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[PA Comic] Friday, November 7, 2014 - Economaniacal
Dog
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Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
[PA Comic] Friday, November 7, 2014 - Economaniacal
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the reason retail is more expensive seems to be a combination of distribution costs and a smaller overall market
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Only a mere 136 pins to go!
The consolidated pdf version gives a pretty rundown of this issue - which extends beyond game pricing.
Might be worth putting this quote out there:
"3.78 The Committee notes no representatives from the gaming industry chose
to address this issue. "
Unfortunately it doesn't feel like much has been done about it - except that when the Coalition won the federal election they stalled the rollout of the National Broadband Network - making physical goods more attractive to ppl who dont have access to decent internet.
Xiro is correct. Retailers charge what the market will bear, and we're so used to games being considerably more expensive compared to other countries that we grin (although it's more like a rictus in this modern age) and bear it. Same thing with software suites, it's all bullshit.
You know, as opposed to Moon, PA.
Pins!
I assumed digital games cost more in Australia because Koala bears love the taste of fiber optic cable.
You know there are still large parts of the US that don't have access to high speed Internet, right? I imagine retail still exists because there are people that would like to be able to play their games in areas of the world without an Internet connection at all.
"The cost of Adobe Systems Creative Suite Master 6 Collection in Australia was much higher than that of the United States equivalent, retailing at $4,334 in comparison to $2599 in the United States. It was calculated at the time that it was cheaper to fly to the United States, puchase a copy of the Creative Suite Master 6 Collection and fly back to Australia"
Like, the interviewer sits down with him to start the video, hits record and the immediate first thing out of his mouth is "I fuckin' hate Australia, man. Fuck those guys."
I doubt it. Since I'm from Ukraine, the situation here is reversed - we have some games cheaper than rest of the world. But if someone goes here or uses a proxy to buy game here, he won't be able to play it in other regions.
Summation: it costs 10-20x as much to push bits in Australia as it does in EU and NA.
Money quote: "To give you some sense of how out-of-whack Australia is, at CloudFlare we pay about as much every month for bandwidth to serve all of Europe as we do to for Australia. That’s in spite of the fact that approximately 33x the number of people live in Europe (750 million) versus Australia (22 million)."
Well, it's more the case that physical retailers often refuse to stock products if they're cheaper digitally (for obvious reasons), and game publishers don't want to shoot themselves in the foot by getting cut out of half the market. Lots of indie games (which often aren't available at physical stores) are similarly priced in Australia and the US.
Yo ho, yo ho...
As always the answer to the question "Why does that cost so much?" is "Because people are willing to pay that much for it."
Bulldust and dog's business.
I wouldn't make a habit of this, but while I was over there for a trip, a friend of mine bought a game and gifted it to me because Steam would not take my credit card while I was in the region.
Reading that page, I saw Telstra mentioned and goddamn it, of course it's their fault. Fucking Telstra. I cannot think of a good thing anyone has said about that company.
So they aren't doing it anymore, even though it will cost more in the long run. Because it'll be cheaper right now.
When it comes to technology this country can barely work out where the switch is.
(Important to note, though, that minimum wage in Australia is about double what it is in the US, so we can afford it. It's been really short-sighted of those vested interests in the US to keep the wages so low - sure, you need to pay your own staff more money, but now most of your customers have twice as much to spend! The cost of labour in most products is actually pretty damn small. If you can't sell more burgers to people with twice as much money, even if the burger costs 15 cents more, then you're an idiot).
Deeply Afraid
(And that's when they make stuff available at all and don't just block us from accessing the pages and ban us for using Steam keys bought from other sites)
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Steam traffic is not paid for by the game publisher, the local CDNs do that. They are not paying Telstra to peer their data out.
While it is true that wages are high in Australia so to is the cost of living.
The reason why game prices are so high here is because there are no barriers to make publishers reduce their prices. They are high not because of data transmission costs but because they can charge as much as they like with little to no consequence.
And to make matters worse, when some games finally arrive here not only is the price higher but often some content is even removed from the game and some editions of games do not arrive here.
The closest we have in Australia to a sales tax is the Goods and Services Tax (GST). It is set to 10% of the product and is applied before it even goes on the shelf. For example, if I see a game for $100 AUD, $10 is tax. The rest is for the unit itself.
The real joke is the same distributors and retailers are the ones that scream poor the loudest and have event demanded that measures be put in place to deter people from buying online.
That's bloody cheap for a pre-release. Prices in Aus have dropped markedly over the past few years - launch titles for the 360 were hitting $120 at EB.