Publisher: pls explain 80USD Australia price on Steam

[OzJeremy]

I would love to buy Civilization V, even on Steam. I've bought every previous version of this franchise, including on the consoles.

But I'm not a sucker. I will not be completely and utterly gouged.

The Steam store is demanding 80 US dollars for Civ V, compared with 50 US dollars to American purchasers. A SIXTY PERCENT MARKUP. Same currency. Same digital product. No extra costs for you, save the 10% GST (which should push the price to 55 USD, not 80).

So justify turning fifty into eighty. Give us your lame corporate justification for ripping off Australians so much.

And Australians - if you don't have a relative overseas who can gift it to you, please make sure you buy it from PlayAsia or something. If you buy it locally, you're rewarding the local distributor that has demanded this ridiculous markup.

 

[Schuesseled]

I would love to buy Civilization V, even on Steam. I've bought every previous version of this franchise, including on the consoles.

But I'm not a sucker. I will not be completely and utterly gouged.

The Steam store is demanding 80 US dollars for Civ V, compared with 50 US dollars to American purchasers. A SIXTY PERCENT MARKUP. Same currency. Same digital product. No extra costs for you, save the 10% GST (which should push the price to 55 USD, not 80).

So justify turning fifty into eighty. Give us your lame corporate justification for ripping off Australians so much.

And Australians - if you don't have a relative overseas who can gift it to you, please make sure you buy it from PlayAsia or something. If you buy it locally, you're rewarding the local distributor that has demanded this ridiculous markup.

Whats the us to aus exhange rate?

 

[Mercade]

Duplicate thread. This is already extensively discussed here where the exact same argument and math were presented.

 

[Lillefix]

Whats the us to aus exhange rate?

Google. Very nice instrument.

1 usd to aud

1 U.S. dollar = 1.14916111 Australian dollars

edit: 80 U.S. dollars = 91.932889 Australian dollars

 

[The_J]

Duplicate thread. This is already extensively discussed here where the exact same argument and math were presented.

Please discuss over there.

Moderator Action: Thread closed.

Edit: Ups, forgot to do that, now closed.
2. Edit: Now open again, i've been convinced that the thread is needed.

 

[Schuesseled]

Then yeah i'd say its over priced.

 

[arstal]

I would love to buy Civilization V, even on Steam. I've bought every previous version of this franchise, including on the consoles.

But I'm not a sucker. I will not be completely and utterly gouged.
.

Enough Aussies will be gouged.

Your best bets:

a) Show Firaxis that you don't support this by supporting one of their competitors instead. I believe Stardock doesn't do price discrimination (look up Elemental and doublecheck for me, if it's wrong, I'll send a complaint myself)

b) Get an American to buy the game for you, then pay them after they gift it to you

That said, the game will likely be overbloated in size, and eat up a ton of your stupid Aussie bandwidth caps that I worry will come to the US. Show Valve the power of Factor Price equalization. (then again,, Valve could be evil and brick your games instead)

 

[tom2050]

Firaxis, 2K and Valve are Anti-Australians! They hate them all down-under! Those bastards!

JUST KIDDING! Had to throw that in there for a good laugh!

That is a bit (a huge bit) on the high side... I don't see it as being possible to have such a HUGE legitimate price difference!

Can Civ 5 only be purchased from Steam in Australia, or will it be available at stores eventually? If so, I doubt the price would be the same as the Steam price.

 

[bite]

Firaxis, 2K and Valve are Anti-Australians! They hate them all down-under! Those bastards!

JUST KIDDING! Had to throw that in there for a good laugh!

That is a bit (a huge bit) on the high side... I don't see it as being possible to have such a HUGE legitimate price difference!

Can Civ 5 only be purchased from Steam in Australia, or will it be available at stores eventually? If so, I doubt the price would be the same as the Steam price.

The Steam price is probably aligned with what you would usually pay retail, for a new game here in Australia (anywhere from $AU60 - $AU100 depending on the platform). However, for a PC computer game $US80 (that is around $AU90) is a bit on the high side all ready let alone the fact that your buying it as a digital product, not a retail product.

 

[Alki]

Steam is gonna charge whatever they think they can get away with. Supply and demand forces at work here. I'm a bit gutted about the price difference between the GBP and the € myself. I'd be livid if I was upside down right now.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

This is disgusting. as an Australian ive been buying games around the $100 AUS mark for years without realising you Americans pay almost half that for the same thing! im definately going to have to find an alternative source for this, i refuse to pay double. looks like Playasia.com is the cheapest for us.

i seriously hope they reconsider this ridiculous price increase.

 

[Danger]

This price difference is not justified. In no way does being in Australia alter the fact that all digital copies will come from exactly the same place in exactly the same way.

I myself will be looking at other alternatives. Might even give those guys in Sweden a try...

 

[PieceOfMind]

Steam is gonna charge whatever they think they can get away with. Supply and demand forces at work here. I'm a bit gutted about the price difference between the GBP and the € myself. I'd be livid if I was upside down right now.

I find I can go around in circles with the supply and demand argument. I'm unsure how well it applies to digital products which effectively cost 0 to replicate and only a small cost to distribute to the customer.

For example, prices rise if a product is in limited supply. This can't apply here as the supply is for all intents and purposes infinite. The other way a price can rise is from greater demand. Should we therefore assume that demand for this videogame is higher in Australia than, say, the US?

What about if we consider the Deluxe Edition? It is restricted to sales through Steam only. Supply and demand economics would probably dictate then that the price can remain higher than it ought to had there been adequate competition. Or am I applying the wrong thing here? (I'm no economist )

The way I'm seeing it at the moment, you can work out why these prices are arrived at if you assume there is some underlying function that determines how likely a customer is to purchase a product given its price (and possibly other factors like how long since release). If that function tells you there is an acceptably high number of people willing to pay a higher price for the product then it could be reasonable to initially price the product high, and lower the price later. Generally you can consider it to be lost revenue when you sell a product to someone when they would have happily paid more for it. I think it's probably true enough that a lot of people are prepared to pay as much as 80USD for this game in Australia as well as anywhere else in the world.

Why then don't we see US customers paying 80USD for the game? Perhaps Australian gamers have more disposable income on average than American gamers (in which case I could see some justification for the higher price). It is true that Australians have been paying more for new video games for years anyway (arguably not so with second hand video games where prices across countries are probably comparable) so perhaps the price set for Australia in this case is just trying to take advantage of Aussies being used to paying more anyway. But as I said in another thread, usually Aussies would only pay that much for a game that is highly anticipated - typically one with flashy graphics (a lot of FPS games for example). A game like civ5 is hugely anticipated only really by the strategy gamers and everyone else will only buy it if they think it looks good on the shelf.

Wherever I can I will be recommending Aussies buy the game through a US friend on Steam or through a retailer of the physical copy. Paying 90USD for the steam deluxe edition is almost a joke.

 

[J-man]

I think the price is more than justified. I'll explain, it's all about geography, Australia is located at the bottom half of the earth. Think about the extra work Firaxis has to do, because Australia is upside down Firaxis has to rotate all the graphics, units, UI elements and many other things with 180 degrees just for the Australians.

That's why the price is justified.

 

[Danger]

I find I can go around in circles with the supply and demand argument. I'm unsure how well it applies to digital products which effectively cost 0 to replicate and only a small cost to distribute to the customer.

For example, prices rise if a product is in limited supply. This can't apply here as the supply is for all intents and purposes infinite. The other way a price can rise is from greater demand. Should we therefore assume that demand for this videogame is higher in Australia than, say, the US?

What about if we consider the Deluxe Edition? It is restricted to sales through Steam only. Supply and demand economics would probably dictate then that the price can remain higher than it ought to had there been adequate competition. Or am I applying the wrong thing here? (I'm no economist )

The way I'm seeing it at the moment, you can work out why these prices are arrived at if you assume there is some underlying function that determines how likely a customer is to purchase a product given its price (and possibly other factors like how long since release). If that function tells you there is an acceptably high number of people willing to pay a higher price for the product then it could be reasonable to initially price the product high, and lower the price later. Generally you can consider it to be lost revenue when you sell a product to someone when they would have happily paid more for it. I think it's probably true enough that a lot of people are prepared to pay as much as 80USD for this game in Australia as well as anywhere else in the world.

Why then don't we see US customers paying 80USD for the game? Perhaps Australian gamers have more disposable income on average than American gamers (in which case I could see some justification for the higher price). It is true that Australians have been paying more for new video games for years anyway (arguably not so with second hand video games where prices across countries are probably comparable) so perhaps the price set for Australia in this case is just trying to take advantage of Aussies being used to paying more anyway. But as I said in another thread, usually Aussies would only pay that much for a game that is highly anticipated - typically one with flashy graphics (a lot of FPS games for example). A game like civ5 is hugely anticipated only really by the strategy gamers and everyone else will only buy it if they think it looks good on the shelf.

Wherever I can I will be recommending Aussies buy the game through a US friend on Steam or through a retailer of the physical copy. Paying 90USD for the steam deluxe edition is almost a joke.

We have been paying more for games for as long as I can remember. It was somewhat justified as the developers/publishers would be subject to extra shipping costs, taxes, our smaller market share, exchange rates and other anomalies.

None of those apply now with digital copies.....

Unfortunately I feel that their solution to this won't be to lower the digital prices but to remove the option altogether....

 

[tom2050]

So the bottom line is; Firaxis has to rotate graphics! Ahhhh the work involved!

Here is what will happen (And we ALL KNOW IT will happen): We will be told some horrible lame excuse like it is common and historical to rip Australians off (as said above perfectly by Danger)

And then: They may drop the price some pathetic amount (a few dollars).

And then: The PR Nightmare will tell us sweet little lies to try to fool us since there is no valid and realistically appropriate answer.

The partial worldy truth: It is really just other 'human beings in power' that are telling 'the idiot masses that aren't in power' that it costs 'an outrageous amount more' so some idiot somewhere 'can line their filthy greedy pockets'.
--- at least we know this part is true to some extent ----

 

[Dale]

The answer is actually very simple. Australia has a 47% luxury tax on computers and software.

Ironically, the same tax is applied to tampons and pads. Since when were THEY a luxury!

 

[Grey Fox]

Tampons are a luxary cause you can live without them

And the price here is also quite stupid since they made the $ to € a flat exchange. A game costing 50$ costs 50€ here. Which would have been fine if it always worked out to be a 25% difference, which is our VAT. But it doesn't.

Think I am going to get an american to gift games to me in the future.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Are you kidding Dale? If not, got a source?

 

[arstal]

This is disgusting. as an Australian ive been buying games around the $100 AUS mark for years without realising you Americans pay almost half that for the same thing! im definately going to have to find an alternative source for this, i refuse to pay double. looks like Playasia.com is the cheapest for us.

i seriously hope they reconsider this ridiculous price increase.

The best option is for Americans to help Aussies out by taking Aussie money then gifting it to Aussies.

Or use an American proxy perhaps?