I really don't want to go on a rant, but this seems slightly ironic given Todd's http://kotaku.com/5827898/skyrim-chief-more-games-should-cost-29-but-not-skyrim...

Seriously, US$89.99 for a digital download?

WHAT 89.99 US what the hell for a digital copy on steam. i thought pre-order steam was 59.99 US zzzzz

Cheaper to import a retail copy.

I'd pay it for this game tbh, but that does seem ridiculous. :shrug:

ask Yahtzee about how much it svcks to buy games in the Land Down Under :sadvaultboy:

Exactly, I wouldn't complain if it was Australian or NZ dollars, but US dollars? That's ridiculous.

Why is this the case? I'm genuinely curious. I highly doubt steam just decided "eh we'll just screw the "g'day mates" down under".

Games are usually around $110-$120 NZD anyway

In the first century, Publius Syrus wrote, "Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it."

This is a great site for showing how much we aussies get ripped off.

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

Not buying that though. There's an actual reason out there and I want to know why the price isn't a direct conversion.

makes no sense for a digital down load to cost more regardless of geography.

I wonder if the australian downloads are downloaded from the same server as american or any where else, because that would just make that

even a more stupid case of pointless price padding.

That the price is higher is not a huge surprise to me but $89.99 is more expensive than other recent releases that have been $69.99 or even $79.99.

Having said that, at current exchange rates it works out to be ~NZD$107 vs retail store of NZD$109.99 (not including the 10% pre-order bonus).

The good news as I see it is that the game is available on Steam so I'll wait for a Steam sale.

I haven't bought a game from a retail store in probably 6 years.

The problem is that when putting games on Steam, most publishers will stick to $59.99 as a global price, but (I think Activision started it with MW2) they've recently started bumping up the price to $89.99. The reason given when people asked Activision about the prices was something like "To keep competition fair between steam and retail stores".
That's not increasing competition, that's anti-competitive.



Nope, my ISP in NZ actually provides it's own Steam content mirrors. I think you can even set up private steam mirrors.

maybe steam for austrailia accdeintly released a CE price

It's not, we always get screwed with steam.

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

i apologize, at the risk of sounding like identity theft give me your adress and ill buy you a canadian copy

Why would you disregard "People are prepared pay this price, so why should we lower it?" as a possible reason for why Australians get ripped off? It is the most direct and intuitive reason there is.

I mean sure, you could say that you don't want to undercut bricks-and-mortar retail stores, and you could say that it costs money to have a game rated, and any number of other reasons. But ask yourself: if people have been paying $100 for your products for the last twenty years (yes, we've been doing this for a long time now), and they're prepared to go on doing it, would you lower your prices and your profit margin? And if you would, would your stakeholders feel the same way?

I'm not disregarding it... I'm simply saying that there were reasons to have that cost higher than in other places in the origin of game pricing in Australia. I am curious as to what those were. Australians haven't always been paying for games, so why were they charged way more than any other country in the first place, if you say that you've been paying these prices for 20 years.

Intuitive answers in economics don't actually answer anything. Facts and contributing factors are more illuminating. So I was wondering if anyone actually knew why they are so much more expensive (especially digital downloads, or if that is just priced the same as hard copies, which makes sense since it is in the U.S. as well...mostly)

I should have added that when the prices were being set up, they were basically at parity between Australia and the US. We used to be at about US$1 = AU$0.55, and disregarding the extra costs of freight and customs and whatnot, our prices was basically in line with what was being charged in America. But even as manufacturing and distribution have cheapened, and as the economic situations have changed, these prices have remained the same and largely resisted variation.

You'll find some retailers here in Australia selling a game for $85, say, but there is not enough competition here to force prices down definitively (most of the local game stores like Games Wizards were pushed out or absorbed by the multinationals that captured the market).

And to go back to my earlier point, why would anyone (except the consumer ) want the prices to go down? Publishers have doubled their take based on the rising value of the AUD alone, and this is even before you consider that there are a lot more gamers now than there were before, that people own multiple platforms, etc etc etc.

http://www.play-asia.com/paOScore/19-71-99-49-en-15-skyrim.html

There's nothing we can do about it, i remember about 5 years ago games were up to $20 cheaper for a new release...I really don't understand what happened

I always remember SNES games being $80-90. :sadvaultboy:

Basically what happened is that every console generation, the hardware manufacturer said, "Hay guise, our tech is so powerful and full of opportunity that it's now much more expensive to develop and publish for it, so we're going to raise prices by five or ten dollars per title. Really, it'll be worth it!" And then they showed you a screenshot of a cutscene showing a shiny car or a big football player, while subtly implying that this was the quality you could expect from your in-game graphics.

Actually, it's more so they don't undercut themselves compared to their retail copies. I mean, if you're selling it at retail for $90, and digital for $60, then why would most people bother buying retail? Hence, why should you then bother selling it at retail? Either you'd need to sell it at retail for a similar price (which the retailers won't go for), or you jack-up the digital price. Yes, it's purely profit-driven, and yes, it svcks, but it just doesn't make much sense economically for a company to sell essentially the same product at such vastly different prices. Of course, what these publishers seem to forget is that most people don't like paying the same amount for something they can't physically hold in their hands, or that retail stores will often go a bit under the RRP at launch, making the digital copy an even worse deal, so they'd be better-off to put the digital price at, say, $70 or $80 to take that into account.

lol I see! That blows hard as they say (don't ask me who they are).

Also people might not want the prices to go down but they might anyways. There are loads of games out nowadays that are cheaper because they are smaller games, or indie games or what have you. Games are a lot more accessible now than they were 4 years ago. Edit: Except in AUS it seems lol. Poor chaps.