In both physical & digital copies of video games: when I’ve visited an store, upon looking at the price tag (they range at 90 AUD or more for a copy, seriously?!) I’ve also browsed through their Steam store front which isn’t any better, 110-30 AUD for a digital license?! When you consider regional pricing, they end up costing more than USD (depends, like a +20% increase which is insane to me). To put it into perspective, games are cheaper in my country than they are in Australia.
You must log in or register to comment.
I reckon the most expensive game I’ve bought in the last 10 years was about $20. There are just so many high quality low price games out there, often with deep discounts. I wouldn’t waste my time on something like CoD 13, let alone waste my money.
So, a high quality game costs less than a sandwich and coffee for lunch. I don’t think it’s expensive at all.
They’re not. In fact we often pay less than the US after factoring in exchange rate and the fact that a USD$70 game doesn’t include sales tax.
Because.
Have you not heard of the term “Australia tax”?
Here I am relaxing to half an hour or so of Day of Defeat Source in the evening and not having to think about the price of any games and also not having to think about hardware cuz it runs on any old thing.
Corporate greed and a weaker dollar.
Take a look at MS flight Sim 2024
US$70
AU$110Actual conversion using xe.com says US$70 is only AU$101.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but US prices for some stupid reason tend to be quoted in pre-tax, whereas in Australia ours is including GST.
So in your example, it’s pretty much spot on currently?
As SaveTheTuaHawk said add gst
But also whilst the conversion rate on XE might be less you can’t convert currency at that price, once you add in conversion fees that will also increase the price.
Look to FlightGear, Opensource and free, and imho better for small planes.
Aussies on Lemmy who don’t understand their own economy… Austria has a GST of 10%.
10% of $100 is $10, $100 + $10 = $110.
Americans don’t have a GST or VAT, which is why they are $38T in debt.
If it were as easy as that every game would follow the expense route. But many games on steam are below the au/us conversion rate.
Because while both countries use the “dollar,” it is not the same currency and cannot be compared directly.
Australians also tend to make more, and thus have a higher cost of living. If an Australian is making less than the equivalent American, someone or something failed somewhere and that person is not going to have a good time. If an American is making more than the equivalent Australian, that person is probably enjoying life.
It’s why pushes for minimum wage are so poorly thought out. Okay, you double everyone’s wage, it means the companies that pay them pay twice as much, so they will raise costs to compensate. They’re not going to take a pay cut. With everything going up, those who get paid more have roughly the same spending power (so nothing has really changed for them) but those who didn’t get paid more have it worse — and that’s the point.
