Poll: Australia: Games are too expensive

[gruggins]

Being a gamer here in Australia is the equivalent of throwing all your savings down a deep hole in the ground.

it just ain't fair anymore, I mean our dollar is stronger than the US right now and the majority of games are made locally at the sidney blu-ray factory and yet we still pay more than the US. why?....why?

Also the "minimum wage argument" is rubbish. as Metalhandkerchief put it

Nope, they are fine. The minimum wage in Australia at this moment is somewhere in the vicinity of $15-16 an hour. Our prices reflect that.

Minimum wage in Norway is 24$, and video games still cost 60$.

 

[Jekken6]

The only reason the RRP for games in Australia is so high is because we're used to paying that price, even though our currency is now. It is the fault of us consumers who buy at such high prices.

 

[Vault101]

eh I can live with it....I mean also you ahve to factor in pre owned stuff and trading in

speaking of whitch I am now the proud owner of a PS3......ohh all those games...(red dead LA noire...NERDGASM)

 

[Craorach]

Game Informer down here had an article on this once.

Basically the idea was that.. along with things like shipping.. game companies also have to make up their costs for doing business here with a much lower potential customer base. Put up a poster to advertise a game in New York, and you can reach a customer base many times more than a single poster anywhere in Australia. In some places, a tiny advertising budget can reach populations vastly great than that of the entire country here. The same is true about pretty much all the other aspects of their business.. if they want to do it here, they are doing it for a greater costs because they will reach a far lower number of people.

 

[Superior Mind]

Australians pay the same dollar value for games that NZ does doesn't it? New release games here are upwards of $100. Sucks because the Aussie dollar is much stronger than the NZ dollar and for a while now its been stronger than the US dollar. No idea why they pay over double for games as Americans do. It's stupid. At least there's digital distribution.

 

[Robert Ewing]

Yeah, my jaw drops when I see the price of Australian games. But then I think about inflation rates, and minimum wage of the average Australian, and my jaw still seems to drop. It's quite a hefty price tag, and makes me wonder why it's so much more expensive in Australia even without inflation.

Some sort of 'Australia hates gaming import tax?'

 

[StormShaun]

108 dollers for a new game from Eb games...uh, thats really expensive!
Exept I earn quite alot, so no problem.

 

[Zeema]

Australia? Try NZ mate. Now that's expensive.

i hear that alot i live in NSW and every time i play with a NX on PSN they talk about how expensive it is

but yeah its too expensive i think

 

[Reaper195]

Games are only expensive if you pay a hundred and thirty bucks for a game that takes about five hours or less to complete the campaign. Games like Call of Duty. Games like Oblivion, Mass Effect and Just Cause 2 however are perfectly priced considering how much is offer in the main game, all forms of multiplayer aside, since multiplayer can fuck off when it comes into what a game is worth.

 

[cfb_rolley]

the problem with consumer markets these days is that people STILL pay the big money. back in the day(say, a decade ago), if something was too expensive, people refused to buy the product. but now there are so many people that "have to have the latest COD game/ ipad 2/ whatever" that if a handful of others turn around and refuse to pay $120 for a half arsed attempt at a game, the retailer isn't phased at all because they can still move millions of unit to idiots at a huge profit.

 

[Still Life]

On the whole, even with the AUD stronger than the USB at the moment, we're still getting shafted on video game prices (not to mention the cost of fucking computer parts!), and it's a similar deal over in NZ (though they DON'T have the strong backing against the USD unlike the AUD).

It's not just videogames, but the entire retail sector in Australia. This is why more and more people are choosing to shop online, because the market is milking the consumer for all its worth.

 

[Still Life]

I just buy from England

Cheat

What's the cost difference like?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

after this steam summer sale thing ive decided that its simply madness for me to buy first day releases. I think i will now do most of my purchases on steam in discounts. except for games that are really important to me, so skyrim. so im going into pc gaming, but ill keep buying multiplayer games on my xbox to play with my mates.

im australia btw.

 

[Rabish Bini]

I accidentally voted Australia: No, I meant Australia: Yes...

But yeah, it's starting to get bloody ridiculous, and I rarely buy games new nowadays.

 

[blind_dead_mcjones]

Some sort of 'Australia hates gaming import tax?'

more like 'the worlds nicest beaches tax' as Yahtzee once put it

i personally think that the complaints about it sound like self entitled whining, yes it may be 20 dollars more expensive, but thats the trade off you make for having a high standard of living in a relatively sparsely populated country that is by all accounts somewhat geopraphically isolated from other 1st world nations

kind of reminds me of the complaints made about the price of bananas (works out to $2 per banana) huge uproar from a vocal minority about how outrageous it was yet they'd happily pay a $1.80 for a chocolate bar

 

[Robert Ewing]

Some sort of 'Australia hates gaming import tax?'

more like 'the worlds nicest beaches tax' as Yahtzee once put it

i personally think that the complaints about it sound like self entitled whining, yes it may be 20 dollars more expensive, but thats the trade off you make for having a high standard of living in a relatively sparsely populated country that is by all accounts somewhat geopraphically isolated from other 1st world nations

kind of reminds me of the complaints made about the price of bananas (works out to $2 per banana) huge uproar from a vocal minority about how outrageous it was yet they'd happily pay a $1.80 for a chocolate bar

And the hellfire heat, the spiders the size of planets, the floods, the droughts, the tourists, the racism, the perma-troll government, the overpricing of everything not just games.

Yeah other than that, i'd live there.

 

[fragmaster09]

ok, you think that's bad? go to MW3's official website, click pre-oder(yo don't actually have to buy it), scroll through to 'mexico' as the place that it's bought from, see the price? i remember it at $999.99 (or something similar), and Australia? $112 (or something similar)... although UK has £43 and USA has about $52... so it's worse, but not $999

 

[fragmaster09]

I just buy from England

Cheat

What's the cost difference like?

i buy from
England,too, although why i would import games TO England would be the question =3