Aussies: Game deals/bargains/sales, etc

Dublo7

So, where do you Australians get your games?

Personally, I refuse to pay over 100 dollars for a game. Seeing some games in store for 110 and 120 dollars makes me wretch. It's pretty disgusting.

I've been trying to find places to get games relatively cheaper than they are retail, and so far I like Play Asia. However, the only problem with Play Asia is sometimes their Xbox 360 selection is a tad limited.
The great thing with Play Asia is I'll save about 30 to 40 dollars on each 360 title. That's how much cheaper it is.

Kelor

If its a title that I really want or forgot it was coming out and its a rarer title from a publisher like Atlus or Nippon Ichi I'll pick it up straight away, but I've been importing of late.

I just got myself a Wii and aside from Australian Wiimotes not working with NTSC consoles its going to save me a lot of money in the long run. The console itself cost me $50 more than it would buying it at EB, I've saved $120 just from buying games for it.

Games here have been $100 for a long long time, so most people are used to paying that much for them, but $120 for a game? I find that really really hard to justify, the rising cost of consoles and movement towards region free games with the XBox and PS3 means that I might just start importing everything instead of ever having to visit EB. Not to mention you get them 6-12 months faster.

Dublo7

Kelor wrote:

If its a title that I really want or forgot it was coming out and its a rarer title from a publisher like Atlus or Nippon Ichi I'll pick it up straight away, but I've been importing of late.

I just got myself a Wii and aside from Australian Wiimotes not working with NTSC consoles its going to save me a lot of money in the long run. The console itself cost me $50 more than it would buying it at EB, I've saved $120 just from buying games for it.

Games here have been $100 for a long long time, so most people are used to paying that much for them, but $120 for a game? I find that really really hard to justify, the rising cost of consoles and movement towards region free games with the XBox and PS3 means that I might just start importing everything instead of ever having to visit EB. Not to mention you get them 6-12 months faster.

I know. 100 dollars, everynow and then, I can stretch. But 120 is just ridiculous.
I mean, how much are games going to cost in the next generation? 150?
No thank you.

Iriah

Apparently ordering from Play Asia is a good idea.

I've never tried it. Anybody from Oz tried it?

Pheezer

So what you're saying is you find the Australian PS3 price to be perfectly reasonable

Giga Gopher

I've always found that www.dvdcrave.com usually has very good prices on lots of games; they also seem to get a fair few region-free 360 games that are about 30 dollars cheaper than the PAL versions.

Dublo7

Iriah wrote:

Apparently ordering from Play Asia is a good idea.

I've never tried it. Anybody from Oz tried it?

I saved 40 dollars on Rainbow Six Vegas on Play Asia. I'm hoping to get Crackdown from Play Asia next.

And yeah, the Aussie PS3 price is just dandy.

Kelor

pheezer FD wrote:

So what you're saying is you find the Australian PS3 price to be perfectly reasonable

Hell no, $1000 is insane. I just didn't want to bring it up and turn this into a Sony hate thread. But since its mod sanctioned....

Up until when Sony went bat shit insane at E3 last year, I was planning on picking one up, since I've owned both the previous ones and figured I'd be getting my Zone of the Enders/FF/MGS fix.

Maybe if Sony can explain to me how the simple act of shipping a PS3 over to here is making me pay US$772 I'd understand more, but the fact that they're only bringing out the 60Gb model and charging me an insane amount of money for it, they can go fuck themselves.

High definition over here is no where near as big as it is in the US, most people don't even have LCD or flatscreen T.Vs so the move towards Blu-Ray and HD-DVD does absolutely nothing. The average Australian has no idea what the hell Blu-Ray is and even if they did it'd be that its a DVD that costs too much. The PS3 sort of falls on its ass at this point, its biggest feature does not even help, since Blu-Ray dvds are impossible to find here and most peoples TVs can't support them anyway. Microsoft has picked up a lot of the market share recently, since Halo was the new gamers generation of Goldeneye, so you have a bunch of kids who never grew up with the Playstation or Nintendo consoles.

But seriously, Sony is going to have a rude awakening if it thinks that Europe and Australasia are going to help stave off the cash its bleeding overseas.

Marlor

I import about two thirds of my games. It's cheaper than buying in Australia and there is a better range to choose from. Aussies don't pay GST or customs duty for personal imports under $1000 either.

Most of my DS games come from the US and cost US$20-30. I get recently released PC games from Thailand for 700 Baht (AU$30). Console games (from the US) generally cost anywhere from US$20-50 depending on how new they are.

I've worked out that the average shipping price I pay is around AU$7 on each game. This is not much higher than shipping prices from some Aussie online stores.

Even including shipping, games are often half the price that I would pay locally.

Check out my import guide for more info:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1073839194

It's in my .sig too!