]

the shock on my face that after i had started paying most of assassins creed 3 off it went up in price and i had to dish out more money :S
first time pre-ordering for me so yeah just a little shock really that they do that

 

[Rednog]

Actually the Australian dollar is doing alright. 49.99 US is ROUGHLY like over 50ish for Australia. Still, don't get it.

Actually the Australian dollar is doing alright. 49.99 US is ROUGHLY like over 50ish for Australia. Still, don't get it.

Most publishers are still used to charging us $100 or more for a new game, and despite that the exchange rates have evened out, we're still paying the same amount so they see no reason to lower their prices. It's annoying.

Uhh, might want to get a refund for that basics economics class there....exchange rates don't set prices. And people who complain about why do people in country X pay Z amount when we in country Y get charged a different amount, are quite frankly insane.
What sets prices (normally) is based on relative buying power, say that the exchange rate is 1 for 1, but you are paid double, you suddenly have double the buying power if prices were the same in both countries.

It's the same question I always ask people who complain about price discrepancy. Why aren't you complaining that in terms of "dollars" you pay more for almost everything; food, housing, clothing...etc? By the logic you apply to video games why aren't you complaining about paying like $2-3 dollars for a bottle of water when you can get a bottle of water in the US for $1?

Hell, let's take it a set further, why aren't people complaining that compared to countries in Eastern Europe, Russia, and in some cases India/Malaysia they pay only about $20-30 dollar for a brand new game? Why are you complaining about US prices when those guys get it even cheaper than the US?

 

[CyanideSandwich]

http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs

This is a whole website showing the rip-offs on Steam. It's not based on how much money you pay, but the sheer difference in price to if you'd have bought it while in America or the UK.

 

[VoidWanderer]

I always feel annoyed when I look at Steam prices in the UK, as I feel we are ripped off.

Then I look at Australia and feel lucky. Seriously, it's like they don't want a gaming industry/market out there.

Apparently the government is holding some lawsuit (or something similar) to Apple, Microsoft and various other and going 'WTF is with these prices!?'