Poll: Games prices in Australia
- Thread starter Luke Cartner
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Most new console games are $90 - $120 AUD. Most new PC games are generally $80 - $90 AUDMrShowerHead said:
Steam prices are *not* universal. They are for a lot of games, and I have been buying off steam from some companies. But many companies have requested that steam increase their prices in Australia. Given how much we pay for our bandwidth here, it can easily become a more expensive (or only slightly cheaper but much slower) option.Vrach said:
EB's a massive ripoff though. have never bought a game there because they are just so damn expensive.kman123 said:
Many countries around the world get charged exuberant amounts and Australia is one of them. They charge that much simply because they can. I would recommend importing region free copies or buying them from the UK.Luke Cartner said:
What really annoys us Australian gamers (and some other countries) is when someone cries about a game being $60. I mean... wow. It's like an Emo complaining their life is too hard when there is an African aids-ridden starved corpse next door.
I had always thought it was normal and didn't complain, until I heard people complaining about the prices here. I then found out how much I'm being ripped off.
I voted "Yes" simply due to being an Australian gamer myself. Mind you, I usually find prices lower than that by waiting and looking very carefully.
Still, the answer is that we shouldn't really, as equal citizens of the world, have to deal with this, but it's a reality enforced on us by our geographically spread out, isolated population and the fact that all games are basically imported products. Shipping those gigantic crates of gamey goodness here does not cost nothing. In fact, GameInformer did a very extensive and frustrated-in-tone article about this, but ended up agreeing with industry figures that prices were fair and there was no identifiable gouging. This surprised me as well, yet there was no question that shipping and the other basic costs of retail were causing the price inequalities.
So if we want to see this change, we have two options: one, we make games good enough in our own country for us to play those, cutting the import problem in half, or two, we shop around very extensively for what we want, be price variety aware and in general don't give in to the first price that we see out of laziness or our love for games. Professional games development here just isn't going to take off in the foreseeable future: Australian games design is independent and amateur at its very finest as far as world competition goes, save for the 2k office here that helped make BioShock. So that leaves Australian gamers with the option of being good customers or just living with it.
The more conscious you are of where you can get the best deal, the more likely you are to help companies be motivated to stay at the minimum price for profit. The only language that they will understand or care about is: "I've found a better deal. I will take my business, and my money, elsewhere." If that means importing (and I'd be surprised if it did, shipping costs are going to create the same result in the end), or trying new retailers, or looking in a supermarket instead of a specialised games store, or using the EB Games "photograph a better deal" policy... whatever works, do it. Do it for yourself, and indeed for the wider Australian gaming community.
Still, the answer is that we shouldn't really, as equal citizens of the world, have to deal with this, but it's a reality enforced on us by our geographically spread out, isolated population and the fact that all games are basically imported products. Shipping those gigantic crates of gamey goodness here does not cost nothing. In fact, GameInformer did a very extensive and frustrated-in-tone article about this, but ended up agreeing with industry figures that prices were fair and there was no identifiable gouging. This surprised me as well, yet there was no question that shipping and the other basic costs of retail were causing the price inequalities.
So if we want to see this change, we have two options: one, we make games good enough in our own country for us to play those, cutting the import problem in half, or two, we shop around very extensively for what we want, be price variety aware and in general don't give in to the first price that we see out of laziness or our love for games. Professional games development here just isn't going to take off in the foreseeable future: Australian games design is independent and amateur at its very finest as far as world competition goes, save for the 2k office here that helped make BioShock. So that leaves Australian gamers with the option of being good customers or just living with it.
The more conscious you are of where you can get the best deal, the more likely you are to help companies be motivated to stay at the minimum price for profit. The only language that they will understand or care about is: "I've found a better deal. I will take my business, and my money, elsewhere." If that means importing (and I'd be surprised if it did, shipping costs are going to create the same result in the end), or trying new retailers, or looking in a supermarket instead of a specialised games store, or using the EB Games "photograph a better deal" policy... whatever works, do it. Do it for yourself, and indeed for the wider Australian gaming community.
We certainly do, if I was to shoulder the considerably higher cost of importing a single game I want, both the (relatively) huge tax and cost of shipping would amount to almost $5au (I last did this when the $au was at about $0.90US, so I can only see the shipping aspect being cheaper now). I love that big game devs entirely blame to failings of their product on greedy pirates, without even considering the possibility that people don't like paying an extra 100% on RRP for what is more likely than not an inferior product[footnote]And I don't mean people pirate them instead by that, I'm saying that a great many gamers simply do not bother.[/footnote].oplinger said:
Good thought, but there are annoyances. Better to (possibly illegally) modify an Australian xbox so that it will play NTSC formatted games, or import PAL format games (games from Asia are cheaper than American anyway, and it isn't too hard to find PAL of most games). All flamewars and "my console is better than yours" wankery aside, one of the best features of the PS3 is that the games are not region locked (it's seriously a stupid system and I see no reason for it whatsoever). I hope that the next console generation do away with it completely.Chunko said:
Yes it does, and again steam is one of the worst offenders. Take Fallout New Vegas for example, on steam they want $90US (That's right, not only are they happy to inflate the price by 50%, they won't even bother converting it to $AU for us, meaning we have to shoulder the whatever% conversion cost as well....fuck I hate steam). $90US is more than the $80 I've seen it sold for at the retail rip off stores, assholes. Hell, if you know where to go there are plenty of stores that sell new, AAA PC games in Australia for around $60au. All this talk of how steam is cheap is completely untrue for those of us living in Australia[footnote]outside of some of their sales, they are inarguably dirt cheap.[/footnote].Continuity said: