Appreciate that in regards to AU...but it doesn't help with knowing Brazillian tax law...
I wasn't addressing Brazillian tax law - apologies if that wasn't clear. I was addressing the bolded section: the idea that Sony wasn't being greedy. I did this by demonstrating that Sony jacked their prices across the board - regardless of the taxation in Brazil, Sony wants more money everywhere, and raised their prices by large amounts in other regions, as opposed to just Brazil.
The cost of living in AU is a good deal more than America as well...might want to mention that so the price doesn't seem so unfair lol
Cost of living in United States compared to Australia. We provide several metrics to compare the cost of living including cost of groceries, transportation, and more.
www.mylifeelsewhere.com
This is an irrelevant statistic when comparing price increases within a single region. The core issue isn't the lax US-AUD conversion rate - the core issue is that Sony increased their prices by 16% in USD... but imposed larger cost increases everywhere else. Being that their games are funded in USD, disproportionate region specific price increases falls outside of justifiable economic factors. The increased price in AUD should've been AUD$116, not AUD$125.00. Sony charged more because it believed it could get away with it.
That's rough...Most digital prices are ridonkulous sans sales... With tax a new PS5 game is nearly 80$ here (more expensive depending on state)
luckily even in the "Down Under" there are ways to avoid that stupidity
If you've been hunting for new PS5 games to play, then go to Amazon Australia right now and get excellent deals on a handful of great PlayStation 5 games before time runs out.
www.techtimes.com
Not really. The site you've linked to basically instructs their readers to import physical games via Amazon Australia, which often ships US Region games to Australian customers. This takes advantage of Sony's over-charging in AUD to provide lower-cost physical games. If Australians want to safely import their games, they're better of importing from other Pal regions, like the UK, to prevent game region fuckery. Of course, asking entire countries to import their game collections physically to avoid Sony's greed is kind of a silly suggestion in the first place: Sony shouldn't be charging AUD$125.00 per game in one region while charging AUD$85 in another.
Yes the price hike is stupid, yes I hate that decision...and sadly no as PS5's and their games sell like...well PS5s (hotcakes are overrated) it likely won't stop.
The impact will be felt, it'll just take time. There is only a finite amount of expendable income, and Sony is now charging more for the same product. They're committing themselves to
hopefully making more money off of less total sales by increasing their RRP. This will works wonders initially, but as the generation goes on, it adds up in public perception. Xbox killed itself last gen because it couldn't recover from its terrible public perception, and "Arrogant Sony" isn't something Sony can afford for very long.
That having been said though, this WAS going to happen eventually, the costs of development have never been higher and inflation was GOING to hit video games again eventually. Sucks it was Sony to give it a try...)(&#(*^#%)( price hike!
What? Literally none of this is true.
Sony and Activision are the only companies who jacked up their prices. Ubisoft, EA, Zenimax, Microsoft, Square; all of the biggest publishers' games are still just AUD$100.00 and every pre-orderable game is listed at this price. No one is jacking their prices except for Sony and Activision. Why? Because they believe people will pay more money for the same game, and they can pocket the difference. Greed, plain and simple.
Sony's price hike isn't an inevitability, and this is a poor attempt at apologetics for corporate profiteering. Gaming is the most profitable entertainment medium on Earth and it just had its biggest year of all time. Sony in particular is posting record breaking profits year, after year, after year. So, if Sony is making more money than they have in any year previously, why do they
need to increase the cost of their games
now? Jacking prices when you're making industry-record profits isn't "inevitable" - as if this is outside of Sony's control. This is simply Sony's suits wanting to cash in on the goodwill and dominance that the PS4 created. Like when Activision posts record profits and the fires hundreds of employees. Or EA posting record profits thanks to loot boxes, and cuts support for their GAAS titles to cut costs. Greed.
The idea that inflation SHOULD increase the cost of games in 2021 is also a
really bad argument. The size of the industry in 2021 is
multiple orders of magnitude more than it was even just twenty years ago. Scary levels of growth. A Sony exclusive on the PS4 might push 20 million sales alone, whereas that was more than the spending power of the
entire home video game market in 1980. Companies are selling ten or twenty times the number of copies of their games in comparison, which is why the retail cost of games hasn't increased: they've been making so much fucking money off of selling
so many more copies that they just don't need to. What changed this year that Sony - and only Sony - suddenly needs to start charging more? That doesn't even touch on Sony's biggest money maker: PSN. Movies, music, rentals - even digital games have much better margins for Sony thanks to PSN. This type of network simply didn't exist in years gone by, and it's generated literally billions for Sony. If a platform holder like Sony apparently
needs to jack up their prices, why doesn't this apply to the other publishers who don't have PSN profits to offset rising costs? Surely, without the revenue of a platform like PSN, their development costs would've forced game prices up dozens of times already? Except that EA, Activision, and Ubisoft all posted massive profits last year, and the year before, etc.
Sony is hoping that the appetite for "next gen" makes their customers blind to unnecessarily jacking up the price of their games. That's literally all it is.
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ethomaz posts, and thought that Brzil was chock full of super-fanboys that would pay anything.
