So why are us Brits getting screwed over once again?

[Corralis]

This has turned into an interesting conversation. OK first point I'm gonna try and answer is average wage. Over here the average wage is around £22000 or $34.499.95 but we have roughly 200 million less people over here so it only take a few of the super-rich to push up that average. I personally earn around £13000 or $20.381.61 which I would consider as being more the average normal person's wage. I don't know what the average wage is in America but I would assume the two are not that far apart.
Second point is that as several people have said, electronic items are not affected by the 20% VAT so my original maths are quite sound and we are getting screwed over.
And the third point is that there are people in other countries getting the shaft far worse than us so I'm gonna consider myself lucky and buy the console when it's cheaper. And anyway Destiny isn't gonna be out till probably late 2014 so not a huge issue.

 

[Edith The Hutt]

With US pricing you still need to add the 9% sales tax to that price. Lets not forget here we pay more if you look at it like that, but tax is included in price. We do pay 20% and that goes to Europe not our elected officials.

Nope. VAT is collected by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and paid directly to the United Kingdom Treasury. The UK Treasury pays money to various European Agencies as the UK's contribution to the the EU budget but this is separate and not dependant on how much VAT is collected.

In other words: The Chancellor of the Exchequer sets the VAT rate, raising it or lowering it won't affect how much the UK pays to be part of the EU but it might help raise some of the money towards paying it.

 

[krazykidd]

I live in Canada . Quebec to be precise . We have 2 sales taxes here , provincial and federal . Which is about 15% together . So let's see 15% of 400$ is 60$ . So i'm going to pay 460 canadian $ to take home a ps4 .

Do what you will with that information.

 

[Patrick Buck]

I like to make myself feel better about it by reminding myself that we used to own them.

Also that I don't intend to buy a console this gen, they all annoy me. I'll probably try and make the shift to PC gaming, which is a shame because I much prefered having a controller and consoles in general.

 

[hermes]

It'll be over a thousand in brazil, probably two thousand. Not that I want a console but you're not that bad over there.

Maybe... I remember the PS3 being about 2.000 in the early days. However, this is a different market now, and even paying all import taxes it would not be close to that, so I don't think local stores will charge that kind of money for too long.

Games, on the other hand, are going to keep being as overpriced as ever.

 

[socialmenace42]

It's taxes. VAT, import, fuel (for shipping) and the rest. If they raised VAT and other taxes in the US to the levels we have in the UK, there would be a revolution. Really.

Indeed, I believe that's how the last revolution there started...

Right anyway yes: VAT ande shipping costs. I am also a Brit and live in Germany; the Ero prices for the consoles are hiked sky high as well for the very same reasons.

We don't even have it that bad; compare to how much our prisoners cousins in Austrailia have to pay for their gaming goods, after waiting eight months or so for it to be approved of course...

 

[Cartographer]

Since they've said it's not region locked, browse online for the cheapest deal, factor in shipping and buy that. Just be prepared to change plugs/adaptors to suit local power.

 

[Negadeth]

Just registered to post this, as there's always a lot of rage and discussion whenever US/UK prices are announced.

Question: The Xbox One will cost $499 in the US and £429 in the UK. Which one is most expensive?

Ok, so how about this question. An Online Merchandiser in the US can expect to earn between $28k-$30k a year and an Online Merchandiser in the UK can expect to earn between £28k-£30k. Who is richer?

The answer to both questions is that the values are roughly the same. It's very easy to take US prices, use a currency converter, then rage when the UK announced price appears to be extortionately priced. However, that is simply not how international markets work, and that is not how prices are set.

To take the online merchandiser example (which I use as that is my current job, so I know those salaries are accurate), the UK merchandiser and the US merchandiser are earning pretty much the same amount of money if you only consider their own local economy. So when the UK merchandiser spends £425 on their Xbox One, he is spending the same amount of money as the US merchandiser - in other words, the value of that outlay is the same to both of them.

The only time their wealth is different is when one of them travels to the other's country. At that point, the UK merchandiser can be considered wealthier. If they go to the US with £2,000 for two weeks they will have just over $3,000 to spend. But the US merchandiser travelling to the UK with $2,000 will only have just over £1,000 to spend. That is a huge disproportion in spending power. Luckily for the US merchandiser, this situation is very rare; the vast majority of the time, the US merchandiser is paid in dollars, and spends in dollars.

By straight converting the US dollar price into pounds, you are trying to be paid in pounds, but spend in dollars. Now I would love to live in that happy fantasy land where I get paid in pounds and spend in dollars, but that would literally annihilate the economy.

Microsoft's and Sony's costs for selling in the UK are in pounds, not dollars. The marketeers, distributors, retailers, customer service guys, product managers, support staff, etc, etc all need to be paid in pounds. If they sold their consoles for the US value, they might as well set fire to themselves, because paying in pounds and selling in dollars is literally a stupid, stupid business decision.

And that is why American gamers are getting screwed by the Xbox One price at $499 + tax, and UK gamers have a real bargain at £425 including tax.

 

[Saregon]

In Norway the PS4 going to be 4500 NOK, which is just about $780. This is because of import taxes, sales taxes etc. Our government love them some taxes. Want to import it? Tough, import anything over 200 NOK and it'll be the same price due to those same taxes, but with added transport charge due to the longer distance shipping. Still think you're being shafted?

 

[wooty]

I'm talking about the console prices here just so you all know and mainly about the PS4 because I couldn't care less about the Xbone. $399 or £349 I mean c'mon don't insult us Sony, $399 on a simple XE currency converter is £255.50 which means we are paying £93.50 or $145 more for our console then the guys are in the US. This is a huge difference, I wouldn't mind if it was maybe £20 or £30 more for the console as that could at least be explained with the additional logistics of shipping the consoles to us but nearly £100 more is quite frankly a joke. It's wrong that we are constantly being screwed over with prices when we don't earn any more money than you guys do in the States. It's a real shame cause I was actually looking forward to a couple of the titles that were shown off at their press conference.

Not sure if yoy've seen this yet, but it may help in shedding some light on the subject.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22868787

 

[afroebob]

OK I get that but VAT is 20% which is basically the entire additional cost of the console, does that mean that the Americans do not pay any form of import tax? Remember the consoles are not being made in America so they would have to pay those taxes same as us (maybe not the same as us but there must be some cost there).

We do pay an import tax, but its less. And that will never change because if those taxes ever do go up we will storm to ports, board the ships and throw all the tea EHRM I mean PS4s into the ocean. It will be a nice big ol' party, one for the history books.

 

[afroebob]

It'll be over a thousand in brazil, probably two thousand. Not that I want a console but you're not that bad over there.

Maybe... I remember the PS3 being about 2.000 in the early days. However, this is a different market now, and even paying all import taxes it would not be close to that, so I don't think local stores will charge that kind of money for too long.

Games, on the other hand, are going to keep being as overpriced as ever.

But, and correct me if I am wrong, aren't almost all games in Brazil pirated? I mean with the Xbone that wont really work (probably) but with PS4 it probably will. I'm not trying to be confrontational, if I had to pay 3 times the cost I should have to to play a game I would pirate the shit out of it to.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

Would people prefer that the price of the console changed daily as the exchange rate fluctuated?

 

[Roxor]

It could be worse. You could be in Australia where we get charged 70% more for music and movie downloads and 33% more for games, despite the fact that our dollar is on par with the US dollar.

 

[RicoADF]

I'm talking about the console prices here just so you all know and mainly about the PS4 because I couldn't care less about the Xbone. $399 or £349 I mean c'mon don't insult us Sony, $399 on a simple XE currency converter is £255.50 which means we are paying £93.50 or $145 more for our console then the guys are in the US. This is a huge difference, I wouldn't mind if it was maybe £20 or £30 more for the console as that could at least be explained with the additional logistics of shipping the consoles to us but nearly £100 more is quite frankly a joke. It's wrong that we are constantly being screwed over with prices when we don't earn any more money than you guys do in the States. It's a real shame cause I was actually looking forward to a couple of the titles that were shown off at their press conference.

Alot of it is taxes, import costs and local costs (retail employees are paid far better in other countries than the US, it really is bad over there). Over here in Australia we're charged $549, so thats $150 more, however once looking at the cost to import, then remembering the GST (Our tax), which is 10% over here, the difference after adding those 2 costs were like $20-30, which obviously the store added on to you know, make money. Do some research and crunch the numbers yourself, it's not as simple as a conversion rate as much as I wish it was.

Oh and remember their price doesn't include tax, unlike EU and Australia which have the more intelligent thing of "price advertised is what you pay".

EDIT:

It could be worse. You could be in Australia where we get charged 70% more for music and movie downloads and 33% more for games, despite the fact that our dollar is on par with the US dollar.

See above

 

[theartknife]

There's a BBC article about this exact thing here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22868787 Doesn't really cover anything that people haven't already mentioned though....

 

[Corralis]

There's a BBC article about this exact thing here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22868787 Doesn't really cover anything that people haven't already mentioned though....

Yep that article pretty much clears up this whole topic. We do pay more (around £30-40 after tax and everything else) but it's not as bad as I originally thought and as I said earlier, other countries are getting screwed worse than us so I can't really complain too much.

 

[pandorum]

With US pricing you still need to add the 9% sales tax to that price. Lets not forget here we pay more if you look at it like that, but tax is included in price. We do pay 20% and that goes to Europe not our elected officials.

Nope. VAT is collected by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and paid directly to the United Kingdom Treasury. The UK Treasury pays money to various European Agencies as the UK's contribution to the the EU budget but this is separate and not dependant on how much VAT is collected.

In other words: The Chancellor of the Exchequer sets the VAT rate, raising it or lowering it won't affect how much the UK pays to be part of the EU but it might help raise some of the money towards paying it.

Well thank you very much. Very interesting I always thought it went to the Euro parliament. I feel kinda silly now.... Never mind live and learn.

 

[Edith The Hutt]

With US pricing you still need to add the 9% sales tax to that price. Lets not forget here we pay more if you look at it like that, but tax is included in price. We do pay 20% and that goes to Europe not our elected officials.

Nope. VAT is collected by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and paid directly to the United Kingdom Treasury. The UK Treasury pays money to various European Agencies as the UK's contribution to the the EU budget but this is separate and not dependant on how much VAT is collected.

In other words: The Chancellor of the Exchequer sets the VAT rate, raising it or lowering it won't affect how much the UK pays to be part of the EU but it might help raise some of the money towards paying it.

Well thank you very much. Very interesting I always thought it went to the Euro parliament. I feel kinda silly now.... Never mind live and learn.

After checking the wikipedia article there's one thing I missed: As part of EU law, no country can have a VAT rate of less than 15% (although a reduced rate is permitted for certain goods, some goods are exempt and some goods can be charged at a higher rate, the UK does the first two). But the money still goes to the UK Treasury.

 

[daniel the immortal]

as a australian i have no sympathy for this